The Long Good Friday | 1980
The 1980 British classic The Long Good Friday was filmed on real locations all across London. Find out exactly where – and what still remains after more than forty years and what's been lost.
Time to revisit a genuine British classic and discover what London locations remain after more than forty years. The Long Good Friday is one of the few British thrillers that can stand up against the best from the US, as the grand plans of gangland boss Harold Shand (Bob Hoskins) fall apart over an Easter weekend.
The film opens in ‘Northern Ireland’, with Shand’s right-hand man Colin (Paul Freeman – recognise him as Belloq from Raiders Of The Lost Ark?) delivering a suitcase full of money – and unwisely helping himself to just a handful. Not a good move.
The movie was shot entirely in London – except for the remote 'Irish' cottage where the recipients of this suitcase are gunned down. It's not nearly as remote as it's made to look. This is Bottom Barn Cottage, Berrys Hill, just east of Biggin Hill Airport toward the very English village of Cudham in Kent.
As you can see, the 'Belfast' bar in which Colin hits on the doomed Irish lad (Kevin McNally) is called Fagan's. That’s not set-dressing as I had assumed, this is what the pub was called at the time. Previously it was The Fishmongers Arms, 287 High Road at Trinity Road in Wood Green, London N22.
The building still bears the ‘Fishmongers Arms’ signage but, like so many pubs, it's been redeveloped as private accommodation and its carpark is now a timber yard. In the background of the scene, as Colin's driver and the lad are abducted from the pub car park, you can recognise the pub opposite, which is now Grand Palace Tapas Bar.
The ‘Belfast’ pub interior is a different matter but it’s still London and not far away. This is Grade II-listed boozer The Salisbury Hotel, 1 Grand Parade, Green Lanes, at the corner of St Ann’s Road, in Harringay, London N4.
Its slightly faded ambiance can also be seen in Richard Attenborough’s 1992 biopic Chaplin with Robert Downey Jr, and also appeared under its own name as the big, bustling pub where Miranda Richardson looks for Gabriel Byrne in David Cronenberg’s Spider.
The pub was looking a bit down at heel, but in 2003 was renovated to become a real gem, offering an enticing range of draught ales and pretty good food too.
The widow of Colin's murdered driver collects her husband's body as it arrives back in London at Paddington Station. The station, serving Worcester and the West of England, is one of the truly great railway buildings, consisting of three vast arched spaces as awe-inspiring as any cathedral.
Take a moment to admire the swirling ironwork of the arches and the almost Moorish balconies. The station was built in 1853 from designs by the ubiquitous Isambard Kingdom Brunel. It’s now the terminus for the Heathrow Express, which will whisk you off to London’s main air terminal at top speed every 15 minutes.
It's appeared in plenty of films but it would be churlish not to give at least a mention to the film that bears its name – 2014's Paddington, and the station now boasts a statue of the little Peruvian bear.
Colin soon pays dearly for his crime, getting offed at a swimming pool by a young Pierce Brosnan, in his first screen appearance. The large pool where Colin shows off his high dives was Barnet Copthall Leisure Centre on Champions Way, Hendon, North London which predictably has been totally redeveloped.
The sauna area, where Colin gets stabbed, was a different location altogether but has also been redeveloped. Way down in South London, this Ladywell Leisure Centre, 261 Lewisham High Street, SE13.
Harold Shand’s right-hand man, Jeff (Derek Thompson),is clearly involved in the shady dealings when the driver's widow turns up and spits in his face as he has an al fresco meeting with the shady Councillor Harris (Bryan Marshall). The restaurant in front of which they talk was then called 'Boulevard'. For many years it became 'Ask Italian' restaurant but is now Mexican restaurant Cavita, 56-60 Wigmore Street, alongside Easley’s Mews, just north of Oxford Street.
Harold himself makes a terrific entrance, like king of the world, strutting through the Arrivals Lounge of Heathrow Airport after a hush-hush meeting with big mob bosses in New York, to be met by Jeff who reassures him that everything has been going well in his absence which, as we've seen, isn't strictly true.
Shand's yacht starts out moored at London’s St Katherine’s Docks, just downstream from Tower Bridge, before it takes off cruising along the Thames as Harold announces his ambitious plans to redevelop the old disused London Docklands in anticipation of the 1988 Olympic Games, during a lavish bash for his associates.
