Ryhope Engines Museum stars in Virginia Woolf’s Night and Day

The former pumping station in Sunderland provides some of the film’s most atmospheric period backdrops, helping director Tina Gharavi turn the region into Edwardian Britain for her new adaptation of Woolf’s novel.

‘Such a gem’ – The location the director didn’t know

Gharavi has lived in the North East for almost 30 years, yet she admits she only discovered Ryhope when she began scouting for sites that could pass as early 20th‑century industrial England.

“It’s such a gem. It is absolutely unbelievably good, you know, like staggeringly good for the region,” she said.

The museum – built around magnificent Victorian and Edwardian beam engines – offered exactly the kind of authentic machinery and architecture the production needed.

Instead of building sets, Gharavi could frame her actors amid real ironwork, brick and steam‑age engineering, giving Night and Day a physical texture that’s hard to fake.

Powered by volunteers like Keith

Part of what moved Gharavi about Ryhope Engines Museum was not just the building, but the people who keep it running.

The site is maintained by volunteers, some of whom have been giving their time for decades.

“The men who work there, they’re just incredible because they’ve been doing it as volunteers, one of them for like 40 years, like this guy called Keith,” she said.

“Keith is just my hero, really… I just can’t give enough props to those men who have kept this kind of Edwardian‑Victorian factory alive forever and ever and ever and it’s just so lovingly looked after.”

The lovingly preserved engines and pipework help Night and Day feel rooted in the real industrial world that sits in the background of Woolf’s story about class, work and social change.

Director Tina Gharavi was blown away by Ryhope Engines Museum. (Image: BRIDGE & TUNNEL PRODUCTIONS)

A perfect fit for Woolf’s Edwardian world

While Night and Day follows the emotional and intellectual lives of characters like aspiring astronomer Katharine Hilbery, it is also very much a story about a country on the brink of transformation.

Suffrage protests, new technologies and shifts in work and family life all loom over the relationships at its centre.

Locations like Ryhope Engines Museum quietly underline that context.

The museum’s great engines speak to the power systems – literal and metaphorical – that kept Edwardian Britain running, while the volunteers’ dedication mirrors the film’s interest in communities and unseen labour.

By shooting in a working heritage site rather than on a backlot, Gharavi adds another layer of authenticity to Woolf’s world.

Putting Sunderland on the cinematic map

For the director, using Ryhope was also part of a bigger mission: to showcase the North East as a serious filming destination.

She has talked about the region as “spectacularly diverse”, with everything from cities and coastline to factories and forests available within a short drive.

“I didn’t know about [Ryhope Engines Museum] until I made this film and we were looking for period locations,” she admits – before adding that now, “everyone should visit it” because “it’s staggeringly good.”

Virginia Woolf’s Night and Day could soon see cinema‑goers across the country follow her advice, stepping inside a place where North East engineering history and big‑screen storytelling meet.