On the case of Hot Fuzz in Wells, Somerset

I found the movie Hot Fuzz terrifying, BUT that didn’t stop me enjoying it… my favourite line was “if you wanna be a big cop in a small town, f**k off up the model village”, which, if said in a Westcountry accent, is pretty hilarious.

When we were on holiday in Dorset, we saw a village called “Sandford” on the map and looked it up to see if it was where they filmed Hot Fuzz. It wasn’t… it turns out that the village of “Sandford” in the movie is fictional, unsurprisingly! We found out that they filmed most of it in Wells, Somerset, so we took a trip there one weekend.

In real life, Wells cathedral is behind this building, but I read that they digitally removed the cathedral in the movie so that it wouldn’t be so recognisable. Wells Cathedral is a fine piece of architecture. It was impressive even to me (and I have been dragged round my fair share of cathedrals and castles as a kid).

The Bishop’s Palace next door (which is where the Bishop of Bath and Wells lives) was also really pretty and quintessentially English. It is surrounded by a moat which looked like a nice place to stroll around on a weekend.

But back to Hot Fuzz…we saw the Church (which the spire fell off in Hot Fuzz) and The Swan Hotel (where Simon Pegg’s character stayed in the film), but our most exciting find was The Crown (the pub where the shoot-out scene happened in the film, cue Simon Pegg and Nick Frost diving in the door firing their guns as they fell to the floor). I wanted to go in and dive through the door (minus the firearms) but when we got inside we found a normal pub – apparently the scenes from the interior of the pub were filmed elsewhere.

My BF stuffed his face with a pasty tried the local delicacies and we headed off, happy that we had successfully solved the case of where Hot Fuzz was filmed.

Afterwards we drove through nearby Glastonbury (Yes, the one with the music festival!). This was also really pretty and quaint but we couldn’t stop as we were running late. Overall, this is a lovely part of the world and definitely worth a look if you’re in the area!

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