Mentmore Towers

Summary

A Grade I listed Victorian Jacobethan country house in Buckinghamshire, built for the Rothschild family between 1852 and 1854, with an extensive film record including Batman Begins (2005), Brazil (1985), Eyes Wide Shut (1999), and The Mummy Returns (2001).

About this location

Mentmore Towers stands in the village of Mentmore in Buckinghamshire, on the north-facing scarp of the Chilterns above the Vale of Aylesbury. The house was designed by Sir Joseph Paxton — then simultaneously overseeing construction of the Crystal Palace — and his son-in-law George Henry Stokes, for Baron Mayer de Rothschild as a country seat and display case for his collection of fine art. The external design draws directly from Robert Smythson’s Elizabethan Wollaton Hall in Nottingham; the revival of late 16th and early 17th-century Jacobethan forms gives the house its dramatic profile of towers, corner turrets, and large mullioned windows. The central hall is covered by a ridge-and-furrow glass roof of the kind Paxton had perfected at the Crystal Palace. The house is a Grade I listed building.

The interior was enriched by Hannah Primrose, née Rothschild, who inherited Mentmore on the death of her father in 1874 and brought further collections to the house. The Earls of Rosebery held the property until 1977, when the contents were dispersed at a major Sotheby’s auction. The empty shell was subsequently acquired by the Maharishi Foundation, and later by property investors. The building is currently undergoing restoration.

The film record spans four decades. Brazil (1985, director Terry Gilliam) used the house as one of its dystopian bureaucratic interiors. Eyes Wide Shut (1999, Stanley Kubrick) filmed here for the masked ball sequence. Batman Begins (2005, Christopher Nolan) used Mentmore as the interior of Wayne Manor — the exterior of which was filmed at Wollaton Hall in Nottingham. Other productions include Slipstream (1989), Incognito (1997), Quills (2000), The Mummy Returns (2001), Ali G Indahouse (2002), Johnny English (2003), and Infinite (2021). The Inspector Morse episode “Cherubim and Seraphim” also filmed on the . Music video appearances include Roxy Music’s “Avalon” (1982) and the Spice Girls’ “Goodbye” (1998).