**Peaky Blinders Location Guide is a perfect companion to the
worldwide BBC hit series set in the gritty industrial heart of early
twentieth-century Britain. Tommy Shelby might be a West Midlands
gangster, but most of the series is shot in the north of England! **
The Black Country Living Museum, Dudley, is open all year round to the
public. It's the perfect place for the Shelbys to stash illicit goods,
situated as it is on a working canal. And as the museum is decked out in
period guise to display the West Midlands' industrial heritage, it's
ready for a TV production company to roll up.
Further north, Manchester's impressive 1877 town hall is used when Sam
Neill's character meets Churchill, while the city's Grade II-listed
Edwardian swimming pool, the Victoria Baths, was mocked up for a horse
fair. Before the Luftwaffe visited in World War II, there were many
streets like Admiral Grove and Powis Street in Liverpool 8. Ringo Starr
grew up there, and it doubles for the Shelbys' home street in
Birmingham's Small Heath.
What the Wirral is to Liverpool, Sutton Coldfield is to Small Heath--the
gentrified suburbs. Aunt Polly's Sutton Coldfield House is filmed in
Port Sunlight, a model industrial village on the Wirral that has been
preserved thanks to its single ownership and strict leaseholds.
There are many station scenes in Peaky Blinders, especially the
gripping finale to the first series, when the devious Inspector Campbell
confronts Grace. As the scene fades, a shot rings out... You can retrace
their steps at the Keighley & Worth Valley Railway in Yorkshire, which
once served mills and villages in the Worth Valley.
Other sites include Brooke's Mill, at Armitage near Huddersfield
(playing a gypsy camp), Leeds' Town Hall (an art gallery), Newby Hall &
Gardens, Ripon (Grace's undercover meeting location), Arley Hall,
Cheshire (Tommy's country house), and City Varieties, Leeds (a
vaudeville theater). Coming soon in series six, the harbor at Portsoy in
Aberdeenshire will be standing in for a French port. No doubt smuggling
will be involved.
