The final season of Peaky Blinders has officially come to an end, and once again we’ve been treated to plenty of incredible sets based here in Manchester.
Our city is often used by BBC film crews for the series, despite the drama actually being set in post-war Birmingham.
The excitement started building way back in spring last year when Cillian Murphy and his co-stars were spotted filming scenes around Castlefield.
In previous years, Peaky Blinders cast and crews have descended on locations like Victoria Baths, London Road Fire Station, and Stockport Plaza.
There have been masses of familiar locations that have popped up on screen this year too.
And a warning – spoilers lie ahead.
Chrome Hill
Chrome Hill was a filming location in the Peaky Blinders finale. Credit: BBC
One of the most spectacularly visual scenes of the whole season of Peaky Blinders was right at the end, where Tommy has taken himself off to live in a caravan in the hills.
Those hills aren’t too far from Manchester – it was all filmed near Chrome Hill in the Peak District.
The beautiful peaks around here are sometimes nicknamed the ‘Matterhorn of the Peak District’ thanks to its pyramid-like shape, similar to that of the iconic Toblerone mountain in the Alps.
Ashton Memorial, Lancaster
Gina in Peaky Blinders inside the Ashton Memorial. Credit: BBC
The stunning art deco room where Gina Gray (played by Anya Taylor-Joy) lounged in a lot of her scenes was meant to be in America.
But it’s actually in the north west – the incredible white marble interiors are the inside of the Ashton Memorial in Lancaster.
You’ll find the Grade I-listed building in Williamson Park.
Le Mans Crescent
Scenes at Le Mans Crescent in Peaky Blinders. Credit: BBC
The sweep of Grade II-listed buildings in the centre of Bolton regularly pops up in historical dramas, and Peaky Blinders is no different.
One of the end units in the grand terrace became the Shelby Sanatorium for Sick Children, where Tommy and his wife Lizzie sadly spent a lot of time in this series.
It cropped up in several episodes – including the gut-wrenching moment where the lead character found out his daughter had died.
One of Greater Manchester’s most iconic historical buildings pops up, very briefly, as a location in this final season of Peaky Blinders.
When Tommy – who is MP for Birmingham South as well as a notorious gangster – pops along to give a speech to Labour party supporters, it’s Salford Lad’s Club that he approaches.
The club has been there since 1903.
Arley Hall
Both the inside and the outside of Arley Hall have become familiar sights while watching the BBC’s hit gangster drama.
And this year was no different – including an, erm, explosive moment right in the final episode.
The grand Cheshire mansion has been there from the very opening scene of season six, and its rooms have doubled up as Tommy’s study and the family’s dining room.
Castlefield
Castlefield’s historic cobbled streets have doubled up as Birmingham’s Small Heath for the final instalment of Peaky Blinders.
It caused a lot of excitement when the huge set was built, including a mock-frontage of the Garrison Pub owned by the Shelby clan.
The area beneath the railway bridge was even used in the season finale’s dramatic shoot-out scene.
Castlefield, again
Castlefield was a major filming location for Peaky Blinders this year. Credit: BBC
Castlefield was also used for Chinatown, complete with red lanterns and fake tea houses.
The pyrotechnics were back out in force here, when Tommy dropped a bomb off one of the footbridges over the canal.
There were 1930s-style Chinese adverts plastered on billboards too, along with a poster advertising Shelby Dry Gin.
Lee Quarry, Bacup
Over in Lancashire, the Lee Quarry in Bacup provided a dramatic backdrop for Tommy’s encounter with his ex-sister in law Esme.
The former working quarry is now a free-to-use mountain bike trail.
Hotel Gotham
Hotel Gotham was one of the locations used in Peaky Blinders. Credit: BBC
There’s absolutely no mistaking this Manchester landmark, even if the Peaky Blinders team have rebranded it to the Midland.
This is the Hotel Gotham on King Street, a huge art deco five-star hotel that is one of Manchester’s most beautiful buildings.
Its familiar exterior only gets a very brief appearance before Tommy heads inside to a nondescript hotel room.
Featured image: BBC
TV & Showbiz
BBC is looking for messy Mancs who need to ‘sort their life out’ to take part in new series
Emily Sergeant
Do you need to sort your life out?
We get that this may sound like a pretty brutal and upfront question to ask, but don’t shoot the messenger, it’s technically the BBC asking it, as producers are currently on the hunt for messy people who could do with ‘sorting their life out’ to take part in the new series of one of its hit TV shows – and they’re encouraging Greater Manchester residents to apply.
While the title of the show may, quite literally, be Sort Your Life Out, we promise it’s not as harsh as it seems, as in reality, it’s just offering you a helping hand to tidy up.
