This is an article tracking down all the London locations that Sean Connery has visited, as detailed in the biography by Christopher Bray. I’ve also inserted these locations onto the Bond Google Map at the foot of the post. The physical London Bond Map and the Thames River Chase Map is still available to buy through our online store.
UPDATE:
Several other locations not noted in the book have been added with help from readers, notably from friend and author Ajay Chowdhury.
There is a photo of Connery posing on the stage of London’s now demolished Scala Theatre 58 Charlotte St, [1953] as for results for the Mr Universe heats are read out. Pg22.
Now the show (South Pacific), twenty months or so into its two-year run at the Drury Lane Theatre Catherine Street, WC2B 5JF, was going on tour […] auditions were to be held for his part in the chorus. Pg23.
(1955) Back in London, Connery took a basement room at 12 Shalcomb Street, off the King’s Road – not even the glitzy spot it would subsequently become – and cycled to the West End every day to hector the big showbiz agencies, hang around the stage doors, keep up on the theatre gossip, all the while signing on at the Westminster Labour Exchange for the £6 a week dole to which he was entitled. Pg29.
[…] it was Robert Henderson (who palled up with Connery on the touring version of South Pacific) that he would be mounting a production of Witness for the Prosecution at the Q Theatre in Kew. (Now demolished, 50 Kew Bridge Road, TW8 0ES) […] Henderson recalled, ‘the main actors were compelling, but Sean’s movement across the stage was so eye-catching .. that it just wiped them out.’ Pg29-30.
Q Theatre was closed in 1956 for want of funds. He kept up his self imposed elocution lessons in a local library in Chelsea. On April 4th, 1956, Connery played O’Daniel in The Good Sailor, a theatrical version of Melville’s Billy Budd at the Lyric in Hammersmith. (Interesting article here). Pg31.
FROM WIKI: In 1966 the theatre was due to be closed and demolished. However, a successful campaign to save it led to the auditorium being dismantled and reinstalled piece by piece within a modern shell on its current site on King Street, a short distance from the former Bradmore Grove location. The relocated theatre opened in 1979.
The Old Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith, 1943,1979, Ruskin Spear RA (1911 – 1990)
The year is 1957, and according to the article; Sean Connery in Kilburn and West Hampstead, London by Flaskbak,
To make some extra money Connery worked as a babysitter at 46 Abbey Road, the home of Peter Noble, a journalist and film buff. […] Noble got to know Sean through his friends Llew and Merry Gardner, who had a first floor flat at 67 Brondesbury Villas in Kilburn, where Sean lodged for a year, paying 12s 6d a week.
Sean Connery’s breakthrough role was as the washed-up boxer Harlan “Mountain” McClintock in Blood Money (an adaptation of Rod Serling’s Requiem for a Heavyweight). It was broadcast live on 31 March 1957, from the BBC’s Lime Grove Studios in Shepherd’s Bush, London. Michael Caine played a minor role. Unfortunately, any recording of this broadcast has been lost.
Lime Grove Studios
Blood Money (1957)
Julia Hamilton, (who Connery was dating) talks of seeing Connery in Hampstead Church, ‘Sean was there in full Scottish dress – kilt, frilly shirt, the whole get-up’. Pg33. Hamilton was also the stepdaughter of Michael Foot, Labour MP and future party leader and Connery would visit the family home in 66 Pilgrim’s Lane in Hampstead, London.
Hamilton & Connery
Julia Hamilton – ‘After the wedding I took him back home. That meant walking down Fitzjohn’s Avenue to Abbey Road […] heads were turning as we went by. After a while, though, I realised it wasn’t me they were interested in, it was Sean. He was so magnificent.’ Pg33.
Hamilton did not appreciate Connery’s ‘very damp basement’ in Chelsea, which she remembers as being plastered with Sean modelling underwear. Probably the work of Bill Green, who ran a studio called Vince in 5 Newburgh Street. Pg33. Interesting article can be found here.
In 1958 Connery and Hamilton then moved into a flat above a double garage in Wavel Mews NW6 an area that, while is not quite Kilburn, is not quite West Hampstead either. Pg42-43. (No.3 Wavel Mews, off Acol Road in West Hampstead). Sean returned from Hollywood in 1959 and started converting the garage space below the flat into a sitting room.
The screenplay for Dr No was knocked together by Terence Young and his assistant Joanna Harwood in a week-long session at the Dorchester Hotel. Pg75.
Early 60s, Connery has moved on from Hamilton and is now courting Australian actress Diane Cilento. Instead of marriage, Cilento proposed that they live together in a ‘largish house in an inexpensive area of London…in a sort of loose community of artists.’
