Pressure | 2026
- Locations |
- Buckinghamshire;
- London;
- East Sussex;
- Kent
- DIRECTOR |
- Anthony Maras
If the screen version of 'Southwick House', the Allied headquarters where the WWII invasion of the Normandy beaches was planned, prompts you to think of 'Wayne Manor' – well done. That's exactly what it was in Christopher Nolan's Batman Begins. Now discover the rest of the tense wartime drama's locations.
We know well that the D-Day landings didn't take place on June 5th 1944, but that doesn't diminish the drama in meteorologist James Stagg (Andrew Scott) bearing the responsibility of delaying the vital operation with only days to go, in the face of perilous weather conditions.
The film is largely set in 'Southwick House', the Allied headquarters where the invasion of the Normandy beaches was planned.
The real Southwick is a Grade II listed 19th-century manor house near Fareham about 5 miles north of Portsmouth in Hampshire. Although the D-Day wall-map still exists, Southwick remains a Ministry of Defence site and it can only be visited by prior appointment made well in advance.
The film's stand-in is Mentmore Towers, a Victorian extravagance built in 1854 for the Rothschild banking family, and based on the genuine Tudor mansion of Wollaton Hall, Nottinghamshire, in the English Midlands (and seen in The Dark Knight Rises). It stands in the village of Mentmore, Buckinghamshire, just to the north of Cheddington station, on the West Coast Main Line between London Euston and Milton Keynes.
After the death of the owner in 1974, plans to save the house for the nation fell through, its contents were sold by auction and for a couple of decades it became the HQ of the Maharishi Foundation for the promotion of transcendental meditation. When the meditators left in 1999, there were plans to redevelop in as a hotel and then as a golf club.
Currently unoccupied, the house was able to be taken over completely for the production, with principal cast members even staying on set experiencing something of the isolation of the film's team (though I assume they weren't forbidden from making phone calls).
Mentmore Towers is already familiar on-screen, seen as the exterior of 'Wayne Manor' in Christopher Nolan's Batman Begins, and of the ‘Long Island’ orgy mansion in Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut; as a restaurant in Terry Gilliam's Brazil and in Bond-spoof Johnny English.
It must have been familiar territory for at least one cast member. Mentmore was used in both The Mummy and The Mummy Returns, starring Brendan Fraser who plays General Eisenhower.
Several other locations are seen quite briefly, and a couple seem not to have made the Final Cut at all.
The church, where the Sunday morning service is overtaken by Stagg's predicted sudden change in the weather, appears to be in the grounds of the house.
Standing just beyond the gates of Mentmore Towers, this is St Mary's Church, dating back to the 12th century but much altered by the Rothschilds.
Summoned by General Eisenhower, Stagg must leave behind his heavily pregnant wife. Their home is 229 Princes Gardens, part of the Hanger Hill Garden Estate in Ealing, West London.
The estate's half-timbered appearance is an example of what is popularly known as Mock Tudor – or Tudorbethan – a style developed between the wars appealing to more affluent Londoners who wanted to move out of the city to leafier green suburbs.
As weather balloons are released to chart upper atmosphere conditions, it's against the backdrop of the 'White Cliffs of Dover' – the visual symbol of Britain's bulwark against attack from continental Europe. What we see is the more picturesque stand-in of the Seven Sisters, on the East Sussex coast west of Eastbourne toward Cuckmore Haven. If you've a head for heights you can access the clifftop path from car parks at Exceat Barn and Birling Gap, or simply take in this gorgeous view from Seaford Head.
The same stretch of coast is seen again in 1991's Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves and in 2007's Atonement.
Once the decision is made to go ahead (I don't think it's much of a spoiler to reveal that the final date is the Sixth of June), we see troops preparing for departure at two dependable locations.
The airborne squadrons depart from RAF Halton, Halton, near Wendover, in Buckinghamshire. An RAF station in use since the First World War, Halton was scheduled to be decommissioned in 2030, but the discovery of structural safety issues saw it closed down in early 2025.
Halton was seen as the 'German' airfield in Wonder Woman (2017) but more familiar onscreen is Halton House, the lavish mansion at the heart of the estate seen in productions as diverse as The Queen, The King's Speech, Disney's origin story Cruella, Bond movie The World Is Not Enough and Evita.
The seaborne invasion sets out from Chatham Historic Dockyard. Another familiar location, previously seen in Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes, with Robert Downey Jr, as well as in Tom Hooper’s film of Les Misérables, Stephen Sommers' 1999 The Mummy, Sarah Gavron's Suffragette and even as 'Hiroshima' in 2015's Mr Holmes, with Ian McKellen as the aging Sherlock Holmes.
'Operation Tiger' – the ill-fated rehearsal for the Normandy landing and the bloody landing itself on Omaha and Utah Beaches (famously recreated in the shocking opening Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan) were both filmed on the same beach – Camber Sands, the only sand dune system in East Sussex, in the village of Camber, near Rye. It stands east of the estuary of the River Rother at Rye Bay, stretching three miles to just beyond the Kent border.
Since the dunes resemble topographically those seen in Normandy, Camber Sands actually were used for exercises during the Second World War, but the real 'Operation Tiger' took place at Slapton Sands on the southern coast of Devon.
As the film shows, this was a shocking catastrophe. Eisenhower, determined that the rehearsal be as realistic as possible to acclimatise more inexperienced men to the real sounds and smells of war, insisted on using live ammunition (firing over the troops' heads of course). Tragically confusion and missed messages saw at least 749 American servicemen being killed. Strict secrecy surrounding the impending invasion meant that the incident was initially unreported, and was only revealed later.
In fact, since the dunes resemble topographically those seen in parts of Normandy, they actually were fortified and used for exercises during the Second World War. There is a roughly square MoD danger area and base inland of the east of the area.
It's not surprising that Camber Sands has been used on-screen before, in the 1958 film Dunkirk starring John Mills to recreate 'Operation Dynamo' and as the 'Normandy' beaches during D-Day in the 1962 film The Longest Day.
In the the 1967 Foreign Legion spoof Carry On... Follow That Camel (aka simply Follow That Camel) the credulity of audiences was stretched to breaking point when Camber Sands stood in for the 'Sahara Desert.
Camel... must be unique in film history as the only Sahara-set production to be held up by snowfalls.