Well, London had to wait until 2012 to host the Olympics but otherwise the film's prediction as amazingly prescient. The deserted site seen in the film is now the Canary Wharf complex, heart of London's finance business – glitzy high-rises, served by the Docklands Light Railway.
A threat to Harold's empire comes when his Mum narrowly escapes getting blown up while attending a Good Friday church service. The place of worship is, like many locations in this film, two separate locations.
The church in front of which the car bomb explodes is St George In The East Church, 14 Cannon Street Road, Wapping E1. The Anglican church, one of six by architect Nicholas Hawksmoor, was bombed during WWII and although the walls survived, the interior was destroyed by fire and a more modern interior built in 1964.
I found it difficult to line up a perfect match for the photo until I realised that a false wall was built for the film to protect neighbouring houses from the spectacular fireball.
The spacious interior, where Harold's Mum makes her devotions, actually is a Catholic church. Still in Wapping and only a few blocks to the south of St George's, it's St Patrick’s Church, Green Bank, off Dundee Street.
After another bomb is discovered – before it can explode – in Harold's casino, his fury triggers the chain of inevitable events. Harold is greeted with the news of this bomb as he arrives at the entrance to his club. This isn't a nightspot at all but a private home at 15 Catherine Place, SW1, one of a street of handsome townhouses tucked away and forgotten in Victoria between Victoria Station and Buckingham Palace.
Again, there's a different interior. The club premises where Harold barks out his instructions and the lads collect their guns was glitzy Italian restaurant Villa Elephant on the River, which stood at 135 Grosvenor Road in Pimlico opposite Dolphin Square. The Elephant closed soon afterwards and the building stood vacant for many years until finally being demolished in 2012.
Things keep getting worse for Harold as he takes his US mob contacts to experience his good old fashioned English boozer the 'Lion and Unicorn'. As their car approaches the pub, it is suddenly blown to smithereens.
The ‘Lion and Unicorn’ was no more than a set built for the film on the south side of Wapping High Street. It was constructed to face Scandrett Street directly so that we get that shocking head-on view of the explosion as Harold's car is driven toward the pub. The solid-looking set unusually included a detailed interior which rendered it a little too convincing. Despite the presence of lights and cameras, the crew were constantly interrupted by thirsty punters looking for a pint.
Frantic to get information on the mysterious attacks, Harold and co. Visit the home of Erroll the Grass (Paul Barber, now more famous as Horse in The Full Monty). The house is 33 Villa Road, Brixton, South London. Despite getting cut up by Razors (PH Moriarty), Erroll can give no leads. BTW, the kid hanging around outside demanding money for not having slashed Harold's car tyres is a (very) young Dexter Fletcher, actor and now director of Bohemian Rhapsody.
Meanwhile Harold's partner, the resourceful Victoria (Helen Mirren), hampered by the loose-lipped Councillor Harris, attempts to reassure the American mobsters during a lavish evening at an ostentatiously glittering nightclub. This was the real Regine's Nightclub with its mirrored pillars and ceiling – a nightmare for the cinematographer but a wonderful image of the OTT excess of the period.
Opened by international nightclub entertainer Régine Zylberberg, simply known as Régine, after the success of a similar club in Paris, the restaurant occupied what had been the tea-room of the famous Roof Gardens of the old Derry & Tom's Department Store on Kensington High Street.
The luxury store, built in 1938, had closed and was for a while in the Seventies the huge art deco Biba store. When Biba left in 1978, the tea room was converted into Regine's but this too soon closed.
By the way, on the top floor immediately beneath the Roof Gardens is the Rainbow Room (now a gymnasium) which was featured in Terry Gilliam's Brazil.
Frustrated by the lack of leads, Harold visits Billy (Nick Stringer) – “Walk to the car, Billy, or I’ll blow your spine off!” – at the ‘Governor General’ pub. This was a real pub, though long since demolished, which stood on Whitefoot Lane in Downham, South London.
Once again, the interior is somewhere else. This is famous pub The Waterman's Arms, 1 Glenaffric Avenue, just south of the Docklands development on the Isle of Dogs, East London E14. Although it's very much changed inside, you can still see the spacious bar and stage.
This was a legendary boozer, famed for its live entertainment, and once owned by writer and broadcaster Dan Farson, one of the Fifties Bohemians of Soho’s legendary dive, the Colony Room.
