Filming outside Trinity Hall stirs memories of its cinematic impact

10 August 2023

Trinity Hall’s links to movies and television includes current fellows, former students and, of course, the buildings themselves.

Cast extras standing in Trinity Lane Cambridge during a film shoot

Sat as we are in the midst of Cambridge’s academic and geographic landscape, we’re globally recognisable for research, teaching and our impact on the world of visual entertainment.

Cameraman checks his camera in an old land in Cambridge
Filming in Senate House Passage

This week we’ve been the backdrop to filming along Garret Hostel Lane, Trinity Lane and Senate House Passage.

Cast and crew gathered outside the Porters’ Lodge for two days of filming, with props like fake lampposts and bins being called into play to make the scene just right.

We can’t say much about the production beyond it’s for a TV show and we look forward to seeing the finished product.

Some Film and TV credits for the College include:

  • A famously unfinished episode of Doctor Who in which Tom Baker’s Doctor was chased by a silver ball over Garret Hostel Lane Bridge and past a group of singers outside the Porters’ Lodge.
  • The tense ITV drama The Unforgiven where the star cycles over the bridge and up Senate House Passage.
  • In The Theory of Everything Professor Stephen Hawking’s undergraduate life at Trinity Hall is featured, though interiors of the College where actually shot in Harrow Old School in London.
  • Several TV and film adaptations have been made of alumnus J B Priestley’s classic An Inspector Calls.
  • If you’ve ever seen a Rachel Weisz film, then you’ll have watched one of our famous alumnae (she won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar winner for her role in The Constant Gardener, and gained huge popularity as a heroic librarian in the hit The Mummy).