75 years of The Lavender Hill Mob: how the London locations look today

One of the best loved of all Ealing comedies, The Lavender Hill Mob (1951) is a characteristic combination of sly British wit and plucky criminal endeavour. Lighter in tone than either Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949) or The Ladykillers (1955), it’s an influential example of the caper film, a comedic cousin of the heist movie.

Told in flashback, Charles Crichton’s film opens with the character of Holland (Alec Guinness) living the high-life in Rio de Janeiro. He’s reminiscing about a grand old crime he committed back in London. In the past, he was a lowly bank clerk in the City, charged with the safe delivery of gold bullion. Inspired by the potential afforded by a small foundry – owned by artist and fellow lodger Pendlebury (Stanley Holloway) – a plan develops for melting down the stolen gold into model Eiffel Towers before smuggling them abroad unnoticed. 

The pair work hard on a scheme with help from two career criminals, Lackery (Sid James) and Shorty (Alfie Bass). All goes well for the convoluted robbery, until a box of the gold Eiffel Towers is accidentally shipped to Paris as regular tourist tat. Can the gang recover the leaked gold before it’s discovered by the authorities?

Although the production involved a short filming sojourn to Paris, Crichton’s team mainly filmed extensively around a variety of London locations; in particular, the dilapidated, still bomb-damaged area of the City is used to great effect, serving to document how it looked before the coming high-rise redevelopments that transformed the area in the second half of the 20th century.

Here are five locations from The Lavender Hill Mob as they stand today.

As Holland works in the City, various buildings around Bank make an appearance from the very beginning of the film. This shot during the opening titles shows the steps of the west façade of the Royal Exchange.

When producer Michael Balcon’s credit appears, Crichton includes another shot of the Royal Exchange, this time from the equally pillared and ornate steps of Mansion House. The steps are closed today, so only the angle can be recreated here.

Later on, we see Holland exiting Bank tube station with Princes Street in the background.

Holland then wanders bravely into the intersection of roads that circle around the Royal Exchange.

This later shot shows a more detailed depiction of Holland’s journey from Bank tube station, showing the exact exit used, which is still standing today.

The van of gold that the thieves are after has a regular routine overseen by Holland. It drives out from an innocuous set of doors and then down a road. This routine is shown variously, and the same location is used each time. The doorway was on Hatton Gardens, approximately where the Johnson Building sits today.

This location can be pinpointed thanks to the rest of shot, which looks down Hatton Gardens. In the film, a gap is present between several buildings on the left, which has since been filled in with another development. Interestingly, the pavement to the left of the shot was later used by Stanley Kubrick to fake a shot of New York for Eyes Wide Shut (1999).

When Crichton was filming in the City, World War II was still a recent memory, and we see ruins from when the area was heavily bombed. This makes finding the locations used around Queen Victoria Street tricky; much has changed in the intervening years, with building-work almost constantly taking place, even today.

However, some markers thankfully survived and these allow us to map the original shots on to the area as it stands today. This shot shows what was the then-bombed-out St Nicholas Cole Abbey on the road. Today, the abbey is still standing and has been fully restored.

The location of the abbey also helps to pinpoint this shot where Pendlebury crosses a road. The road is still there, as is the wonderfully named Old Fish Street Hill, which is the little path running adjacent to the church.

Further down Queen Victoria Street, this shot has plenty of markers to show roughly where the original filming took place. The bridge over the road in the background still carries the railway to and from Blackfriars station.

Between the previous location and the abbey, another wider shot shows the van trundling along the road. The College of Arms on the right and the spire of St Benet’s Welsh Church on the left are the only two recognisable elements present both then and now.

An Ealing film wouldn’t be an Ealing film if it didn’t feature a shot here or there of a random street near Ealing Studios. In the case of The Lavender Hill Mob, this features later on when Holland and Pendlebury are trying to get the final gold Eiffel Tower back from a schoolgirl (Patricia Garwood) who is determined to keep it. Crichton cannily used just one location from a variety of different angles to create a more detailed depiction of a set of suburban streets. This shot shows Carlton Road, though the building that was used as the school has long been demolished and replaced with flats.

Crichton cuts to Holland and Pendlebury sat on a bench on a little green just over the way. The green is still there, though the benches have moved.

The two men make to follow the girl down the road. This shot now shows Carlton Road on the left, while looking straight down Castlebar Road.

In an unusual sleight-of-hand, the girl is then filmed walking back up Carlton Road rather than Castlebar Road. The location is distinctive due to the oak tree that stands in the middle of the road near where the policeman is in this shot. Her school from the earlier shot is just to her left.

A close-up shows the tree again, but also the green where the two men were previously seated. Ealing becomes strangely Escher-like in the hands of Crichton.

The girl eventually leads the two men to their misfortune: a police convention. This convention is held in Gunnersbury Park, specifically in what is now Gunnersbury Park Museum. The location is introduced via its entrance of ornate metal gates on Popes Lane.

The girl walks up the steps towards the museum. The building was formally the vast mansion of Nathan de Rothschild, and its grounds are lavish and filled with formal details such as the arch at the top of these steps.

This shot shows the frontage of the museum with another arch in the background. The location is virtually unchanged today.

The arch seen earlier is used as a framing device by Crichton and almost feels like an omen of future prison-gates for the two criminals pursuing their final golden Eiffel Tower.

Finally, as the pair escape and a car chase ensues, Crichton films the gates seen earlier in the sequence, this time from the perspective of the winding path that leads to and from Gunnersbury Park Museum.

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