A dozen or so club runners from around St Andrews reported to a hotel on the Scores early on 24 April 1980, were sent off to have their hair cut short, and spent the day running barefoot on the West Sands. When the film reached them, the laugh came at the caption: Broadstairs, Kent, lettered over a shot of the 18th hole of the Old Course.
19
places on the route
Eight clusters from Fife to the Paris suburbs — switch with the buttons above. Click a point to jump to its entry.
Almost nothing in this film is where the film says it is. The 1924 Olympic stadium in Paris is a municipal running track on the Wirral that still had cinders on it, Dover is a Mersey ferry terminal, every London railway station is York, and Cambridge is Eton, because Cambridge said no. The map only settles down in Scotland, where a school playing field, a public park, a hall on the Mound and a kirk at the top of a glen are more or less themselves. Even there it cheats once: the Church of Scotland in Paris is a church in the Edinburgh New Town. Many of these you can walk into.
filmed herewhere it really happened
The Chariots of Fire beach is at St Andrews, and the film calls it Kent
West Sands: the running scene that opens and closes the film
West Sands out of season, looking north from the seawall.
The beach in Chariots of Fire is the West Sands at St Andrews, two miles of sand on the Fife coast, and the film labels it Broadstairs, at the other end of the country in Kent.
The reason it happened in Scotland is money. The crew was already working in Edinburgh and around Crieff, and the BBC, going back over the shoot in 2012, put the choice down to the cost of hauling a production to the south coast of England. Tom Rice, who teaches film at the University of St Andrews, told The Courier much the same: Broadstairs was the historical place, St Andrews was the affordable one.
The first attempt at the running scene was thrown away. Sand got into the camera on 24 April 1980 and the day's work was unusable, so the unit came back a week later and shot the sequence again. What is on screen is the second attempt.
The runners in it were local. They were recruited from athletics clubs in the town, told they would lose their hair and run barefoot, and one of them remembered afterwards that the jump over the railings by the Old Course had to be done again and again for the camera.
The opening scene of Chariots of Fire is not quite the beach. The film opens and closes on a memorial service for Harold Abrahams in a London church, and the run comes out of that. Which church, we could not establish. The location guides that name one give no source for it, and we found no other account of it at all.
Out of season the West Sands is a very wide grey emptiness with a handrail along the seawall, a public beach with a Blue Flag, open and free. It does not stay empty. Runners come back every year for a race along the sand, in white, with the Vangelis score playing over the beach, and around 400 of them entered in 2015. The run was staged here again for the Olympic torch relay in 2012.
Hamilton Hall: the Carlton Hotel from the outside
The last of the 18th from the Swilcan Burn, with the clubhouse left and Hamilton Hall right, under a black sky.
The 18th green of the Old Course, the Royal and Ancient clubhouse on the left and Hamilton Grand — Hamilton Hall in 1980 — the tall red building on the right.
The seaside hotel the runners are heading for is Hamilton Hall, the tall red sandstone block standing over the 18th green of the Old Course.
Two buildings stand over that green and only one of them is the hotel. The low pale clubhouse of the Royal and Ancient is on one side; Hamilton Hall, turreted and red, is on the other. The Courier names Hamilton Hall for the hotel exteriors, and the extras quoted in The Scotsman remembered the same building under its older name, the Grand Hotel, which is what it was called when it opened in 1895. The golf club does come into the story, but earlier: The Courier says the auditions were held there and at Leven, which is casting rather than filming.
By 1980 the building was a University of St Andrews hall of residence, and the production dressed a student hall as a Kentish seaside hotel. It is Category B listed, it holds twenty-six private apartments now, and it is in shot through every Open Championship played over the Old Course.
Rusacks Hotel: the same hotel from the inside
Rusacks Hotel from Grannie Clark's Wynd, the right of way that crosses the Old Course.