Farson's dream was to create an old-style East End boozer with live entertainment. This garnered plenty of publicity, attracted some big names and even launched a spin-off TV show called Stars and Garters, but in the end turned out not to be financially viable.
The Isle of Dogs, if you don't know, is not an island, but an area of East London caught in a loop of the Thames and surrounded by water on three sides, which makes it ideal as the secure quarantined area in 28 Weeks Later. The 'Isle' also includes Canary Wharf and is serviced by the Docklands Light Railway.
When Harold finally finds out about the death of Colin's driver, he meets the grieving widow tending grave in the City of London Cemetery, Aldersbrook Road, London E12, where he discovers for the first time that Colin had been in Belfast.
The actual filming site is the row of graves dating from 1979 on Barn Road, at the northern corner of the cemetery.
Naturally, it's a historic site, and contains the remains of two of the victims of Jack the Ripper – Catherine Eddowes and Mary Ann Nichols (both of whom have memorial plaques) as well as the remains of Joseph Merrick, famous as 'The Elephant Man' (just his "soft tissue" it's claimed rather gruesomely, since Merrick's skeleton is kept at London's Queen Mary University). Bobby Moore, captain of England's winning 1966 World Cup squad is interred here too, and for film buffs, this is also the last resting place of actress Dame Anna Neagle and her husband producer / director Herbert Wilcox, plus horror movie screenwriter Chris Wicking, who wrote among other films, The Oblong Box.
The IRA connection is inevitably linked to crooked Councillor Harris, who stores high explosives at his demolition company. Before Shand can investigate a robbery of explosives, the IRA gets to the security guard first. Harris's company is long gone, replaced by new housing but you can still recognise Burrell's Wharf on Westferry Road on the Isle of Dogs E14, which faced the entrance. This is just a few minutes' walk west of the Waterman's pub.
Seemingly nearby, the warehouse where the unfortunate guard is discovered nailed to the floor is on Wapping High Street opposite Dundee Street – close to the site of the 'Lion & Unicorn' set and St Patrick’s Church.
Now aware of the IRA connection, Harold visits Councillor Harris at his office. This was in the old art deco Bethnal Green Town Hall on Patriot Square, Bethnal Green, London E2. It's now the Town Hall Hotel, but while it was still the town hall, the building also housed the London Film Office, and so provided a convenient location seen in many productions including Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, Velvet Goldmine and Atonement.
When the deceitful Jeff is finally and bloodily confronted by Harold, it's aboard his yacht, now moored at the western end of West India Docks' North Quay, in the heart of what's now the high-rise Canary Wharf development. It seems that Harold's great dream was realised after all.
All that remains recognisable from the film is the row of warehouses, now developed as the London Museum Docklands, office and residential space.
A meeting is set up with IRA bosses at the car racing stadium which was Harringay Stadium in N4, a greyhound racing and speedway venue. After it closed in 1987, it was demolished and the site repurposed.
Harold assumes that gunning down the IRA guys will solve the problem and that turns out to be his very big mistake.
Meeting the two Mafia big shots in their suite at the Savoy Hotel, 1 Savoy Hill, on the Strand (yes, it really is a suite in the Savoy), Harold discovers they're packing to leave and launches into his gloriously bonkers patriotic speech ending in the triumphant "The Mafia? I've shit'em!"
Once a traditional turn-of-the-century hotel, the Savoy was perked up in 1929 with an unmistakable stainless steel, art-deco frontage on the Strand, the main theatre and shopping thoroughfare running east from Trafalgar Square to Fleet Street and the City.
The hotel is actually an addition to the Savoy Theatre, once home to the Gilbert and Sullivan operettas, but since given a delicious Thirties deco makeover (now painstakingly restored after a disastrous fire in 1990), which meant that when Mike Leigh came to make Topsy-Turvy, he had to use the unchanged Richmond Theatre as a substitute. The Savoy Hotel itself though is seen in The French Lieutenant’s Woman, Entrapment, National Treasure: Book of Secrets and of course, Notting Hill.
Savoy Court, the short entrance road to the hotel is the only place in the UK where the traffic drives on the right, and it's here that Harold, still preoccupied by the Americans, distractedly jumps into the wrong car, leading to one of the all-time great final sequences. And that's newbie Pierce Brosnan again pointing the gun.
