Slow Horses: Filming Locations in London

The story starts at an airport. In the first episode of Slow Horses, River Cartwright makes a crucial mistake during a live training exercise, no thanks to Spider Webb. The error ends in his demotion to Slough House, the MI5 dumping ground where the rest of the series happens. The scene was filmed at Stansted Airport, which lies 31 miles north-east of central London, so a Slow Horses trip can begin the moment you land.

Visitor guidance: Stansted is a working airport; the scene is not marked for visitors.

Slough House is a banishment room for MI5 rejects who failed a task, but not badly enough to be sacked. The exterior is the worn facade of 126 Aldersgate Street, on a corner above an Italian restaurant, directly opposite the Barbican Estate. The rubbish-strewn fire escape the spooks trudge up is around the corner on St. John's Street. Inside, it is all set: the interiors were built on a soundstage in Enfield.

Location precision: Guides disagree on the exact street number; the pin marks 126 Aldersgate Street, the address Wikipedia gives, and the interiors are studio sets.

Visitor guidance: View the exterior from Aldersgate Street.

MI5's headquarters, known as The Park, is said to stand in Regent's Park. In reality the production used the Mews area of the Old Royal Naval College in Greenwich, where gates and buildings double as the stately intelligence headquarters in series 1 and 2. In series 4 the exterior is a visual effects build. The college was designed by Christopher Wren as the Royal Navy's Greenwich Hospital and built between 1696 and 1712, so it makes a fitting home for the spymasters.

Visitor guidance: The Old Royal Naval College is in Greenwich; the Mews filming area is within it.

When Jackson Lamb needs an emergency meeting, he picks a gravestone in a cemetery. Bunhill Fields is where the Slow Horses often gather in secret, in a shadowy corner of the old burial ground. It was in use from 1665 until 1854, with around 123,000 burials, and its best-known monuments are those to John Bunyan, Daniel Defoe and William Blake.

Visitor guidance: Bunhill Fields is in central London, just north of the City of London.

The show's spies need a secret bench for covert talk, and for Taverner and Jackson Lamb it sits on Regent's Canal, just across the water from the Feng Shang Princess, a floating red Chinese restaurant. The canal is 8.6 miles long, so the filming spot is one stop on a long towpath walk.

Location precision: The guide places the bench on Regent's Canal across from the Feng Shang Princess; the pin marks the canal near that restaurant, not a surveyed bench.

Visitor guidance: The spot is on the canal opposite the Feng Shang Princess restaurant.

The Barbican, a concrete labyrinth of walkways, bridges and plant-spilling balconies, sits right across from Slough House and features in several scenes. In series 3, episode 2, River Cartwright and Spider Webb have a barbed, tense meeting on a bridge, Shirley and Marcus chase a suspect through a maze of alleyways, and Jackson Lamb skulks off to the Barbican Launderette to meet an old friend, Sam Chapman.

Visitor guidance: The Barbican is a residential estate, so explore respectfully.

Spoilers ahead. The Lighterman pub in Granary Square, King's Cross, is where River Cartwright faces Hugo Weaving's ruthless Frank Harkness in the series 4 finale. The production hired the pub for a couple of nights to film the finale. Granary Square itself is a large open space, comparable in size to Trafalgar Square.

Visitor guidance: The Lighterman pub is on Granary Square, King's Cross.