Ten famous film locations you can visit in the UK
Smash hit Saltburn put the British manor front and centre and we have rounded up the most memorable grand estates to visit.
Jacob Elordi and Barry Keoghan may have had star billing in the summer movie Saltburn but it was the setting — Drayton House — that stole the movie. Unfortunately it is a private home that you cannot visit but there are plenty architectural stars of the screen where you can see for yourself in the UK. With the “set-jetting” trend on the rise, travellers can explore these estates and baronial manors to tread the same footsteps as lords, ladies, royalty – and actors.
1. Blenheim Palace, Oxfordshire, England
In The Favourite (2018), Olivia Colman’s unhinged Queen Anne presents her manipulative companion, Sarah Churchill, with Blenheim Palace. “It’s a monstrous extravagance,” replies the duchess. Today, visitors can travel almost 100km west of London to see the splendour for themselves. Designed in the English Baroque style as a family home cum national monument, its gateways, porticos and colonnades are designed to overawe.
A dedicated Lights, Camera, Action! Trail showcases the palace’s roles on film: hosting evil geniuses in James Bond’s Spectre (2015) and a sumptuous black-tie ball in Mission: Impossible Rogue Nation (2015); as a royal residence in TV series Queen Charlotte (2023). Annual exhibitions, food festivals, flower shows and an Adventure Play obstacle course bring community appeal to Britain’s grandest house, the only non-royal residence to bear the title of palace.
2. Highclere Castle, West Berkshire, England
Fans who binge the trials and tribulation of Lady Mary and the Granthams in TV hit Downton Abbey (2010-15) and subsequent films (2019, 2022) will find the Jacobethan and Italianate facade of Highclere Castle comfortably familiar. The stately pile near market town Newbury is now as famous as the dowager countess’s acerbic asides.
The real owners, the earls of Carnarvon, led equally screen-worthy lives. The fifth earl married a Rothschild heiress and sponsored the excavation of Egyptian pharaoh Tutankhamun’s tomb in 1922. Highclere’s impeccably British screen credentials include BBC’s Antiques Roadshow, although the fictional dowager would arch a brow over the famous orgy scene during the masked ball in Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut (1999). Today, the more sedate pleasures of picnic concerts entertain visitors.
3. Hampton Court, Richmond upon Thames, England
The Tudors tread across history’s pages as a spectacular royal dynasty. Henry VIII changed Britain forever when he created the Church of England to marry Anne Boleyn, then went on to have her beheaded. History buffs can experience his former home, a vast Gothic pleasure palace in a London borough on the River Thames, where stone unicorns, dragons, heraldry and tapestries evoke Henry’s lavish court life of the 1530s.
Walk where Shakespeare performed under the hammerbeam roof of the Great Hall, or where courtly lovers frolicked in the maze. The massive kitchen ovens once roared to feed Henry’s 800 courtiers, and now feature in The Favourite, as did the palace interiors in Queen Anne’s residential scenes (the monarch actually lived here). Other productions have tapped into its time-warp atmosphere: the Tudor Courtyards feature in Bridgerton (2020), Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows (2011), and Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides (2011).
4. Inveraray Castle, Argyll, Scotland
Here lies the authentic Scottish setting of high-gloss Amazon Prime series A Very British Scandal (2021), depicting the 11th Duke of Argyll’s turbulent 1960s marriage. Even the stunning exteriors are a plot point; the future duchess, depicted by haughtily posh Claire Foy, is dazzled enough by Inveraray to become its chatelaine by marriage.
The fairy tale turrets are one of the earliest examples of 1700s-era Gothic Revival style, dominating the shoreline of Loch Fyne. Visitors can explore an interior of tapestries emblazoned across double-height walls, dazzling chandeliers and 1300 pikes, muskets, swords and weapons. The 6ha garden roars with river cascades and a seasonal colour wave of azaleas, roses and wild heather. Nibble on West Highland ingredients such as Mull cheddar and Arran ice cream along with tea and scones in the tearooms, run by the 13th duchess.
5. Russborough House, County Wicklow, Ireland
Britain’s 17th-century colonisation of Ireland ushered in the creation of grand estates and Georgian cultural influence. When Love & Friendship (2016), an adaptation of the novella Lady Susan, brought Jane Austen’s literary universe to life, Russborough House (1752) provided period authenticity.
