Blog - News

May 6, 2025

By Chloe Roden

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!

Over 200m of trenches were built on Salisbury Plain for 1917 (Landmarc Support Services) © Amblin Partners

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!

Learn more.

Castle Combe © Visit Wiltshire

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.

© Warner Bros

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.

© 2017 FOCUS FEATURES LLC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

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?

© Paramount Pictures

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.

© Universal Pictures

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).

© Studio Canal

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.