inspiration
Pembrokeshire on Screen: Where They Filmed What
Shell Cottage from Harry Potter, Snow White's beach, Dr Who's alien coastline. Where to stand, and what else is there.
By Pembrokeshire Guide editors · Updated 13 August 2026
Pembrokeshire gets used on screen constantly, for the obvious reason: two hundred miles of coast with almost no modern building in shot.
Freshwater West — the famous one
The huge, wild, west-facing beach on the south coast has done double duty.
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows built Shell Cottage in the dunes here, and filmed Dobby's death and burial on the beach. The set was dismantled afterwards — there is nothing left to see — but the dunes and the beach are exactly as they appear. Fans still leave stones and messages at the spot.
Snow White and the Huntsman used the same beach for its coastline scenes.
Freshwater West is a serious surf beach with strong rips and no lifeguard cover outside the summer season. It's for looking at and surfing with respect, not casual swimming. There's a car park, and Café Môr — the seaweed-and-lobster shack — has been a fixture in it.
Pembroke Castle
A Norman fortress with an intact Great Keep and a natural cavern underneath is exactly what a location scout wants. It has appeared in film and television repeatedly, and is worth two hours regardless of what was shot there.
Manorbier Castle
Privately owned, above a beach, in a green valley — used on screen more than once, and unusually atmospheric because it isn't manicured.
The wider coast
Directors come here for cliffs without pylons: the Castlemartin limestone around Stack Rocks and the Green Bridge, the beaches at Marloes and Barafundle, the harbour at Solva. If a British production needs "wild coast, no century", this is a short list of places and Pembrokeshire is usually on it.
Visiting sensibly
Two things worth saying. Sets don't survive — most were temporary, and what's there now is the landscape, which is the good bit anyway. And the locations are working beaches and cliffs, not attractions: same tides, same unfenced edges, same parking problems as everywhere else on this coast.
See the Freshwater West beach guide, Pembroke Castle and the other castles, or where to stay nearby.
