Georgian and Victorian ordnance buildings sit behind a brick wall in the Royal Arsenal, and the station Jason Bourne used as Athens.
What Woolwich looks like
The Royal Arsenal takes up much of the Thames frontage here, a walled complex of Georgian and Victorian buildings in dark brick and stone. A brick perimeter wall runs more than two miles around the older core. Inside it, arched ground floor windows and stone quoins mark the , a long three storey range along Cadogan Road with plane trees planted at the kerb.
The is a Grade I listed building from 1717. The Dial Arch, from the same years, stands nearby among the oldest structures on the site. Near the old wharf, an eighteenth century guardhouse with a cannon on a plinth in front of it now sits below unfinished tower blocks under construction. On Chatham Close, older brick ranges carry a new glass floor added along the roofline, part of the same conversion into flats.
Outside the Arsenal's main gatehouse, market stalls fill . Powis Street runs off the square, lined with shopfronts. stands nearby on Wellington Street, a domed corner and clock tower over red brick and stone from 1906, with a cannon set on a plinth outside its entrance.
's entrance is a circular glass and steel pavilion, shared today by National Rail, the Elizabeth line and the DLR. The Thames Path runs along the river past Mast Quay, where a red and grey apartment tower faces cranes and the Canary Wharf towers across the water.
Shot in Woolwich
A former college building on played a derelict bank in Children of Men. Woolwich Arsenal station stood in for an Athens platform in Jason Bourne, and the Town Hall's Victoria Hall became the inside of a villain's castle in Hitman's Wife's Bodyguard.
Children of Men, 2006
Calderwood Street
Theo and Kee hide out in an abandoned bank in a former college building at the corner of Calderwood Street and Thomas Street. They run through a riot along the same street a short while later.
Jason Bourne, 2016
Woolwich Arsenal station
Played a railway station in Athens, Athens, Greece, present day
Woolwich Arsenal station stands in for a railway station in Athens, in a sequence where Bourne travels on toward Berlin. Matt Damon was seen filming there in March 2016, alongside filming in Croydon.
Hitman's Wife's Bodyguard, 2021
Woolwich Town Hall
Played Aristotle Papadopoulos's castle, Trieste, Italy, present day
Woolwich Town Hall's Victoria Hall plays the interior of a Greek shipping magnate's castle, its own staircase and domed ceiling on screen. The exterior of the same castle is Miramare Castle, a real building in Trieste, Italy. The two are cut together as one location in the film.
The Royal Arsenal's brick wall and its Georgian storehouses like the Royal Brass Foundry of 1717 match the scale and material of Chatham Historic Dockyard, an eighty acre site of more than a hundred Georgian and Victorian naval buildings behind its own perimeter wall. Call the Midwife and Les Miserables have both used Chatham's streets to play other periods and cities. ' glass signage and the Berkeley Homes towers behind the western yards give away the present day, so frames need to stay close to the older gatehouses and storehouses near Beresford Square. Try searching Georgian storehouses and gatehouses now.
Portsmouth Historic Dockyard has three Grade I listed Georgian storehouses, numbers nine, ten and eleven. They went up during the yard's expansion from 1760, the last finished in 1782, close to the dates on the Royal Arsenal's own Grand Store and Royal Brass Foundry. Both sites keep a run of plain brick storehouse facades behind a working naval boundary. Portsmouth's dockyard keeps HMS Victory and other preserved ships in view from most angles, which Woolwich has none of, so a shot standing in for it needs to stay off the water and hold on the storehouse facades alone. Try searching Georgian storehouse facades now.
Royal William Yard is a sixteen acre former naval victualling yard built between 1826 and 1835. Its Grade I listed limestone buildings with granite detailing have been converted from the late 1990s into flats, offices and restaurants, the same kind of adaptive reuse Berkeley Homes has done with the Royal Arsenal's own western yards. Both keep the original storehouse walls and window openings behind a new residential use. Royal William Yard sits on a waterside peninsula with sightlines across Plymouth Sound in most directions, which Woolwich's enclosed yards do not have, so a frame standing in for it needs to avoid any view out to open water. Try searching converted naval storehouse yard now.
