St Pancras Chambers, Euston Road, NW1
The interior of ‘Arkham Asylum’ in Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins, where where Dr Crane, aka The Scarecrow, (Cillian Murphy) conducts sinister experiments is the elaborate Gothic stairwell of St Pancras Chambers, attached to St Pancras Station.
Built as the Midland Grand Hotel, a lavish palace of luxury for Victorian travellers, and the last word in comfort when it opened in 1873, it was soon overtaken by changing demands. Ironically, the building’s solid construction proved its downfall. Unable to accommodate such modern improvements as en-suite bathrooms and central heating, the hotel inevitably closed down. Its ceilings were boarded over, its lavish rooms divided up into offices, and in the Sixties, the wildly unfashionable extravaganza came close to being demolished.
Grade I listing finally ensured its survival and radical restoration means that it will soon function as a luxury hotel again. St Pancras Chambers became an asylum, too, in Richard Attenborough's biopic Chaplin, in which Charlie’s mother (Geraldine Chaplin) is confined after her mental breakdown, and was also seen in the 1976 WWII melodrama Voyage of the Damned, and in Robert Bierman’s 1997 film of George Orwell’s Keep the Aspidistra Flying, with Richard E Grant. You might also recognise the elaborate stairwell from the first Spice Girls video, Wannabe.
Trivia: Although Gotham City’s ‘Narrows' are reached by Chicago's Franklin Street Bridge, the exterior of ‘Arkham Asylum’ is the severe forties-style National Institute for Medical Research, the Ridgeway at Burtonhole Lane, Mill Hill, north London.
Batman Begins (2005, dir: Christopher Nolan)
Chaplin (1992, dir: Richard Attenborough)
Voyage Of The Damned (1976, dir: Stuart Rosenberg)
Keep The Aspidistra Flying (1997, dir: Robert Bierman)
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