Filming

Although Dorking has been used as a location for film and television productions such as ‘The Bill’, ‘The Secret Life of Adrian Mole’ and the upcoming 2022 BBC One drama ‘The Gold’ (based on the Brink’s Mat robbery), the area surrounding the town has greater claim to television and film location fame.

The internationally successful 1993 film, ‘Four Weddings and a Funeral’, starring Hugh Grant, filmed one of the external Church scenes at Betchworth Church, 3 miles east of Dorking while, more recently, St Martin’s Church in Dorking was the set for some scenes in Foyles War. Betchworth’s now disused quarries were regular haunts of BBC film crews creating the ‘planets’ of Xbar, Sardos & Xenon for the early 80’s sci-fi series ‘Blakes Seven’.

The 1981 horror film, ‘An American Werewolf in London’, used The Black Swan Public House, located near Effingham, 4 miles north-west of Dorking for the interiors of ‘The Slaughtered Lamb’ public house, which in the film was set in a isolated part of the Yorkshire Moors, not leafy Surrey!  In 2006 Jude Law, Cameron Diaz, Kate Winslet and Jack Black were spotted filming ‘The Holiday’ in Shere.

Contact Mole Valley District Council for permissions to film on Council owned locations www.molevalley.gov.uk