How big-budget film and TV are keeping our stately homes afloat (2024)

Letting out their country piles as backdrops to mega-budget films and TV shows has become something of a survival tactic for many aristocrats, as Charles Stopford Sackville — who hired out Drayton House to the makers of hit film Saltburn — admitted at the weekend.

Stopford Sackville, 63, said the fee paid for use of the 127-room Grade I-listed mansion had ‘100 per cent’ influenced his decision to grant access, adding: ‘These houses don’t run on water.’

Yet letting director Emerald Fennell and her crew in to film the dark comedy, which stars Barry Keoghan, has had its drawbacks.

Such is the current interest in his 700-year-old property in Northamptonshire that a TikTok video showing the exact location of a public footpath running through the grounds has been viewed 400,000 times.

Stopford Sackville says his staff now have to patrol it as ‘more than 50’ trespassers have strayed off the path. ‘Some people get a bit inquisitive,’ he said.

So what’s it really like letting a camera crew into your pad? Five stately home owners reveal all to Antonia Hoyle.

Period authenticity is broken when cast pick up their phones!

Lord and Lady Edward Manners live at Haddon Hall, Derbyshire, with their two children. Their home has featured in three versions of Jane Eyre, including the BBC’s 2006 series with Ruth Wilson and Toby Stephens.

The state rooms at Haddon Hall, which dates back to the 12th century, have formed the backdrop to myriad Tudor and Elizabethan dramas, including 2008’s The Other Boleyn Girl. Almost all of them have been shot by candlelight — which carries a distinct drama of its own, says Lady Edward. ‘What people don’t know is there is a fire engine outside and a team armed with hydrants on standby,’ she says.

Upsides include her ‘mesmerised’ children being invited to watch a battle scene, and seeing her home’s history being recreated.

‘There are moments where there is a scene so perfectly authentic, of horsem*n riding into your courtyard,’ she says, laughing, ‘and then they go “Cut!” and all the riders pick up their phones.’

Celebrities such as Kit Harington and Liv Tyler, who starred in the BBC series Gunpowder, and Dame Judi Dench, who appeared in the 2011 film of Jane Eyre, have graced her home, but Lady Edward — Gabrielle to her friends — doesn’t introduce herself. ‘I’m shy. I don’t see the superstars.’

Reluctant to reveal fees, she says they are nonetheless very helpful: ‘It means there is a significant contribution towards restoration.’

A visitor asked Damian Lewis: ‘Don’t I know you?’

The Honourable Philip Sidney lives at Penshurst Place in Kent, where two Queens’ fictionalised executions were filmed: in BBC’s The Boleyns and 2019’s Mary Queen Of Scots.

Philip says his family seat, the 14th-century mansion which was once King Henry VIII’s hunting lodge, has obvious appeal for filmmakers. ‘The family was never quite wealthy enough to tear it all down and start again — it was already quite old when we got hold of it in 1552 — so tended to bolt things on. It can stand in for lots of periods.’

In 2014, Mark Rylance stalked the grounds (as Thomas Cromwell) in the BBC adaptation of Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall, which was, Philip says, ‘one of few productions happy to have public visits continue while they were filming’.

He recalls an elderly female visitor who approached actor Damian Lewis, taking a break from being Henry VIII while seated on a throne, and asked ‘Don’t I know you from somewhere?’ Philip recalls: ‘He drew himself up to full height and said, “Of course you do, madam, I’m King Henry VIII.’

As for how much Penshurst costs to maintain, he concedes: ‘If a bit of battlement falls off you find yourself looking at a sizeable bill.’

Bond crew hit our police panic button

William says the film shoots have offered a lifeline: ‘A fee into the tens of thousands can enable an important piece of restoration work — like a new bit of roof.’ Production companies’ attention to detail is meticulous.

A Christmas Carol was filmed in a heatwave and needed three days of fake, paper snow being pumped over the Jaco bean mansion to replicate Scrooge’s boarding school days.

When William was 12, his parents allowed a Bond action scene to be shot at Stonor Park, with the mansion featuring as an MI6 safe house from which a KGB agent is captured by a villain dressed as a milkman, whose ‘milk bottles’ blow up the front door.

William, witnessing ‘every boy’s dream,’ says that while filming, the special effects crew accidentally hit the house’s police panic button — and the local constabulary arrived to find two pretend fire engines, fake ambulances and a helicopter flying overhead, with the house being blown up and a cast wielding machine guns.

‘The poor policemen thought there was a massive incident,’ says William. ‘If you watch that scene, you’ll see their police car in it.’

Smoke bombs filled the chimneys

Sir Richard FitzHerbert and wife Fiona live at Tissington Hall in Derbyshire, where the BBC’s Jane Eyre was filmed.

Sir Richard says they often miss out on hosting film companies because many want locations within the M25 — ‘so all the stars can go home overnight’.

What’s more, their 61-room, seven-staircase 17th-century home is in the middle of a village, which doesn’t afford celebrities much privacy.

Nonetheless, parts of the 2006 BBC adaptation of Jane Eyre were filmed there, as was ITV’s Peak Practice. For this, the crew wanted smoke coming out of 25 of the hall’s 48 chimneys. ‘But unless you’ve got ten of you running around the house keeping them alight for six hours, you can’t physically do that,’ Sir Richard says. In the end, they put smoke bombs up the chimneys instead.

The most recent filming was an episode of the BBC’s Antique Road Trip, for which he was paid nothing — ‘literally nothing’.

While grateful for the exposure, Sir Richard points out his heating bill is £20,000 a year.

Usually, though, he’s paid an average of £1,500 a day — and for a feature film or a big movie ‘it could be twice that’.

We could be the next Downton

Helen Gill and her husband Dan own Rise Hall in Yorkshire, featured in the film The War Below.

Helen was unaware her £1.4million home had been booked by a film company until she exchanged contracts with its former owner, TV presenter and property guru Sarah Beeny, in April 2019.

Having taken over the bookings as part of the deal, she was told: ‘Of course, we’ve got some filming next Wednesday.’

She recalls: ‘We thought then, “What have we done?” We had no idea it was for Netflix.’

A crew of 30 duly arrived on the drive of her 30-acre estate and told her they were making a film ‘about World War I’.

Sofas and tables were moved out and paperbacks swapped for leather-bound encyclopedias, to recreate the office of Field Marshal Haig (played by Douglas Reith) who leads a band of miners tunnelling to set bombs below the German front during the Battle of Messines.

Helen recognised actor Tom Goodman-Hill, who plays Hellfire Jack, from Call The Midwife. ‘We helped set up and then they closed the door,’ she says.

It was only after spotting a post on Instagram that she realised the film had aired. She now believes there’s ‘scope’ for more opportunities.

‘Who knows? We could be the next Downton Abbey.’