Withnail & I, 1987
Director
Cast
visit the film locations
London: Flights: Heathrow Airport; Gatwick Airport
Stony Stratford: about two miles west of Wolverton Station (rail: Silverlink from London Euston)
Penrith: West Coast Main Line from London Euston
Trivia
Bruce Robinson and Richard E Grant teamed up again for the little-seen satire How To Get Ahead in Advertising.
If you're travelling to Stony Stratford, stop off at Milton Keynes to explore ‘Metropolis’ – as seen in Superman IV
Withnail and I filming location: ‘Crow Cragg’: Sleddale Hall, near Penrith, Cumbria
Set in London’s Camden Town and in Penrith, Cumbria, Bruce Robinson’s Sixties-set comedy has acquired a vast cult following over the years.
In fact, most of the London scenes were filmed, not in Camden but in Notting Hill, including the squalid flat, which has since been demolished. Now another classic location succumbs to the same fate.
Withnail and I filming location: The ‘Mother Black Cap, Camden’ – in happier days: Tavistock Crescent, Notting Hill, London
The film’s ‘Mother Black Cap’ pub (presumably a conflation of Camden’s Black Cap and Mother Red Cap – now the World’s End music bar), where Withnail (Richard E Grant) orders “Two large gins. Two pints of cider. Ice in the cider”, lived on as one of the Babushka chain.
It was briefly relaunched – as The Mother Black Cap, then became classy restaurant Crescent House, then The Tavistock. It had a radical makeover since finding fame as Camden’s woozy old Irish boozer, but never seemed to find success and, at the end of 2010, was finally demolished. It stood at 41 Tavistock Crescent at St Mark’s Grove, W11, facing the end of St Luke’s Road, in front of the Westway and Notting Hill’s famous Trellick Tower.
Withnail and I filming location: The ‘Mother Black Cap, Camden’ – finally gone for good: Tavistock Crescent, Notting Hill, London
Photograph: Malcolm Davis
This is a popular spot for movie-makers. Nearby you’ll find locations for the archetypal 60s ‘issue’ movie The L-Shaped Room, the Bill Murray comedy The Man Who Knew Too Little and the Beatles’ first feature film A Hard Day’s Night.
The wolf enclosure is in Camden, though the wolves have now gone. It’s Regent’s Park Zoo, by the Gloucester Gate entrance from the Outer Circle.
Withnail and I filming location: Uncle Monty’s London house: Glebe Place, Chelsea, London SW3
The grand London home of Uncle Monty (Richard Griffiths) is West House, 35 Glebe Place, tucked away in a crook of the street off Bramerton Street, in Chelsea, SW3 .
‘Crow Cragg’, where the pair end up “on holiday by mistake”, is Sleddale Hall, a derelict cottage alongside Wet Sleddale Reservoir, just west from the A6, near Shap, about twelve miles south of Penrith, Cumbria (rail: Penrith). And, yes, that is Wet Sleddale and not ‘West Sleddale’. I have no idea if there’s a Dry Sleddale Reservoir.
Withnail and I filming location: ‘Crow Cragg’: Sleddale Hall in 2000, empty and shuttered
There’s a limited bus service from Penrith to Shap. About a mile south of Shap, a narrow road runs west to Wet Sleddale, and from that, about two miles of footpath lead to Sleddale Hall. Although the cottage overlooks Wet Sleddale Reservoir, that’s not the spectacular body of water seen in the movie.
Withnail and I filming location: The ‘King Henry’ pub: The Crown, Stony Stratford, Buckinghamshire
There seem to be plenty of Withnail fans who head to Penrith to find the ‘King Henry’ pub and the ‘Penrith Tea Rooms’ without realising that these scenes were filmed in Buckinghamshire.
Withnail and I filming location: The ‘Penrith Tea Room ’: Cox and Robinson, Market Place, Stony Stratford, Buckinghamshire
The town square is Market Square, Stony Stratford, not far from Milton Keynes (rail: Wolverton).
The ‘King Henry’ is The Crown, 9 Market Place, but the really sad news is that there is no tea room, so you’ll not be able to order the finest wines known to humanity.
The premises is now a chemist shop, Cox and Robinson, 1 Market Place, on the opposite corner to the Crown.
