Visit the setting of Taboo - Tilbury Fort

In the early 19th century, the East India Company was the most powerful company in the world, with its own docks in the East End. But Taboo was filmed much further down the Thames at Tilbury Fort, an old artillery fort that protected London for centuries.

Hardy at his most mysterious at Tilbury Fort

Taboo took over the fort for three months, transforming the exterior into the streets of historic Wapping. The production also filmed interior scenes in the historic gunpowder magazines (buildings used to store vast quantities of explosive gunpowder).

Tilbury Fort is an artillery fort on the north bank of the River Thames, east of London and towards the Thames Estuary. Early forts existed on the site, but it came to prominence as it was enlarged from 1670 onwards – following the Anglo-Dutch Wars which had seen naval raids up the Thames – into the distinctive star-shaped fort that can be seen today.

With angular bastions, water-filled moats and two lines of guns facing onto the river, it was a formidable barrier, and remains the best surviving example of this type of coastal defence in Britain.

The fort was developed over subsequent centuries, with storage depots and an artillery battery added during the Napoleonic Wars – the time Taboo is set. Eventually changing technologies made the site obsolete, and although used during the First and Second World Wars, it was taken over by the Ministry of Works (now English Heritage) in 1950, and it is now open to visitors at the weekends.

For more information, go to: english-heritage.org.uk

Radio Times Travel promotions:

1. Save yourself up to 50% with our rail and hotel deals to over 500 destinations

2. Ticket to a top UK theme park or attraction plus hotel

3. Friday night out offer: 1 night hotel stay, welcome drink, 3-course meal, nightlife voucher

Click here to search our hotel booking site - over 5,000 UK and European hotels