Summary

A Grade I listed Jacobean country house at Hatfield in Hertfordshire, built 1607 to 1611 by Robert Cecil, 1st Earl of Salisbury and Chief Minister to James I; adjacent to surviving portions of the earlier Royal Palace of Hatfield (c.1480) where Elizabeth I spent her childhood and learned of her accession; set in a large park; home of the Marquess of Salisbury (Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 7th Marquess); one of England’s most frequently used filming locations with credits including Batman (1989), Shakespeare in Love (1998), Sherlock Holmes (2009), The Favourite (2018), Rebecca (2020), Bridgerton (2020 onwards), The Crown (Netflix), Enola Holmes (2020), and many others.

About this location

Hatfield House stands on the eastern side of Hatfield in Hertfordshire. The site was previously occupied by the Royal Palace of Hatfield, built around 1480 by Cardinal John Morton, Archbishop of Canterbury, as an episcopal palace. Henry VIII seized the palace from the church; his children Edward VI and the future Elizabeth I spent their youth at Hatfield, and it was Elizabeth’s favourite early residence. The surviving wing of the Old Palace stands a short distance from the present house.

In 1607, Robert Cecil, 1st Earl of Salisbury — son of William Cecil, Lord Burghley, and Chief Minister to James I — began construction of the present Jacobean house, completed in 1611. The Jacobean house is a prodigy house: one of the great houses built by Elizabethan and Jacobean grandees partly to demonstrate their wealth and status, intended to receive royal visits. The east wing is the principal facade, three storeys of red brick with stone dressings and a central clock tower. The west wing, less elaborate, faces the Old Palace. The Great Hall has a carved screen of 1611; the King James Drawing Room contains a portrait of Robert Cecil; the Marble Hall has a chequered marble floor.

The estate includes an Elizabethan knot garden, a wilderness garden, and parkland extending to approximately 1,000 acres, with a kitchen garden in the walled garden area. The house has been continuously in Cecil family ownership since 1611, with the Marquessate of Salisbury being one of the senior surviving titles of that family. The current owner is the 7th Marquess of Salisbury.

The house has been among the most heavily used filming locations in England, offering Jacobean interiors, Elizabethan gardens, parkland, and the Old Palace ruins across a single estate. Film and television productions include: Batman (Warner Bros., 1989, directed by Tim Burton, starring Michael Keaton and Jack Nicholson); Orlando (Adventure Pictures, 1992, directed by Sally Potter, starring Tilda Swinton, based on Virginia Woolf’s novel); Shakespeare in Love (Miramax/Universal, 1998, directed by John Madden, starring Gwyneth Paltrow and Joseph Fiennes, Academy Award winner for Best Picture); Cromwell (Columbia, 1970, directed by Ken Hughes, starring Richard Harris as Oliver Cromwell and Alec Guinness as Charles I); Henry VIII and His Six Wives (BBC/MGM, 1972); Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes (Warner Bros., 1984, directed by Hugh Hudson, starring Christopher Lambert); Sherlock Holmes (Warner Bros., 2009, directed by Guy Ritchie, starring Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law); My Week with Marilyn (The Weinstein Company, 2011, directed by Simon Curtis, starring Michelle Williams as Marilyn Monroe); Elizabeth: The Golden Age (Universal/Working Title, 2007, directed by Shekhar Kapur, starring Cate Blanchett); V for Vendetta (Warner Bros., 2006, directed by James McTeigue, starring Natalie Portman and Hugo Weaving); The Favourite (Film4/Element Pictures, 2018, directed by Yorgos Lanthimos, starring Olivia Colman, Emma Stone, and Rachel Weisz); Rebecca (Netflix/Working Title, 2020, directed by Ben Wheatley, starring Lily James and Armie Hammer, adapted from Daphne du Maurier’s novel — the house served as Manderley); Enola Holmes (Netflix, 2020, directed by Harry Bradbeer, starring Millie Bobby Brown); Bridgerton (Netflix/Shondaland, 2020 onwards); The Crown (Netflix, 2016 onwards); Mr. Holmes (Miramax, 2015, directed by Bill Condon, starring Ian McKellen as an elderly Sherlock Holmes); Paddington (StudioCanal, 2014) and Paddington 2 (2017); Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (Warner Bros., 2005, directed by Tim Burton, starring Johnny Depp); Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (Screen Gems, 2016); The New World (New Line Cinema, 2005, directed by Terrence Malick, starring Colin Farrell).