The inside of that hotel is a different building 129 metres away. Rusacks is grey stone with dormers and a glazed conservatory across the front, open since 1887, and Grannie Clark's Wynd, the public right of way that crosses the Old Course, runs past its door.
The Courier is explicit about the split: the Carlton was shot outside at Hamilton Hall and inside at Rusacks. The film's Kentish hotel is therefore two Fife buildings, two minutes' walk apart, with a golf course between them.
Chariots of Fire in Edinburgh: two athletics grounds and a church that plays Paris
Goldenacre Sports Ground
Goldenacre looking south: rugby posts, a hockey goal and, on the skyline, Arthur's Seat and Calton Hill.
The Scotland against France match, with its packed grandstand, was filmed on a school playing field in the north of Edinburgh. Goldenacre belongs to George Heriot's School, Heriot's Rugby Club and Heriot's Cricket Club play on it, and the way in from Warriston Gardens goes past a row of turnstile huts beside a low white timber stand. Rugby posts, a hockey goal, a line of trees, and Arthur's Seat and Calton Hill on the skyline behind.
Edinburgh's own tourist film map carries the ground as point 9, with the Scotland versus France race written against it. Public access here is to matches rather than to the pitches; the cricket square has since held seven matches of the 2015 World Twenty20 Qualifier and Twenty20 internationals in 2023.
Inverleith
The grandstand at Inverleith Sports Ground, parts of it dating from the ground's opening in 1899.
Three sources put this film in Inverleith and no two of them mean the same ground. Film Edinburgh, the film office at the city council, says the Scotland against Ireland athletics were shot in Inverleith and stops there. The city's film map says Inverleith Park, and puts a different scene in it, Harold Abrahams training. The English Wikipedia says Inverleith Sports Ground, which is a third answer: a private club ground belonging to Stewart's Melville RFC, with a grandstand partly dating from its opening in 1899, about 750 metres from the park.
Nothing we opened settles it. The marker on this page stands on the sports ground, the park is the other candidate, and if you go, go to both; the park is open at all hours and there is a tree-lined avenue through it that runners use. The film office's files attach one other title to Inverleith Park, The Lost King.
Goldenacre is 960 metres from the sports ground. Whatever was shot at Inverleith, it was shot within a mile of the France match, in the same quiet corner of the city.
Assembly Hall, Mound Place
Inside the Assembly Hall: the horseshoe of benches around the central floor.
Eric Liddell comes off a race and is late for a religious meeting, and the hall he runs to is the General Assembly Hall on the Mound, not the Assembly Rooms on George Street, a different building with a similar name. The General Assembly of the Church of Scotland meets here; the Scottish Parliament used it as a temporary debating chamber from 1999; in August it is a large Festival venue. Inside, tiers of blue benches curve round an open floor with a gallery above them. Outside stands John Knox in bronze with one arm raised.
In 1959 the same address took a pipe band. In Journey to the Centre of the Earth, Professor Lindenbrook walks through one marching along Mound Place.
Holyrood Park
The Radical Road along the foot of Salisbury Crags.
The hillside walk on which Liddell tells his sister Jennie that he still means to go to China as a missionary was filmed in a royal park inside the capital. Where in it, nobody says. Film Edinburgh records a walk in Holyrood Park and stops; the city's film map puts the scene on Salisbury Crags, which are inside the park.
The Radical Road runs along the foot of the Crags with gorse on the slope below and the city dropping away to the right. Historic Environment Scotland keeps the park, entry is free, and Queen's Drive has been closed to cars on Sundays since 2018.
Other films come to this hillside, and the city keeps two lists of them that do not quite agree. The film map puts One Day, The Battle of the Sexes and The Illusionist on Salisbury Crags. The film office's own card for Arthur's Seat holds four titles, among them Doors Open and T2 Trainspotting.
Café Royal
The Café Royal on the corner of West Register Street, with its hanging sign and the Café Buffet entrance.
