Patrick Comerford
The Ealing comedies, produced between 1947 and 1957, were known for their gentle irony, eccentric characters, and sharp social satire, often pitting the ordinary, well-meaning underdog against pompous authority or rigid social systems.
Three of those classics from Ealing Studios were produced in 1949 alone: Kind Hearts and Coronets, a dark comedy in which a disinherited man tries to murder eight relatives to claim a title, with Alec Guinness playing all the family victims; Passport to Pimlico, where a London neighbourhood discovers it is legally a part of Burgundy in France, leading to absurd stand-offs with bureaucracy and officialdom; and Whisky Galore!, when remote Scottish islanders scramble to salvage 50,000 cases of whisky from a shipwreck during a wartime drought.
Other well-remembered films in the series include The Lavender Hill Mob (1951); The Man in the White Suit (1951) and The Ladykillers (1955).
The story of Passport to Pimlico involves the discovery of lost treasure and legal documents that lead to a small part of Pimlico being declared a legal part of the Duchy of Burgundy, exempting the area from the post-war rationing and other bureaucratic restrictions. The film evokes nostalgia for the spirit and unity in London during the Blitz after the war and looks at what is regarded as English resilience, and celebrates working class heroes in a quintessentially middle class area.
When an unexploded bomb detonates in Miramont Gardens in Pimlico, the explosion reveals a long-buried cellar filled with artwork, coins, jewellery and an ancient charter from Edward IV that cedes a house and its estates to the last Duke of Burgundy after the Battle of Nancy in 1477 As the charter had never been revoked, an area of Pimlico is declared a left-over legal part of Burgundy.
When rationing and other post-war restrictions is abolished in Pimlico, the enclave is flooded with black marketeers and shoppers. In responses and recriminations, area is surrounded with barbed wire, the residents stop an Underground train as it passes through Burgundy demanding to see passports, and all water and food are cut off at the new border. After tense diplomatic negotiations, Burgundy is reunited with Britain – and ration books return, along with British weather as a summer heatwave turns to a torrential downpour.
I spent the afternoon in Pimlico yesterday, wandering around its elegant Georgian terraces and squares, enjoying its architectural legacy and visiting is churches. To my disappointment, but not to my surprise, there is no Miramont Gardens in Pimlico. But no one asked to see my passport, and in the street cafés and the spillover onto the streets from the bars and restaurant it can be seen there is not even a hint of the memory of post-war rations and restrictions.
Pimlico in central London is part of the City of Westminster, between Victoria Station and the River Thames. It was built as a southern extension to neighbouring Belgravia, and has more than 350 Grade II–listed buildings and many Grade II* listed churches.
The grid of residential streets at the heart of Pimlico was laid out by the planner Thomas Cubitt, beginning over 200 years ago in 1825. It includes three garden squares, Saint George’s Square, Warwick Square and Eccleston Square, and the wider avenues of Belgrave Road and Saint George’s Drive.
Pimlico also includes Dolphin Square, built in 1935-1937, and Churchill Gardens and Lillington and Longmoore Gardens, built after the war. Churchill Gardens, developed in 1946-1962, replaced several terraces designed by Cubitt terraces and damaged in the Blitz.
The name Pimlico sounds Spanish or Italian, but various legends ascribe it to either Ben Pimlico, a publican in Hoxton, or from trade on the river with American Indians.
Pimlico dates back to the royal Manor of Ebury, which was sold off by James I In 1623. It was inherited by Mary Davies, a young heiress in 1666, whose dowry included what are present-day Pimlico and Belgravia, and much of Mayfair and Knightsbridge. At the age of 12, she married Sir Thomas Grosvenor of Eaton Hall, Cheshire, in 1677. Their descendants in the Grosvenor family became Marquesses and later Dukes of Westminster.
Thomas Cubitt was contracted by Lord Grosvenor to develop the once marshy lands of Pimlico in 1825. Cubitt developed Pimlico as a grid of attractive white stucco terraces along Saint George’s Drive, Belgrave Road and Lupus Street, and on Eccleston Square, Warwick Square and Saint George’s Square. Smaller, three-storey houses were built on the side streets.
Several Peabody estates were designed to provide affordable, quality working class housing in the late 19th century, and when the Revd Gerald Olivier, father of Laurence Olivier, moved from Notting Hill to Pimlico as the curate of Saint Saviour’s in 1912, he came as a ‘slum priest’ for west London.
Pimlico is close to the Houses of Parliament and so it became a lively area for political life in the early 20th century. The Labour Party and the Trades Union Congress once shared offices at 33 Eccleston Square. Sir Winston Churchill lived at 33 Eccleston Square and Morpeth Terrace for a time. The fascist leader Oswald Mosley lived at Dolphin Square, until his arrest in 1940, and it was the headquarters of Charles De Gaulle and the Free French for much of World War II.
After World War II, many of the larger Victorian houses were converted into small hotels. The Duke of Westminster sold off much of the Grosvenor estate, including Pimlico, in 1953. Pimlico was designated a conservation area in 1968 and successive waves of development since then have given Pimlico an interesting social mix.
The Anglican churches in Pimlico included Saint Gabriel’s, Saint Saviour’s and Saint James the Less, and Saint Peter’s, Eaton Square, Belgravia, was known as Saint Peter’s, Pimlico, until the 1870s. I visited Saint Gabriel’s, Saint Saviour’s and Saint Peter’s during my stroll around Pimlico yesterday, but more about them in the days to come, hopefully.
Artistic, literary and other notable figures who have lived in Pimlico include the illustrator Aubrey Beardsley, the writers Joseph Conrad, Bram Stoker and Barbara Pym, Jomo Kenyatta, first president of Kenya, the Hindu philosopher Swami Vivekananda, Walter Clopton Wingfield, the father figure in lawn tennis, the designer Laura Ashley, and the dancer Isadora Duncan.
Surprisingly, the outdoor scenes in the Ealing comedy Passport To Pimlico were shot not in Pimlico but about a mile away in Lambeth. The scene of food airlifts into the enclave of Burgundy may have been inspired by the flights during the Berlin Blockade in 1948-1949.
For many, the film continues to celebrate English values of individualism, tolerance and compromise. But even today it points to the absurdity of passport border checks between Britain and France.
It is a reminder that England has always shared a common cultural legacy and identity with the rest of Europe, and a reminder too of the absurdity of trying to live in insular isolation in a post-war Europe that sought to bring us closer to one another as a way of countering war and the potential rise again of authoritarianism.
