Brick terraces run off Princes Road, a boulevard lined with a Grade I synagogue and a Greek Orthodox church. Powis Street is where Peaky Blinders built Watery Lane.
What Toxteth looks like
Redbrick and rendered terraces run off Princes Road in long straight rows, most of them two storeys with bay windows and cast iron railings at the front. Princes Road itself is a broad, tree lined boulevard. The synagogue and the stand close together on it, a Moorish and Gothic Revival facade beside banded stone and brick under three small domes. , its twin minarets visible over the surrounding roofs, is a short walk away on Hatherley Street.
Away from the boulevard, terraced streets run off in long rows of their own. Beaconsfield Street and Cairns Street are lined with mature trees and cars parked nose to tail, the houses red brick with bay windows and small fenced front yards. Some fronts are rendered or painted. One row nearby still stands boarded up, dormer gables and stepped parapets over windows sealed with black boards.
sits on High Park Street, a covered Victorian reservoir in snecked stone under a flat grass roof, now a community events space. Toxteth Town Hall's red sandstone front and pediment stand close by on the same street. The Admiral Street police station, still in service, is a two storey redbrick block a short walk from both.
and Upper Stanhope Street carry the shopfronts, roller shutters pulled down over some, hand painted signs over the rest. Dormer windows break the roofline in the pale brick above Upper Stanhope Street, a newsagent and a grocer behind the ground floor glass.
Shot in Toxteth
, in the Welsh Streets, is where Peaky Blinders opens. Tommy Shelby rides down it in the show's first five minutes. The production painted and boarded the terraces to stand in for Watery Lane, the fictional Small Heath street. It returned to the same houses across five seasons.
Peaky Blinders
Powis Street
Played Watery Lane, Small Heath, Birmingham, 1919 to the early 1920s
The Shelby family home, headquarters and illegal betting office are all placed on this street. The production painted the brick fronts and boarded the windows for the period look, and the houses have since been refurbished and are lived in again.
What Toxteth can double for
Small Heath in Birmingham, England
Peaky Blinders already painted Powis Street's redbrick terraces to stand in for Small Heath's Watery Lane, and the same plain two storey rows repeat across the Welsh Streets. The scale and the brick match without alteration. The production painted the brickwork black and boarded the windows for the period. The red brick today is unpainted and the windows are back in, a cleaner street than the one the cameras used. Try searching redbrick terraces now.
Ordsall in Salford, Greater Manchester
Ordsall's own redbrick terraces run to a similar two storey scale, with the same bay fronts and short front yards behind low walls. Manchester's terraces run flatter to the street with fewer stone lintels, so close ups need care to avoid the give away. Try searching bay front terraces now.
Ancoats mixes surviving terraced rows with taller mill buildings, a block of one period followed by a block of the next rather than one continuous run. The mills nearby are taller and more industrial than anything in Toxteth, so wide shots need to stay tight to the terraced rows. Try searching terraced rows now.