Harold Abrahams dines in the Café Royal on West Register Street, and no source we read says what city the scene is supposed to be in. Film Edinburgh records the location as a dinner in the Café Royal and nothing more.
The building takes the corner: round-headed windows, a wrought-iron hanging sign, THE CAFE ROYAL BAR in gold capitals across the glass. It is a working pub and oyster bar. Behind the glass is a Victorian room with a bar island standing free on the floor and Doulton tile portraits set into the walls.
Broughton McDonald Church
Broughton McDonald Church on Broughton Place, built 1820–21, now an auction house.
The Church of Scotland in Paris, where Liddell preaches on the Sunday of the heats, is a church in the Edinburgh New Town. The front is Greek Revival of 1820 to 1821 by Archibald Elliot, four heavy Doric columns under a pediment, red doors.
It has been out of religious use for years and in commercial use instead. A photograph from 2015 has an auctioneer's name lettered at the corner, and one from 2009 shows the galleried floor with furniture and pictures set out for a sale. What is in it now, we did not check. The city's film map puts The Illusionist on Broughton Place, but that is the street rather than this building.
Perthshire: the Highland Gathering and the kirk after it
The Highland Gathering at which Liddell hands out the prizes was shot around Crieff, and The Courier, which is where that comes from, gets no closer than the name of the town. So the marker here is Crieff itself: about 7,500 people at the foot of the Highlands, 17 miles west of Perth.
The place-name that circulates for this scene is the Sma' Glen, on the A822 north of the town. It comes from location databases that give no source for it, and we could not confirm it anywhere else.
Amulree and Strathbraan Church
Amulree church in its glen after a light fall of snow.
The church service that follows the gathering was shot at Amulree, a kirk standing by itself at the top of the Sma' Glen road, 20 miles up the A822 from Crieff. One sentence in The Courier is the whole of what we found about it.
The building is white harled with a bellcote, a dry stone wall in front and bare hills behind, of 1743 and rebuilt in 1881. Inside are box-ended pews on a wooden floor, a central pulpit, a blue-painted timber ceiling and one stained glass window. The Amulree and Strathbraan congregation has closed and the building has been out of regular use; what goes on in it now, we did not establish.
Cambridge is Eton, 70 miles away
Eton College
School Yard at Eton: the eighteenth-century statue of the founder, Henry VI, with Lupton's Tower behind.
The Great Court run in Chariots of Fire was filmed at Eton College, which is 70 miles from the court it plays. Trinity College turned the production down, and Eton is Hugh Hudson's old school.
Graham Elliott, one of the crowd extras, wrote in The Oldie that he collected his costume at Eton, that the race took two days to film, and that a third day went on a handful of them walking and pushing bicycles across the quad. The English Wikipedia says instead that all the indoor Cambridge scenes were shot at Eton, and gives the college's fear of how the film would show antisemitism as the reason for the refusal; the footnote under that sentence is Hugh Hudson's commentary on the 2005 DVD. The man who was there is describing outdoor work.
Which of Eton's yards it was, nothing we found names, so the marker stands on the college rather than on a quadrangle. This is a boarding school and the buildings are not open to casual visitors; guided tours have run at times and the arrangements change.
Every station in the film is York
York railway station
The curved trainshed at York, the reason the station gets filmed.
Every railway station scene in Chariots of Fire was shot at York, with locomotives borrowed from the National Railway Museum next door. That rests on a single line: Hugh Hudson's commentary on the 2005 DVD, cited by Wikipedia. We could not hear it, nothing published independently about those days in York turned up, and we never found the platform numbers in print.
What is certain is the roof. The trainshed of 1877 curves with the tracks, iron ribs on slender columns with decorative spandrels between them, and at the north end it runs out and the platforms open to the sky. The museum whose engines did the work is a five-minute walk away and free to go into.
The British Embassy in Paris, where the Prince of Wales and the Olympic committee lean on Liddell to run on a Sunday, is Liverpool Town Hall. The building is Georgian, pale stone, with a Corinthian portico under a dome carrying a clock and a statue. It is Grade I listed, it is still the seat of Liverpool City Council, and it opens to the public on advertised tour days.