That’s right, if you would you like your home to be totally transformed by none other than Stacey Solomon and her expert team, then through a life-changing declutter, supersize spring clean, and some ingenious carpentry solutions to top things off, you could bring some job back to where you live.
The BBC is looking for messy Mancs who need to ‘sort their life out’ to take part in new series / Credit: BBC | FreerangeStock
Stacey and her expert team of organising fanatics can help you let go of the things you don’t need, and streamline what you do.
Plus they’ll also help to create space-saving storage and put systems in place to save you time and money in the future.
“Whether you have a new baby on the way, want to run a business from home, find it hard to let go of sentimental items or just want to create calm in the chaos, we’d love to hear from you,” producers said in a casting call on the BBC website.
Does this process sounds like something you could benefit from then? Producers of the hit show are looking for families or shared households to take part in a potential future series.
Find out more and apply to Sort Your Life Out on the BBC website here.
Featured Image – BBC
TV & Showbiz
Some Oasis fans are only just discovering who ‘Cast No Shadow’ is dedicated to
Danny Jones
Die-hard Oasis fans typically pride themselves on knowing the most intricate details about the band and its history, from where the first demos were recorded and when, to how Peggy Gallagher takes her tea, but we were surprised to learn that many don’t know who ‘Cast No Shadow’ is dedicated to.
Fans are already queuing up outside Heaton Park ahead of the Manc band’s massive homecoming, but we’d be curious to quiz how many of them know the story behind the track taken from Oasis’ seminal sophomore album, (What’s the Story) Morning Glory?
It seems that until very recently, even some of the most avid Britpop fans were unaware that the song was written with another icon of the genre and local music legend in mind: Richard Ashcroft.
While claiming it was written about him would be too reductive, and Noel Gallagher himself has openly clarified this, he has also regularly made it known that the tune and some of the lyrics, in particular, act as somewhat of an ode to the Wigan wordsmith.
Noel Gallagher dedicated "Cast No Shadow" to Richard Ashcroft.
"He always seemed to me that he was not entirely happy with the things that were happening around him. So the lyrics 'bound with all the weight of all the words he tried to say' was cos I always felt that he'd been… pic.twitter.com/a9baqa2ti7
The elder Gallagher brother has long maintained a deep level of admiration for Ashcroft, citing him as one of the best singer-songwriters he’s ever come across, and regularly felt like both he and The Verve were not given the recognition they deserved at the time.
As touched upon briefly in the clip above, Noel dedicated the track to his friend Richard around the time that he split from his bandmates and began writing solo material, much of which has gone on to become beloved by countless Brits, certainly here in the North and Greater Manchester.
The now 58-year-old Oasis songwriter believes the ‘Bittersweet Symphony’, ‘A Song for the Lovers’ and ‘They Don’t Own Me’ writer, just to name a very small but stellar sample size, was overlooked for far too long and, to some degree, still is massively underappreciated.
We tend to agree.
In fact, we think he put it best when he said this in a BBC Radio 1 interview back in 1997: “I don’t write songs about many people – I’ve written songs about him [Liam], I’ve written songs about me mam, I’ve written songs about my wife, I’ve written songs about Richard Ashcroft.”
“That man is a genius, and I tell you what, man, he ain’t doing it for himself: he’s doing it for me. He has got to be a better songwriter than me, and in return, I’ve got to write better songs than him. That’s what it’s about.”
‘Cast No Shadow’ also led to one of the most beautiful but subtle pieces of art you can find anywhere in Manchester – a personal favourite of ours, we’ll confess.
Noel has revealed on multiple occasions that when he first played and revealed that he’d dedicated ‘Cast No Shadow’ to Ashcroft, Richard himself was left nearly ‘in tears’.
Speaking to The Guardian back in 2010, just a year after Oasis parted ways on the painful night in Paris, Ashcroft himself confessed: “I can’t work out if he means I’m a witch, vampire or just incredibly emaciated and thin cos, you know, I haven’t really got enough body mass to cast a shadow?”
You’d have to ask the ‘Champagne Supernova’ creator himself, but he’s said that while written directly about him, it is a tribute to his “genius”, and when his friend and fellow Greater Mancunian artist finally got his number one for ‘The Drugs Don’t Work’, he said he was “the happiest man in the world.”
His love for The Verve as a whole still remains, too, insisting that just like Liam’s love for The Stone Roses’ John Squire, he believes lead guitarist Nick McCabe is still “one of the best” he’s ever seen.
The Live ’25 reunion has don’t plenty to reignite and an already firm love affair with one of the biggest bands there’s ever been, and it’s also encouraged a whole new generation and demographic of fans to dig further down into the various facets of being Oasis fans involves. Exhibit B…
Daisy Jackson -
6th April 2022 
