Hot Fuzz, 2007
Director
Cast
- Simon Pegg
- Nick Frost
- Timothy Dalton
- Jim Broadbent
- Edward Woodward
- Billie Whitelaw
- Bill Nighy
- Paul Freeman
- Paddy Considine
- David Threlfall
- Peter Wight
- Cate Blanchett
- Peter Jackson
visit the film locations
Wells: There is no direct rail link from London. Wells is 21 miles southwest of Bath on the A39 and A371.
Wells Tourist Information Centre, Town Hall, Wells, Somerset BA5 2RB. (tel: 01749.672552)
The Crown at Wells, Market Square, Wells, Somerset BA5 2RP. (tel: 01749.673457)
Swan Hotel, Sadler Street, Wells, Somerset BA5 2RX. (tel: 01749.836300)
Bishop's Palace, Wells
The Little Theatre, Chamberlain Street, Wells
The Royal Standard of England, Forty Green Lane, Forty Green, Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire (tel: 01494.673382)
Corus Hotel, Edgwarebury Lane, off Barnett Lane, Elstree
The Barn Theatre, Welwyn Garden City, Hertfordshire
Finchley Nurseries Garden Centre, Burton Hole Lane, Mill Hill NW71AS (tel: (020.8959.2124)
Trivia
The same team previously produced zombie rom-com Shaun of the Dead
Hot Fuzz location: the ‘Sandford’ pub: The Crown at Wells, Somerset
Photograph: Crown at Wells, Somerset
Following Shaun of the Dead, the team of Edgar Wright, Simon Pegg and Nick Frost hit gold again, transplanting the high energy police buddy movie to the West Country of England. And what other film can boast unrecognisable cameos from Oscar-winning Cate Blanchett and Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson? Or a credit line which thanks both Somerfield Supermarkets and Quentin Tarantino?
The setting is the fictitious town of ‘Sandford’ – the all-purpose place name used in police training exercises.
In fact, the opening training scenes were filmed in the real Metropolitan Police's training complex, Hendon Police Training College, Peel Centre, Aerodrome Road, NW4.
Hot Fuzz location: cast members Nick Frost and Simon Pegg with director Edgar Wright at The Crown at Wells, Somerset
Photograph: Crown at Wells, Somerset
'Sandford' itself is England's smallest city, Wells in Somerset, at the foot of the Mendip Hills in the West of England. It's about four miles from Glastonbury. The centre of town, around which much of the action is set, is the city's Market Square. To keep the small-town feel, the famous Wells Cathedral had to be removed from the film digitally.
Hot Fuzz location: Nicholas Angel’s hotel: The Swan, Sadler Street, Wells, Somerset
London über-cop Nicholas Angel (Simon Pegg) stays at the Swan Hotel, 11 Sadler Street, in Wells (which is where many of the cast stayed during filming).
Hot Fuzz location: the town of ‘Sandford’: Market Square, Wells, Somerset
The local pub where the cops meet after work, and outside which Angel nicks a seriously plastered Danny Butterman (Nick Frost) on his first night in ‘Sandford’, is The Crown at Wells, on the south side of Market Square, a 15th century Grade II listed coaching inn. It was from a window at the Crown that Quaker leader William Penn (founder of Pennsylvania) once preached.
Hot Fuzz location: the ‘Sandford’ newsagent: City News, High Street, Wells, Somerset
Other Wells locations include the newsagent ('Only one schoolchild at a time'), which is City News, 2a High Street.
Hot Fuzz location: journalist Tim gets splatted: St Cuthbert’s, Wells, Somerset
'St Vincent's’, the church outside which journalist Tim Messenger is splatted, in an homage to The Omen, is not the famous cathedral, but St Cuthbert's Church – though the shot of the sinister figure on the spiral stair – is Wells Cathedral.
Hot Fuzz location: the NWA meeting: Bishop’s Palace, Wells, Somerset
Angel meets the local worthies of the NWA (Neighbourhood Watch Association) in the Bishop's Palace, Wells, and later at the nighttime meeting outside the Palace. It’s in the grounds of the Palace, incidentally, that you can see the wells which gave the city its name.
Hot Fuzz location: the supermarket exterior: Somerfield, High Street, Wells, Somerset
The supermarket owned by devious Simon Skinner (Timothy Dalton) is Somerfield, High Street, which is where director Edgar Wright once worked (and he puts in a glimpse-and-miss-him cameo as a shelf stacker here).
The exterior of the theatre at which Angel and Danny watch the gloriously awful production of Romeo and Juliet is The Little Theatre, Portway at Chamberlain Street, Wells. Like quite a few of the interiors, the Baz Luhrmann-style extravaganza was staged closer to London, at The Barn Theatre, Welwyn Garden City, Hertfordshire.
Among the non-Somerset locations are the farm at which David Bradley keeps an armoury fit to defend a small nation, which is Wards Hurst Farm, Berkhamstead.
The final chase, which begins at Bishop's Palace, continues through the arches of Waverley Abbey, two miles southeast of Farnham in Surrey, and on to Copped Hall, the remaining shell of a Georgian mansion destroyed by fire, in Essex.
Hot Fuzz location: the interior of the supermarket: Safeway, Staines Road, Hounslow, Greater London
And the Wells establishments? It's not all quite as it seems. The suspiciously huge interior of the Somerfield supermarket is the old (currently empty) Safeway store on Staines Road in Hounslow, Greater London.
The garden centre, at which a victim is bloodily dispatched with a pair of shears, is in London itself. It's Finchley Nurseries Garden Centre, Burton Hole Lane, Mill Hill. Incidentally, this is just behind the location of ‘Arkham Asylum’ in Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins.
Hot Fuzz location: the interior of the pub: The Royal Standard, Forty Green Road, Forty Green, Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire
The interior of the Crown, used for the spectacular shoot-em-up, is The Royal Standard of England, Forty Green Road, Forty Green, near Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire – a wonderfully atmospheric timbered bar, which claims to be the oldest free-house in England.
Hot Fuzz location: the lobby of the hotel: Corus Hotel, Edgwarebury Lane, Elstree, Hertfordshire
And the Swan Hotel lobby, where Angel encounters Billie Whitelaw, and its dining room, where he dines alone after his accusation of murder falls flat, is the interior of the Corus Hotel, Edgwarebury Lane, off Barnett Lane, Elstree, a familiar location (as the Edgwarebury Hotel) seen in films as diverse as School For Scoundrels, The Devil Rides Out and – very briefly – A Clockwork Orange.
