Dark brick Victorian warehouses line Shad Thames beneath cast iron walkways, and Come Away used the street to play a Victorian market.
What Bermondsey looks like
Shad Thames is a narrow street of converted Victorian warehouses in dark brick, cast iron walkways crossing overhead between the upper floors. The warehouses, completed in 1873, still carry winches and lettering painted directly onto the brick. The vertical bay of loading doors and hoist gantry run up the middle of nearly every front. Restaurants and shops now fill the ground floors behind the same loading bays. , the largest of the original warehouses, sits at the western end of the street by Tower Bridge. Its long river frontage is still lined with loading doors.
The Georgian high street inland from Shad Thames keeps its medieval width, four and a half to five metres between buildings, all the way along. A run of eighteenth century houses stands near the north end, three storeys tall. One has a jettied and weatherboarded upper floor. fills a converted 1970s building further down, more than five thousand square metres of gallery space including a double height room known as 9x9x9. The 's building, a 1950s warehouse and garage, is refaced in a bold orange and pink stucco.
runs through railway arches built in the 1830s, off Tanner Street. Dealers lay out antiques and furniture on stalls across nearby. stands close by, its current building completed in 1690.
on Wolseley Street is a plain brick building from 1928, its engine bay doors facing the street. Tower Bridge and the City skyline are visible across the water from the riverside path near Shad Thames.
Shot in Bermondsey
Shad Thames was filmed as a working dock street in Diamonds on Wheels, before the warehouses were converted. Alfie, The Elephant Man and A Fish Called Wanda used Butler's Wharf and Reed's Wharf for their own scenes. Doctor Who's 1984 serial Resurrection of the Daleks built a science fiction time corridor along the same street, and Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix later used Butler's Wharf again.
Come Away, 2020
Come Away used Shad Thames to play a Victorian era street market in 2020. Boss Street, pictured here, is one of the warehouse conversion streets in that same stretch. It is a short walk from Butler's Wharf, signposted to the Design Museum.
Highlander filmed its climactic alley showdown with the Kurgan on Shad Thames itself near Tower Bridge, using the real street to play a New York alleyway. DUMBO's own Empire Stores, a coffee warehouse built between the 1860s and 1880s on the Brooklyn waterfront, is the same five and six storey brick scale turned into lofts around cobbled streets by the water. DUMBO's warehouses mix schist with brick rather than London stock brick. The Manhattan and Brooklyn bridges fill the sky where Tower Bridge would sit here, so a tight street level frame holds the illusion better than a wide one. Try searching brick warehouse loft now.
The Distillery District's red brick warehouses and malthouses were raised for the Gooderham and Worts distillery between 1859 and the 1890s. They sit on the same tight grid of cobbled lanes as Bermondsey Street, their ground floors now given over to galleries, shops and restaurants. Toronto's malthouse chimneys and the CN Tower on the skyline give the district away in a wide shot, so keep the frame down at street level among the warehouses themselves. Try searching cobbled lanes red brick now.
Albert Dock in Liverpool, Merseyside
Albert Dock's five storey warehouse blocks are built in the same combination of brick and cast iron as Shad Thames. Doric columns about 1.2 metres across hold up a continuous quayside arcade. Liverpool's warehouses face a wide open dock basin rather than a narrow street, so a shot that shows open water gives it away. Framing along the arcade itself, away from the dock, keeps the two interchangeable. Try searching brick cast iron warehouse now.
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