Pride and Prejudice at 200: The Real-Life Movie Mansions You Can Visit

Exactly two centuries since Jane Austen published Pride and Prejudice, we celebrate the UK residences that have been immortalized in adaptations of her classic satire.

By Mark Smith

January 28, 2013

National Trust Images/Clive Nichols
Stourhead Landscape Garden
The Temple of Apollo, set above the tranquil lake at 18th-century Stourhead, was used as the location for Darcy’s first and excruciating proposal to Lizzy. Afterward, an offended Lizzy makes her exit across the Palladian Bridge. Thankfully, as we all know, the final outcome is joyous and love prevails.
National Trust Images/Rupert Truman
Basildon Park
This 18th-century Palladian mansion 'played’ Mr Bingley’s house, Netherfield, a suitably grand residence for a "young man of four or five thousand a year."

Wilton House
The 2005 film was shot in Wilton's Single and Double Cube Rooms, which are part of the suite of state rooms designed in the mid-17th century by Inigo Jones and John Webb for a proposed visit by King Charles I (who was unfortunately executed in 1649 and never saw the completed rooms).
Haddon Hall
Haddon's Banqueting Hall was dressed with curtains and transformed into the inn at Lambton. The house has also been used as a location for no less than three on-screen versions of Jane Eyre, as well as The Other Boleyn Girl with Natalie Portman and Scarlett Johansson.

Groombridge Place
Appropriately, given that the county in which Groombridge stands is known as the garden of England, the foliage and stonemasonry here stood in for the Bennett family’s residence.
NTPL/Andrew Butler
Chatsworth House
One of the UK’s most-visited stately homes, Chatsworth in the Peak District is the major location for Pemberley, Mr. Darcy’s estate, in the 2005 film Pride & Prejudice, starring Keira Knightley as Elizabeth and Matthew Macfadyen as Mr. Darcy. The grand staircase and sculpture gallery get quite a lot of screen time.****

National Trust Images/Stephen Robson
Lyme Park
Lyme Park is a Tudor house that was transformed into an Italianate palace, famous for its turn as Pemberley, Darcy’s home, in the BBC’s Pride and Prejudice. Jennifer Ehle’s Lizzy was shocked by the approach of the wet clad figure of Mr. Darcy, played by Colin Firth, post-dip in the lake. The scene cemented Colin Firth’s sex symbol status, as obsessed over by Bridget Jones in her fictional diary.
Chichley Hall
Chichley Hall is now home to the Kavli Royal Society International Centre, a scientific academy. But its Regency interiors were host to considerable chemistry when they doubled for London.

Lord Leycester Hospital
Never a medical establishment, Lord Leycester started as a charitable institution for the needy and dispossessed. With timber-framed facades, its buildings doubled for 19th-century London streets.
Brocket Hall
It was beneath Sir Francis Wheatley’s spectacularly vaulted ceiling that Colin Firth sneered at all and sundry for the BBC series; the dining room doubled as the ballroom of Netherfield, residence of the Bingleys.

National Trust Images/Andrew Butler
Belton House
It was the good fortune of Jennifer Ehle’s Lizzy to dine in the magnificent splendor of Belton House, used as Lady Catherine De Bourgh’s residence. As Mr. Collins would attest, no greater honor can be bestowed than an invitation to dine at "Rosings." Belton also featured in the scenes leading up to Darcy’s first toe-curling proposal to Elizabeth.
National Trust Images/Rupert Truman
Lacock Village
Lacock, a delightfully preserved village dating from the 13th century, played the village of Meryton in the BBC’s 1995 adaptation. Here the Bennet girls, in particular Lydia and Kitty "whose minds were more vacant than their sisters," shop for bonnets, seek the latest tittle-tattle from their Aunt Philips, and hope to attract the attentions of the officers—in particular a certain Mr. Wickham.

North Lees Hall
The views of the Derbyshire hills are amazing from this grand 16th-century house, used as a location for both the 1995 BBC series and the 2005 movie. ****