Beautiful and on the doorstep to both the coast and the capital, it’s no surprise that filmmakers have made good use of the Garden of England.
On film, north Kent has become everything from Vietnamese paddy fields to Swiss castles or a gothic asylum. Occasionally, its landscape and buildings have managed to just be themselves too.
Here’s a glimpse of some unexpected movies in which the north of the county crops up in recent blockbusters.
Depending on where you put the line on that grey area of south east London and north Kent, there are many more films we could have included. To include Greenwich, for example, would have made this article very long indeed.
In the other direction we stopped short of Chatham, whose historic docks appear to be in constant demand from Hollywood.
Rush (2013)
Ron Howard’s drama about the rivalry between Formula One drivers Niki Lauda and James Hunt starred Chris Hemsworth, with much of its action shot in this country. Legendary north Kent racing circuit, Brands Hatch was one of the places where the frenetic racing action was filmed.
Dark Shadows (2012)
The revival of a gothic US soap opera from the 50s was not one of Tim Burton or Johnny Depp’s best works but it did make good use of a great Kent location, Beckenham Place Park, which doubled as an asylum.
The Da Vinci Code (2006)
Before Ron Howard used Brands Hatch in Rush, he filmed close by at Biggin Hill in the Tom Hanks-starring adaptation of Dan Brown’s ludicrously popular conspiracy novel. Professor Robert Langdon (Hanks) gives a lecture in Croydon’s Fairfield Halls at the beginning of the movie but Biggin Hill gets a slice of the action when Langdon and Sophie (Audrey Tatou) fly back to England from France (the French terminal was actually Shoreham Airport in West Sussex).
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WARNING: Strong language/ violence
Full Metal Jacket (1987)
It’s not often that Kent gets mistaken for Vietnam but legendary filmmaker Stanley Kubrick was determined to fool the viewer by transforming the marshes out at Cliffe into a war zone for his brutal classic war flick, Full Metal Jacket. The marshes stood in as paddy fields, complete with 200 imported Spanish palm trees and 100,000 plastic tropical plants from Hong Kong.
The Boat That Rocked (2009)
Richard Curtis’ star-studded homage to the hey day of pirate radio is probably best remembered for a rocking 60s soundtrack. Filming on the pirate radio ship itself was completed down in Dorset but Squerryes Court in Westerham was used as the home of Kenneth Branagh’s strict minister Sir Alistair Dormandy.
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, part One (2010)
We’d all like to be able to avoid traffic on the Dartford crossing but it takes a wizard to actually pull it off. Hogwarts’ finest Harry Potter filmed at the tunnel in a dramatic chase in flying sidecar with Hagrid on the bike.
Pirates of the Carribean: On Stranger Tides (2011)/ The Other Boleyn Girl (2008)/ Burke and Hare (2010)/ Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows (2011)
It’s unlikely these films have an awful lot in common, aside from counting Sevenoaks’ stately Knole House as a shooting location. The beautiful National Trust house and parkland has doubled up as everything from a prison yard where Jack Sparrow escapes the gallows (Pirates) to the Palace of Whitehall (The Other Boleyn Girl) and a Swiss Courtyard (Sherlock Holmes).
- Where have we missed? Let us know in the comments or tweet @JimNewsShopper
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