A flat open heath ringed by Georgian crescents and Victorian shopfronts, and the passage Velvet Goldmine used as a fictional 1970s club.
What Blackheath looks like
The heath is 85 hectares of flat, open common land, cut across by two main roads. Small ponds sit on it too, including on the Lewisham side. Cricket pitches and football goals mark out the open grass, and the middle of the heath stays clear of trees and buildings.
Georgian terraces and villas face the heath along and , most of them two and a half to three storeys in painted stucco or multicoloured London stock brick. curves seven blocks of houses behind six single storey Doric colonnades, at the heath's southeast corner. Its own villas rise four storeys over a basement.
Village shops around Tranquil Vale and Royal Parade keep Victorian shopfronts, cast iron pilasters under upper floor sash windows. A run of black weatherboard cottages from the late eighteenth century survives at Collins Square, off the same street.
stands on the open heath itself, its stone spire visible across the grass from most of the surrounding streets. stands a short walk south on Pond Road. Its spire is taller and narrower, rising above the rooftops nearby.
Shot in Blackheath
Blackheath has drawn a handful of small productions rather than one returning to the same corner. The Firm filmed a football scene on the heath by All Saints Church, and Velvet Goldmine used a cobbled passage in as a fictional club. Babylon filmed a car park and hall scene at , a short walk south of the heath.
The Firm, 1989
All Saints Church
The BBC television film The Firm filmed a football match on the open heath beside this church. The source names the church rather than an exact pitch, since the open grass here has no permanent markings. Street View
Velvet Goldmine, 1998
Played the Sombrero Club, Kensington, London, 1970s
Velvet Goldmine filmed the exterior of the fictional Sombrero Club on Brigade Street, a cobbled passage between Tranquil Passage and Royal Parade. The real Sombrero stood at 142 to 144 High Street, Kensington, so the film borrowed this Village corner in its place. Street View
Clifton's Georgian crescents match Blackheath's own scale and date most closely. Cornwallis Crescent went up from 1791 in brick with a limestone ashlar front. Royal York Crescent, begun the same year, is reputed to be the longest crescent in Europe. Clifton's crescents climb a hillside rather than facing flat, open ground, so a wide shot gives away the slope where Blackheath's own crescent does not. Try searching Georgian crescent now.
Montpellier Walk has its own colonnade, thirty two carved caryatids from 1840 standing in for columns along the shopfronts. Lansdown Crescent nearby is a full sweeping Regency crescent, built by the Jearrad brothers to John Buonarotti Papworth's estate design. The caryatids are far more ornamented than the Paragon's plain Doric columns, so a close shot of the colonnade itself gives the location away. Try searching Regency crescent colonnade now.
Beacon Hill in Boston, Massachusetts
Louisburg Square on Beacon Hill is a fenced green flanked by red brick Greek Revival townhouses built between 1834 and 1847, a similar idea of houses fronting shared open ground. The square is a small private green behind a cast iron fence rather than Blackheath's open common, so only a tight shot along one side of the square holds the comparison. Try searching Greek Revival townhouses private square now.
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