The National Trust has recently published a movie map of all
their sites that have hosted film shoots since 1960. You can see it here. It's fascinating to see the number and variety of films that have been shot using National Trust sites. Not all the films are costume dramas.
The long gallery, library and backstairs at Osterley Park featured in the latest
Batman film as did the Henrhyd Falls in Wales, which doubled for a waterfall
scene set in remote jungle! Ham House in Richmond was used to represent a grand New York
mansion in the sci-fi adventure John Carter and Antony in Cornwall, which is a gorgeous and quirky little house, was the
setting for Alice in Wonderland.
Unsurprisingly, though, it is the costume dramas that
feature most in the roll call of famous locations. From Pride and Prejudice at
Basildon Park to The Duchess at Kedelston Hall, the grand houses of the
National Trust provide the opulent interiors and impressive scenery need for
epic style productions. My personal favourite though is Great Chalfield Manor
in Wiltshire, which was used as the Boleyn family home in The Other Boleyn Girl. It’s not a grand house,
more a cosy medieval manor complete with moat and topiary gardens! I could easily imagine living there. (Oh, I wish!)
It's great that villages like Lacock (used in the TV series Cranford) and even cities like Bath
can also feature in period dramas so you might be out shopping and stumble across a
film crew! Do you have a favourite place that has been used as a film set or is
there anywhere you’ve seen in a film that you would like to visit?
4 comments:
There's a small central valley California town that recently removed all the palm trees from their main street to better be used in the part of "any-town smalltown USA" for Hollywood. Palm trees are just too California.
Those houses are beautiful. I used Holme Pierrepont as my inspiration for my first and third books.
Nicola, this is just such a fabulous post, we are so lucky to have the National Trust. I've just come home from a day at Lyme Park, which of course was Pemberley in the Colin Firth Pride and Prejudice. It's well worth a visit, as are all the NT "locations".
What a pity about the palm trees, Erin! I'd be very sorry to see trees cut down just to make a place more suitable as a film set. Just had a look at Holme Pierrepoint. Gorgeous!
Amanda, Lyme Park is right up there on my list of locations to visit. It looks wonderful.
A wonderful post, Nicola. We have some lovely old houses here in Cornwall, but nothing on the scale of Lyme Park.
What we do have is the little port of Charlestown near St Austell which has featured in countless films and TV series, including The Onedin Line, Hornblower and Mansfield Park (as Fanny Price's poverty-stricken childhood home)
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