In this commune – which sounds uncannily like the Acacia House Sean Connery had just put his money into in Acton – ‘we would live together and bring up the children but not impinge on each other’s lives’ a well-to-do Iris Murdoch-style fantasy several years ahead of it’s time. Pg87.
A few days before the cast and crew of Thunderball travelled to the Bahamas, it was reported that Cilento had agreed a trial separation and Connery moved out of Acacia House and bunked up at a flat with golfing friend, the singer Ronnie Carroll. Pg122.
Whilst in Acacia Avenue, Sean would often frequent the now-demolished The King’s Arms pub, 37 The Vale, Acton, London, W3 7JT.
The King’s Arms pub
Post Goldfinger, Sean Connery would consult therapist R.D. Laing who his private consulting rooms and office at 21 Wimpole Street, London W1G. It was under Laing’s tutelage that Connery would first try LSD.
21 Wimpole Street
[…] back home in London after the You Only Live Twice shoot, he moved his family to a Victorian house in the middle of Putney Heath. A little more secluded than his previous residence, Connery’s new home came with an acre or so of land and was surrounded by walls rather higher than those he had failed to hide behind in Acton. Pg139.
Whilst living in Putney, Connery would often frequent The Telegraph pub, Telegraph Road, Putney Heath, London SW15 3TU.
[…] just as filming was about to begin, the news broke that he (Connery) and Cilento had separated once more, with Connery holing up in a flat on London’s Embankment that was once the home of Hitler’s foreign minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop. Pg167.
Sean Connery directed the play I’ve Seen You Cut Lemons by Ted Allan starring Diane Cilento and Robert Hardy, staged at the Fortune Theatre, Russell St, London WC2B 5HH in December 1969.
Fortune Theatre
Sean Connery co-owned an exclusive country club and members’ venue called Woolston Hall, Woolston Hill, Abridge Road, Chigwell, Essex, IG7 6BX with England World Cup winning footballer Bobby Moore. It’s now a health club.
Woolston Hall
In the 1970’s, Sean Connery lived in a first-floor flat at 6 Eaton Square, London SW1W 9DA with the women who become his second wife, Micheline Roquebrune.
Sean Connery at the Savoy Hotel in London on April 11, 1971, ready to depart for Las Vegas to film Diamonds Are Forever.
Back as Bond
Connery returning to the role of James Bond was a very big deal! So much so, that a press conference was held at the Savoy Hotel’s River Room where Connery fielded questions from the press. Read more about Bond at The Savoy in a previous article here.
When in London, Connery would frequent Bobby Moore’s “Mooro’s”, 13 Broadway, Stratford, London, E15 4BQ which opened in 1976. Connery had part-share in a second-had car dealership nearby.
Mooro’s
For a period up to the mid-80’s Connery kept a regular suite at The Grosvenor House Hotel, 86-90 Park Lane, London W1K 7TN.
At the end of Diamonds Are Forever […] not long after the film’s release, Sean Connery himself announced that he was quitting Britain because of the ‘pollution thing.’ […] London seemed pretty ropey when I came back,” he said. “All those cars exhausts spewing out much.” Pg194.
Connery took Spanish lessons in the offices of Dunbar and Co, a private bank of which he had recently become a director. Pg194. (9-15 Sackville Street, Piccadilly, London, W1A 2JP Close date 2011. According to the Banks.EU.)
The Man Who Would Be King received a royal premiere at the Odeon Leicester Square in December 1975, Connery himself did not show up. Pg200.
In the late 1980’s it emerged that Sean Connery anonymously donated £50,000 to save the National Youth Theatre located at 443-445 Holloway Road, London, N7 6LW.
Sean Connery co-produced the English-language version of the play Art by Yasmina Reza which was first performed in London on October 15, 1996, at Wyndham’s Theatre, Charing Cross Rd, London WC2H 0DA. Adapted by Christopher Hampton and directed by Matthew Warchus, the first cast was Albert Finney, Tom Courtenay and Ken Stott.
Sean Connery would often dine at Langan’s Brasserie, Stratton Street, Mayfair, London W1J 8LB then co-owned by his friend Michael Caine. In February 1983, he was photographed with Roger Moore outside the restaurant during the height of the Battle of the Bonds phase.
Sean Connery attended the London premiere of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen on 29 September 2003, at the Odeon Cinema in Leicester Square. Here he made handprints which were cast in bronze and placed outside the cinema. The prints were removed when the square was redeveloped in 2014.
Credits:
I’d like to personally thank Ajay Chowdhury for additional intel and imagery for this article. His book on James Bond travel that he co-authored with Matthew Field, Darker Than the Sun, is available on AMAZON.
Images have been sourced through various source on the internet to offer content to the text and locations. Please email for accreditation.
All London Bond locations form the actors, to the films, to the books and brands etc have been documented also on this Google Map.
