Howards End filming locations
Film locations: London; Oxfordshire; Surrey; Shropshire; Devon; Worcester
Howards End filming location: the country cottage ‘Howards End, in ‘Hilton’: Peppard Cottage, Rotherfield Peppard, near Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire
The third of the impeccably produced Merchant-Ivory adaptations of EM Forster novels is filmed on a slew of real locations around the UK.
Howards End filming location: home of the Schlegel sisters: Victoria Square, Victoria, London
Starting off in London: the cream-painted home of the Schlegel sisters (Emma Thompson and Helena Bonham-Carter) – the fictitious ‘6 Wickham Place’ – is 6 Victoria Square, a quiet square hidden away just north of Victoria Station, SW1, whose photogenic charm was also used in Mike Todd’s 1956 Around the World in 80 Days.
Howards End filming location: the London home of Henry Wilcox: 51 Buckingham Gate, Victoria, London
Not far away, the courtyard of a converted Edwardian apartment block, the luxurious, 5-star and very discreet 51 Buckingham Gate, Buckingham Gate, SW1, became the exterior of the London home of Henry Wilcox (Anthony Hopkins). You can glimpse the landscaped courtyard, with its Shakespearian figures and central fountain, through the hotel’s imposing gateway.
The interior staircase, where Wilcox proposes to Ruth (Vanessa Redgrave), is 2 South Audley Street in Mayfair, which housed the office of James Bond producer Albert Broccoli’s Eon Productions. See its elaborate exterior as the ‘Cadogan Hotel’ at which the writer is arrested in biopic Wilde.
At the other end of the social scale, the modest home of Leonard Bast (Samuel West) is on Park Street behind Borough Market, Borough SE1; another popular (though threatened) location you’ll probably recognise from Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, Entrapment and Keep the Aspidistra Flying, among others.
Howards End filming location: Christmas shopping: Fortnum and Mason, 181 Piccadilly, London
The lavish emporium decked out with seasonal decorations, where Margaret Schlegel demonstrates “the scientific approach to Christmas shopping – a list”, to Ruth, is Fortnum and Mason, 181 Piccadilly. Read the shop’s history from its humble beginnings as a grocery store in1707.
Back in 1965, Julie Christie and swinging photographer Roland Curram shoplifted a bagful of luxury foods here in John Schlesinger’s Oscar-winning satire Darling.
Howards End filming location: the lecture at the ‘Ethical Hall’: Oxford Town Hall, St Aldgate, Oxford
The rainswept exterior of the ‘Ethical Hall’, where Mr Bast and the Schlegel sisters attend a lecture, is near the Bank of England in the City of London, but the interior, where Bast picks up the wrong umbrella, is Oxford Town Hall, St Aldgate’s at Carfax in the centre of town (another favourite, it featured as the interior of the ‘Old Bailey’ in A Fish Called Wanda).
Howards End filming location: the discussion group on the ‘Chelsea Embankment’: Strawberry House, Chiswick Mall, Chiswick.
The row of houses along Chiswick Mall stood in for the ‘Chelsea Embankment’, where Wilcox gives a bit of disastrous insider info about the ‘Porphyrion’ company to the Schlegels, as they leave their weekly discussion group at Strawberry House. The same house is home to James Fox and Anjelica Huston in another Merchant-Ivory Forster adaptation, The Golden Bowl, and the house immediately to the right was home to tortured barrister Melville Farr (Dirk Bogarde) in Victim.
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Howards End, 1992
Director
Cast
visit the film locations
London: Flights: Heathrow Airport; Gatwick Airport
51 Buckingham Gate, Buckingham Gate, SW1 (tel: +44 02 (0) 7769.7766)
Renaissance Chancery Court London, 252 High Holborn, (tel: +44 02 (0) 7829.9888)
Simpson’s-in-the-Strand, 100 Strand (tel: +44 (0)20 7836 9112)
Fortnum and Mason, 181 Piccadilly
Trivia
Simpson’s-in-the-Strand was a favourite haunt of Alfred Hitchcock, who set a scene for his 1936 film Sabotage here, though it was ñ in line with the standard practice of the day ñ recreated in the studio.