The Smiley/Westerby Meeting - Updating the Record

POSTED BY CONTROL (with input from John Rundle and Chris)

Regular visitors to this website might recall that Chris and I visited London a couple of years back to try and pin down the locations of a few scenes from both series. 

One of the places we visited was The Humble Grape wine bar at the foot of St. Bride's Passage, to see if we could match the interior to the Smiley/Westerby scenes. 

Unfortunately the inside of the wine bar was much smaller and there were no recognisable features, which led us to conclude that those scenes had probably been filmed elsewhere. A few months later we received some help from Laura Wright, a visitor to our website, who felt the interior scenes had been filmed at Ludgate Cellars in Apothecary Street. 

Just recently we have been going backwards and forwards over some old ground which led us to some new information. Chris stumbled on another of his remarkable finds on YouTube and that has changed our thinking again about this location. He explains:

Here's a very interesting film from 1970 about the early development of computer simulated golf. 

This external screenshot is from the beginning of the film...

It is taken at the foot of St. Bride's Passage and the building was home to the City Golf Club at the time...

When Sir Alec Guinness entered the building in 1979 (episode six 2.58) they had added an awning...

And today's streetview shows that the entrance is now an arch...

The building on the right in the above photo above is where the little cafe stood in the image below...

The film also gives us a fascinating glimpse of the interior of the City Golf Club at the time, with which we can make some comparisons...

In the nine years that elapsed between the Movietone film and the series there have obviously been some changes, but the location is recognisable. 

Chris's find confirms that at least some of the interior scenes were filmed at the City Golf Club in St. Bride's Passage but we shouldn't discount Ludgate Cellars as a possible second location. Perhaps the scenes of Smiley and Westerby dining were shot there? The discovery of the film still left us with some unanswered questions. We didn't know why the interior of 'The Humble Grape' looked so different to the City Golf Club and why the inside of the building is so much smaller today - see the photo below.

The YouTube clip describes the location of the City Golf Club as 'a disused warehouse off Fleet Street'. My colleague John Rundle has done a bit more digging into the history of the building and has come up with some answers. He takes up our story:

I decided to visit the Kensington and Chelsea library reference section as they have a good collection of Kelly’s London Postal Directories. Starting at 1970 I checked the address of the City Golf Club and discovered it was situated in St. Bride's Passage until 1983/84, when it relocated to 24 Bride Lane. 

Next I visited St. Bride's Church and had a chat with the Verger as I wondered if the Golf Club had been partially constructed in the crypt of the church. The Verger explained that the club was outside the boundary of the church and was built in the cellars of a row of houses and a later warehouse. It appears that the warehouse was demolished when an adjacent office block was constructed.  The Humble Grape was a new build covering all of the length but not all of the width of the cellars. As the warehouse space is also no longer part of the wine bar this explains why the interior looks so different today. 

I think the investment of £10 to church funds was a reasonable return for the information I received!  

A little bit more research led me to a photo of the original houses built on the site of the City Golf Club. Remember the steps Smiley walks down in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy - take a look at the handrail on the right hand side...

...you can see that handrail highlighted again in the photo below. It is attached to the front of the beautiful Grade II listed Victorian building that has been home to the St Bride Foundation since 1891. 

The St. Bride Foundation have been kind enough to give us permission to publish an early photo (below) from the same location, somewhere between 1893 and 1908.

Although it is difficult to make out, the handrail is still visible on the front of their building. From examining old Ordinance Survey maps on the National Library of Scotland website I can conclude that the original terraced properties on what was known as Bells Buildings were demolished between 1895 and 1911. At the same time a warehouse was constructed on the left hand side in the photo above and the street was renamed St Bride's Passage. The warehouse was probably demolished around 1983 when the City Golf Club moved into their new premises in 24 Bride Lane. 

The satellite image below illustrates the results of John Rundle’s research…

It's fair to say this article has been a real team effort - and by ‘team effort’ I mean Chris and John did all the real work! My thanks to both of them for solving another riddle about Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.

UPDATE - 14th August 2025

I'm pleased to able to add a little bit more information about this location, courtesy of John Rundle. He explains: 

I have recently obtained a readers card for the Metropolitan Archives in Islington. An exhibition in the Archive about the London Blitz had some interesting information which by chance is relevant to us.

They have on display the original hand coloured OS Map showing Bomb damage to the area around St Bride's Church and the buildings either side of St Brides Passage. 

If this was not enough, the London Fire Brigade incident book of the night of the raid was also on display. The report highlights that the church was 'severely damaged by fire and roof off'. I have photographed the incident book and the explanatory key.

Update 17th August 2025

Just as we were finalising our previous update to this piece, we had another to add!

I'm very grateful to Mack who recently contacted us with his recollections about 'City Golf Club':

I was a regular at the City Golf Club in the mid 1970s so I can verify your findings - I'm afraid I have no photos though. Being a great fan of Tinker Tailor, which I've seen many times, I always recognised the club as the location where Smiley and Westerby meet. 

My brother was a member there which is why I got to know it. Before I started going there in about 1976 I believe there was a golf range and nets but, as the Fleet Street journos adopted the place, they shifted the golf range out to make more bar space. Of course at that time there were licensing laws and the pubs closed at 3pm and reopened at 6pm - clubs with members were exempt though and you could drink all day, hence the popularity. 

My brother recalls there was a restaurant there but I’m afraid neither of us can identify the photo on the blog (below). 

My hazy memory is that the restaurant in the photo is a bit big for the golf club. I remember it being a bit poky – more of a bar. As time went by they didn't check membership very strictly so, as a journo, it is believable that Westerby would be there. I'm not sure exactly when it closed as I stopped going a few years later. 

I'm so grateful to Mack for getting in touch and sharing his memories of the club. It seems there is still a question mark over whether the scenes of Smiley and Westerby dining were also filmed at The City Golf Club. Can you help? If so, feel free to get in touch at guinnessissmiley@icloud.com