Red sandstone tenements behind a working shipyard on the Clyde, and the graving docks where 1917 built its collapsed bridge.
What Govan looks like
Govan Road runs along the south bank of the Clyde, dock walls and shipyard sheds behind it on the river side. Cranes rise above the roofline at the working BAE Systems yard, with hulls under construction inside open sided sheds. The former shipyard offices nearby are red sandstone and Category A listed. They reopened in 2013 as the .
Behind the yard, streets such as carry long rows of red sandstone tenements, three and four storeys tall. Bay windows and ground floor shops run under the flats, with cars lining the kerb on plain asphalt. The blocks run straight for several hundred metres before the next corner.
Off , a walled churchyard holds , built between 1884 and 1888 in Scottish Gothic Revival style. It no longer holds regular Sunday services and opens instead as a museum. Inside are the Govan Stones, thirty early medieval carved monuments including a sarcophagus and five hogback grave markers, dating from the ninth to the eleventh century.
Farther along the road, the graving docks are three dry docks cut into granite, built between 1869 and 1897 and closed since 1987. Their water filled basins sit below high quay walls, reached by a cobbled path past roofless pump house buildings, some of their stone marked with graffiti.
Shot in Govan
For 1917, the production built a collapsed bridge across one of the closed and added a false upper storey to its pump house tower. The docks are a separate site from the working shipyard nearby, three granite dry docks, disused since 1987.
1917, 2019
Played the Western Front, France, 1917
The production built a second storey and a false front onto the pump house tower. It also built the collapsed bridge across the dock in front of it, for the scene where Schofield comes under sniper fire after being left by Captain Smith's men. The additions came down after the shoot and the tower stands roofless again. Street View
What Govan can double for
Sailortown in Belfast, Northern Ireland
Belfast's former Harland and Wolff shipyard has the same granite dock walls and crane gantries behind tenement streets, close to Govan's own scale for an early twentieth century shipbuilding scene. Belfast's Samson and Goliath cranes are taller and yellow rather than grey, so keep them out of a wide frame. Try searching granite dock walls now.
Leith's red sandstone tenements run to the same three and four storey scale as Govan's streets, with a working harbour close behind them for an early twentieth century dockside scene. Leith's tenements are taller, with more ornate door surrounds, so a tight street frame reads better than a long block. Try searching red sandstone tenements now.
Birkenhead in Liverpool, England
Birkenhead's Cammell Laird shipyard shares the same working cranes and dry dock basins on a tidal river, a reasonable double for a wartime Clyde shipyard scene. The Mersey is wider than the Clyde here and Birkenhead's dock walls are brick rather than granite, so keep the water crossing out of a wide shot. Try searching wartime shipyard cranes now.