The property, nestled in the Wicklow Mountains 40 minutes south of Dublin by car, is an intact jewel of Palladian design; a revival of the classically symmetrical Greek and Roman aesthetic. Kate Beckinsale performs this comedy of manners framed by stuccoed Lafranchini ceilings and lavish art and furnishings, about which visitors can learn in guided tours. Trails thread past woodlands of ancient oaks, through 280ha framed by views of mountains, river and ornamental lakes. A touch of Gaelic magic remains amid this manicured British luxury – a “fairy trail” that reveals the world of the fairy folk, a treasured part of Irish folklore.
6. Bamburgh Castle, Northumberland, England
The days of sixth-century warrior kings live on in Bamburgh Castle, looming 45m above the spectacular coastline in England’s northeast. Its grandeur is fit for a monarch in the film that made Cate Blanchett a star – Elizabeth (1998). It also lent historical heft to World War II flashback scenes in the newest instalment of adventure epic Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (2023). Stories of knights and ransacking Vikings linger, and audio tours of the staterooms and ongoing excavations bring the centuries closer. Bamburgh, the former stronghold of Henry VI (1421-1471), is one of the country’s best-preserved castles, and has views over Bamburgh village and cricket green to the North Sea. The medieval bell tower now houses accommodation for five in three bedrooms, where Flemish prints and rich textiles combine with the modern conveniences needed for a cosy, contemporary stay.
7. Leighton House, London
Victorian artist Lord Frederic Leighton lived in a palatial abode in leafy Holland Park, a mere stroll from Kensington High St, where he created portraits and small-scale sculptures, combining aristocratic flamboyance with his passion for Oriental classicism. Leighton’s vast working studio and home, where le tout Victorian bohemia once partied, dazzles with its two-storey domed Arab Hall, tinkling indoor fountain and exquisite 15th-century tiles. It’s a setting to inspire cinematographers. The hall became a surgery in surrealist comedy Brazil (1985), a decadent nobleman’s home in Nicholas Nickleby (2002), and shone in pop band Spandau Ballet’s iconic video clip for their hit Gold (1983). Today, life drawing classes and “drink and draw” social events encourage visitors also to partake in the pursuit of beauty.
8. Ranger’s House, London
Any fan of Regency-era romance Bridgerton (2020) has admired the idyllic, wisteria-draped home of the titular Bridgerton family on screen. The real-life Georgian villa is in London’s southeast, near Blackheath.
Back in the social season of 1813, the architectural jewel belonged to George III’s dowager sister, the duchess of Brunswick. Today visitors can enter the ornate iron gates to explore the garden and the collection of medieval, Renaissance and 18th-century art, acquired by diamond magnate Julius Wernher. The wisteria may be an art director’s fantasy, but the jewels inside are splendidly real.
9. Glenarm Castle, County Antrim, Northern Ireland
With its spectacular cliffs, crumbling ruins and moss-covered forests, Northern Ireland is a lure for travellers. Last year’s Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, based on the cult game, was filmed at 17th-century Glenarm Estate, 45 minutes’ drive from Belfast. Stars Chris Pine and Hugh Grant recreate a world of rogues and sorcerers, aided by the castle’s atmospheric Tudor Gothic Revival look, historic walled garden and woodland walk. Now guests can soak up the atmosphere and stay in the Barbican Gate lodge used in the film, or go glamping in glazed “ocean pods” with views over Glenarm Bay.
10. Arley Hall & Gardens, Cheshire, England
Beloved actor Joanna Lumley is to the manor born at Arley Hall, the home that becomes a foreboding extra character in Netflix miniseries Fool Me Once, an adaptation of Harlan Coben’s novel. Built in 1842 using materials from earlier buildings, it is a Victorian tribute to the ornamental Jacobean style named after James VI (1566-1625) that is epitomised by geometric ceilings, carved wooden panels and decorative brickwork. Equidistant from Manchester and Liverpool (30km), the red-brick hall has remained in Viscount Ashbrook’s family for 500 years. Visitors can tour the house and stroll the 6ha garden, have locavore afternoon tea at The Gardener’s Kitchen Cafe, and stay in bright, airy accommodation with bay windows and wood-burning stove, converted from workers’ cottages.
