Lambeth Road, SE1

The years immediately after World War II were a time of enforced austerity in the UK. The response of the famous Ealing Studios was this archetypal Ealing Comedy, Passport To Pimlico, with the district of Pimlico, a slightly shabby area west of Westminster, grabbing the opportunity to secede from Britain. When bomb damage uncovers documents revealing that Pimlico belongs to the French Duchy of Burgundy, the neighbourhood declares independence from the tyranny of rationing and licensing laws.

The film was made, not in Pimlico itself, but about a mile away, on the other side of the River Thames, where a huge set was built on a cleared bomb site on the Lambeth Road, SE1. Although the bomb-flattened area has been totally redeveloped, if you stand on the Lambeth Road between Hercules Road and Kennington Road and look north toward Lambeth Bridge, you can clearly recognise the railway arches that dominated the set.

Passport To Pimlico (1949, dir: Henry Cornelius)