Haddon Hall

Summary

A Grade I listed medieval and Tudor country house on the River Wye near Bakewell in Derbyshire, with origins from the 11th century; held by the Vernon family from the 12th century and passing by marriage to the Manners family in 1563; comprising banqueting hall (1370) with minstrels’ gallery, kitchens, parlour, Chapel of St Nicholas (completed 1427), and a Long Gallery added in the 16th century; described as “the most complete and most interesting house of its period”; home of Lord Edward Manners (Manners/Rutland family); used as a filming location for Lady Jane (1986), The Princess Bride (1987), Jane Eyre (1996 and 2011), Elizabeth (1998), Pride and Prejudice (2005), The Other Boleyn Girl (2008), Mary Queen of Scots (2018), The King (2019), and Firebrand (2023), among others.

About this location

Haddon Hall stands on the River Wye near Bakewell in Derbyshire, within the Peak District. William Peverel held the manor in 1087, as recorded in the Domesday Book. The hall was forfeited to the Crown in 1153 before passing through the Avenell family; Sir Richard de Vernon acquired the manor around 1170 by marriage to Alice Avenell. The Vernon family built most of what survives, except for an early tower and part of the Chapel of St Nicholas, which preceded them. The chapel was completed in 1427; the banqueting hall with minstrels’ gallery, kitchens, and parlour date from 1370; the Long Gallery was added in the 16th century.

In 1563, Dorothy Vernon, daughter and heiress of Sir George Vernon, married John Manners, second son of Thomas Manners, 1st Earl of Rutland. A celebrated 19th-century legend holds that the couple eloped, with Dorothy slipping away from a ball and fleeing through the gardens to meet Manners on a footbridge. The couple were quickly reconciled with Sir George, who died two years later; Dorothy inherited the hall and the estate passed into Manners family hands. Their grandson inherited the Rutland Earldom in 1641; his son was made 1st Duke of Rutland in 1703 and relocated the family seat to Belvoir Castle. Because the Dukes thereafter made little use of Haddon, it lay undisturbed in near-original 16th-century condition until the 9th Duke of Rutland undertook a life’s work of meticulous restoration in the 1920s with architect Harold Brakspear.

The surviving hall comprises a sequence of courtyards and ranges in locally quarried limestone. The medieval chapel retains pre-Reformation frescoes, concealed for generations under whitewash that also served to protect them. The Long Gallery is one of the finest Elizabethan gallery rooms in England. The gardens, laid out by the 9th Duke alongside his restoration programme, include a walled topiary garden with clipped heraldic devices — the boar’s head of the Vernons and the peacock of the Manners — alongside terraced gardens above the River Wye. The hall is Grade I listed and the estate and gardens are separately Grade I listed on the Register of Historic Parks and Gardens.

Since 2016 the hall has been the occupied home of Lord Edward Manners, brother of the 11th Duke of Rutland, and Lady Edward Manners.

Film productions at Haddon Hall include: Lady Jane (Paramount/Palace Pictures, 1986, directed by Trevor Nunn, starring Helena Bonham Carter as Lady Jane Grey and Cary Elwes); The Princess Bride (Act III Communications/20th Century Fox, 1987, directed by Rob Reiner, starring Cary Elwes and Robin Wright, which used the hall’s courtyard and exterior); Jane Eyre (Miramax, 1996, directed by Franco Zeffirelli, starring William Hurt as Rochester and Charlotte Gainsbourg as Jane); Elizabeth (PolyGram Filmed Entertainment/Working Title, 1998, directed by Shekhar Kapur, starring Cate Blanchett); Pride and Prejudice (Working Title/Universal, 2005, directed by Joe Wright, starring Keira Knightley as Elizabeth Bennet and Matthew Macfadyen as Darcy, which filmed ball sequences and exterior scenes at the hall); The Other Boleyn Girl (BBC Films/Focus Features, 2008, directed by Justin Chadwick, starring Natalie Portman and Scarlett Johansson); Jane Eyre (Focus Features, 2011, directed by Cary Fukunaga, starring Mia Wasikowska and Michael Fassbender); Gunpowder (BBC One, 2017, written by Ronan Bennett and Kit Harington, starring Harington as Robert Catesby); Mary Queen of Scots (Focus Features, 2018, directed by Josie Rourke, starring Saoirse Ronan and Margot Robbie); The King (Netflix, 2019, directed by David Michôd, starring Timothée Chalamet as Henry V); Firebrand (2023, directed by Karim Aïnouz, starring Jude Law as Henry VIII and Alicia Vikander as Catherine Parr, which filmed entirely at Haddon Hall).