There’s also a lot of snow. While the forthcoming sequel takes care of the white stuff by setting the action in the Austrian Alps, for the first outing it was all artificial – in fact, filming took place in the height of summer. The production took place in the venerated Pinewood Studios on the outskirts of London, but there were also plenty of real-life settings that had to be scattered with fake snow and, in some cases, some seriously misleading signs. Here’s our round-up of the locations they used.
Marylebone Station in LondonGetty Images
Marylebone Station
The busy station full of Santa-hatted revellers heading home to their families is indeed the real Marylebone, in central London – though rail buffs might point out that neither of our stars could get to their destinations from there. Built in the late 19th century, it’s a classic Victorian red-brick building, though most of what we see is much more recent. As well as its familiarity as a station in Monopoly, it has a pretty smart film CV, too, including 60s spy classic The Ipcress File, Beatles movie A Hard Day’s Night and the great Paddington, where it stands in for the station of the same name.
The train station in High Wycombe, BuckinghamshireAlamy
Macclesfield
We see lots of Hayley’s hometown in the film, but none of it is the real Cheshire town. Street scenes were mostly filmed in suburban London, while the station – where we first meet Hayley’s dad Geoff (Daniel Mays) drawing up in an ice cream van full of turkeys – is in Buckinghamshire. It’s High Wycombe station, another Victorian construction, this time designed by the great Isambard Kingdom Brunel, though much changed since those days.