Royal Court Theatre
The Royal Court on Roe Street, an Art Deco theatre of 1938.
The performance of The Mikado at which Abrahams first sees Sybil Gordon was filmed in the Royal Court Theatre in Liverpool, and the singers on stage are not dressed-up extras: the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company was on tour at the time and went in front of the camera.
The theatre is younger than the London evening it plays. It is an Art Deco building of 1938 on Roe Street, brick with rounded corners and stepped massing, Grade II listed and working still.
Colombes, and with it every race the film has been building towards, is The Oval at Bebington on the Wirral. It opened in 1888, and Heswall Nub News reports that the ground was picked for its period look and for the cinders still on its track.
Thousands of local people filled the stands as the Olympic crowd. They were asked to wear dark colours so that nobody would catch the eye, and those who turned up in real Edwardian dress were paid £20 for the day against £10 for everyone else. The track has eight lanes now and belongs to Wirral Council, with Wirral AC and Warriors Pentathlon & AC training on it. The building at the gate is a long black-and-white timbered pavilion behind a wide empty forecourt.
Woodside Ferry Terminal
Woodside in 1966: Birkenhead Corporation buses drawn up on the ferry approach under the FERRY TO signs.
Dover, and the team leaving for France, is the Woodside ferry terminal at Birkenhead. The covered passenger bridge and the floating landing stage that appear in the film are not there any more: the terminal building behind them was in poor condition and was replaced, and the bridge and the stage went at the same time.
The oldest picture we have of the place is from 1966, Birkenhead Corporation buses drawn up on the wide tarmac apron under the FERRY TO signs. That is fourteen years before the film arrived, and closer to what it found than anything standing on the site today.
Three places the film is about and never filmed
Stade Yves-du-Manoir, Colombes
Colombes on 23 August 1923, the stands being enlarged for the 1924 Games.
Photo: Auteur inconnu, photographie de presse / Agence Rol. Source BNF-Gallica · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons
Abrahams won the 100 metres and Liddell the 400 metres at Colombes in 1924, and no part of the film was made there. A press photograph from 23 August 1923 shows the terracing being enlarged for those Olympics, workmen along the top of the scaffolding. In January 2004 The Guardian reported that the stadium had been saved from demolition at the last minute. It held the Olympic hockey in 2024, a hundred years after the Games the film is about.
Great Court, Trinity College, Cambridge
Great Court, Trinity College, Cambridge — the court the run is named after and the one the film was refused.
The Great Court Run is real, the court is real, and Harold Abrahams never ran it. The distance is 339 metres round the court, to be finished before the clock has stopped striking twelve, which by an old tradition it does in 24 chimes. By Trinity's own account only three men are thought to have got round in time, the first of them Lord Burghley in 1927. The film gives the run to Abrahams and staged it at Eton.
Visitors are let into the court for much of the year, with closures in exam term. The name reached Cambridge in the end: a charity relay race called after the film has been run in the city since 1991.
Former Carlton Hotel, Victoria Parade, Broadstairs
The hotel the runners are heading for stands in Broadstairs, in the town the caption names, and none of the filming happened there. The rest of it is true. The British team of 1924 really did stay at the Carlton on Victoria Parade, and the town spent several years assembling the evidence for it. On 29 June 2017 the mayor unveiled a blue plaque on the building, and at three that afternoon they ran the beach race again below it. Which building on the parade it is, we could not pin down, so it has a street here and no point on the map.
That makes two plaques for one run, at opposite ends of the country. One is on the seafront where the athletes actually slept. The other stands on the Bruce Embankment above the West Sands, where the film was made.
The extras laughed at a caption that moved them to Kent. The plaque above their beach moves them in time instead: it credits the scene to 1981, and they ran it in April 1980.
