May 6, 2025
A Journey Through England’s Iconic WWI and WWII Filming Locations
© Amblin Partners
War cinema plays an important part in England’s film history. From recent hits like 1917 and Dunkirk to modern classics like Saving Private Ryan, some of cinema’s most iconic war films were filmed on English soil, supported by the Filming in England team and our Film Office and Local Authority Partners.
Read on to discover some of the remarkable war films filmed in England and the locations they used!
1917 (2020)
Filming locations: Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire | Oxfordshire | Hertfordshire | County Durham
Partially inspired by stories told by director Sam Mendes’ grandfather, 1917 hit cinemas in 2019 to great acclaim. Although set in northern France at the height of the First World War, a key location on the shoot was Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire, where the production rug over 200 metres of replica trenches!
War Horse (2011)
Filming locations: Dartmoor National Park in Devon | Castle Combe in Wiltshire | Bourne Woods in Surrey
Adapted from Michael Morpurgo’s novel, War Horse is set in WWI and follows a young man’s mission to bring his horse home from the war. This huge production, using 5,800 extras and 300 horses, was shot over 63 days entirely in England.
Dunkirk (2017)
Filming locations: Weymouth in Dorset
Christopher Nolan’s visionary WWII epic, Dunkirk, filmed scenes in Weymouth, Dorset – alongside the Netherlands, California and Dunkirk itself.
Darkest Hour (2017)
Filming locations: John Rylands Library and Manchester Town Hall in Manchester | South Yorkshire | Kent
Gary Oldman blew us all away with his Winston Churchill in Darkest Hour, released in 2017. Did you know that Manchester’s Town Hall and John Rylands Library were used to double the Houses of Parliament?
Saving Private Ryan (1998)
Filming locations: Former British Aerospace factory in Hatfield | Hertfordshire | Thame Park in Oxfordshire
Though released over 25 years ago, Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan still stands as a modern war film classic, with the opening D-Day sequence trailblazing cinema’s battle sequences for years to come.
Atonement (2007)
Filming locations: Stokesay Court in Shropshire | Redcar in North Yorkshire | Grimsby in Lincolnshire | Dover in Kent
Another iconic film for war cinema, Atonement filmed in some striking locations across England, with locations spanning from Shropshire to North Yorkshire and Dover in Kent (pictured above).
The Imitation Game (2014)
Filming locations: Bletchley in Milton Keynes | Nettlebed in Oxfordshire | Sherborne in Dorset
Based on Alan Turing’s biography itself, the real-life story of mathematician Alan Turing’s cracking of the German Enigma code was dramatized in 2014 with The Imitation Game.
Want to browse more war filming locations? Visit our Locations Directory here.
