Harlaxton Manor

Summary

A Victorian Gothic Revival mansion near Grantham in Lincolnshire, now operated as Harlaxton College (the UK campus of the University of Evansville), used as a filming location for The Ruling Class (1972), The Haunting (1999), and The Secret Garden (2020).

About this location

Harlaxton Manor stands approximately one mile south of the village of Harlaxton in Lincolnshire, near Grantham. The house was built between 1837 and 1851 for Gregory Gregory, a Lincolnshire landowner of substantial means, to designs by the architect Anthony Salvin in the early phase and then completed and extensively elaborated by William Burn. The result is one of the most extravagant examples of Victorian Gothic Revival domestic architecture in England: a large, asymmetric pile of towers, turrets, gables, and chimney stacks, with elaborate carved stonework throughout. The entrance front stretches more than 300 feet and incorporates elements drawn from Jacobean, Baroque, and Elizabethan sources, combined into a compositional drama that has no close parallel in British architecture.

The interior is equally imposing. The entrance hall, the Great Hall, the Cedar Staircase, and the state rooms were fitted with carved woodwork, elaborate plasterwork ceilings, and ornamental fireplaces of considerable ambition. The Cedar Staircase in particular — a triple-flight oque composition rising through three storeys — is considered one of the most theatrical interior spaces of the Victorian period in England.

After Gregory’s family line died out, Harlaxton passed through various hands. In 1965 it was acquired by the University of Evansville in Indiana, which operates it as Harlaxton College — a residential liberal arts campus for American study-abroad students. The college runs year-round academic programmes from within the house and maintains the building and its formal gardens.

The manor has been used repeatedly as a filming location. The Ruling Class (1972, director Peter Medak, starring Peter O’Toole as a delusional English aristocrat who believes he is Jesus Christ) used Harlaxton as the ancestral home of the Earl of Gurney. The Haunting (1999, director Jan de Bont, starring Liam Neeson, Catherine Zeta-Jones, and Owen Wilson) used the manor as “Hill House”, the haunted mansion at the centre of the story — the production chose Harlaxton specifically for the scale and theatricality of its interiors and exterior. The Secret Garden (2020, director Marc Munden, starring Colin Firth and Julie Walters) also filmed at Harlaxton, using the house and as the setting for the Victorian country estate.