When director Tim Burton was scouting for locations for Alice in Wonderland, he was looking for a historic house with formal gardens and sweeping views. He found them all at atmospheric Antony. The gardens are the backdrop for Johnny Depp's Mad Hatter's Tea Party, although the sequence was filmed using special effects - Johnny himself never actually went to Cornwall.
In the 2005 film of Pride & Prejudice, Mr Darcy (Matthew Macfadyen) makes his first proposal to Elizabeth Bennett (Keira Knightley) in a storm as they shelter in the Temple of Apollo. Lizzie rejects him, and dashes across the Palladian Bridge. The gardens were also used in the Stanley Kubrick film Barry Lyndon in 1975.
Haddon Hall has starred not once but three times in film versions of Jane Eyre. It doubled as Thornfield Hall, home to the tortured Mr Rochester. In the 2011 version, Mia Wasikowska (Jane) and Michael Fassbender (Mr Rochester) spend a lot of time walking mournfully among the gardens. Haddon also has cameo roles in Pride and Prejudice and The Other Boleyn Girl.
You may not recognise the location but you will almost certainly remember that Pride & Prejudice scene in which a dripping Mr Darcy exits a lake and encounters Elizabeth Bennett – a memorable moment on celluloid that was filmed at Lyme Park. More recently the Cheshire house and garden represented a haunted boys' boarding school in supernatural thriller, The Awakening.
This honey-coloured Somerset mansion most recently starred as Johnny Depp's ‘den of iniquity' in The Libertine, but it's also had its Jane Austen moment. In the Oscar-winning Sense and Sensibility, Marianne (Kate Winslet) is running through the rain, inconsolable after being rejected by her lover, Mr Willougby. She's running down Montacute's famous West Drive.
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