Five storey stone warehouses with carved cornices and arched windows line a compact cobbled grid.
What Little Germany looks like
Five and six storey sandstone warehouses crowd both sides of narrow streets across a compact grid. Facades are buff and honey coloured ashlar, with rusticated ground floors, round arched first floor windows and bracketed cornices running the length of each block. The roadways are stone sett cobbles, narrower than a single traffic lane in places, with stone flag pavements worn smooth at the kerb.
The Behrens Warehouse on dates from 1873, five storeys over a semi basement, its windows set under stilted arches below a deep bracketed eaves cornice. A few streets over, dates from 1860 and was extended in 1867. It is four storeys at the front and three storeys plus a basement at the rear, where the ground falls away, with round arched windows framed in dressed sandstone.
runs the length of the district. Warehouse fronts along it have carved pediments, fluted columns and wrought iron gates set into stone archways. Hick Street and are narrower still, glazed cream brick above stone ground floors, arch topped windows in dark green frames and heavy wooden loading doors still fitted with cast safe working load plaques.
Many upper floors stand empty behind intact glazing, with downpipes painted green against the stone. Faded painted lettering survives on some of the glazed tiled walls, where a firm's name was once lettered across the brick above a hoist door.
Shot in Little Germany
Little Germany's cobbled streets and warehouse frontages have stood in for several periods and places on screen. The 2019 Downton Abbey film used Hick Street for the entrance to a 1920s nightclub. The same streets doubled as 1830s Halifax for the BBC and HBO series Gentleman Jack, and the 2026 Peaky Blinders film used the district's cobbled streets as a bomb damaged 1940s Birmingham. Netflix's The Crown used them for a Moscow sequence in its fifth season, and Channel 5's All Creatures Great and Small filmed scenes here for its second season.
Little Germany on screen
The same compact grid of cobbled streets has carried a 1920s York stand in, an 1830s Halifax street scene and a bomb damaged wartime Birmingham without changing its own fabric.
Downton Abbey, 2019
Albion House
Played a nightclub entrance, York, 1920s
Albion House, on Hick Street at its junction with Vicar Lane, was used as the entrance to a 1920s nightclub raided by police. The district's cobbled streets elsewhere stood in for the city of York.
Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man, 2026
Vicar Lane
Played a bomb damaged street, Birmingham, 1940s
Little Germany's cobbled streets, Vicar Lane among them, were dressed as a bomb damaged Birmingham city centre. The same streets carried the Shelby brothers' warehouse in the television series.
Merchant City's sandstone warehouses were built for the same kind of textile and trading firms in roughly the same decades as Little Germany, and share its rusticated ground floors and round arched windows. Ingram Street and Wilson Street hold the densest run of comparable frontages, with the same bracketed cornices along the roofline. Merchant City's streets are wider than Little Germany's, so tighter frames or a long lens hold the comparison better than a wide establishing shot. Try searching sandstone merchant warehouses street now.
John William Street in Huddersfield, West Yorkshire
John William Street and the streets around it carry the same West Yorkshire stone Italianate warehouse style, built in the same wool trading boom as Little Germany and only a few miles away. The scale is close enough that a crew familiar with one recognises the other. Huddersfield's streets run wider and straighter, so a camera needs a tight corner frame to avoid giving away the difference in scale. Try searching stone Italianate warehouse street now.
Whitworth Street in Manchester, England
Carved cornices and round arched windows in the same Venetian and Italianate palazzo style link Whitworth Street's cotton warehouses to Little Germany's wool warehouses. Whitworth Street was built a generation later and at a larger scale, and India House and Lancaster House are the closest individual matches. Manchester's warehouses run taller and the streets carry more modern traffic signage, so a low angle keeps the upper storeys in frame while cropping out the street furniture. Try searching Venetian warehouses palazzo style now.
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