Petworth House

Summary

A 17th-century country house in West Sussex, managed by the National Trust, famous for its collection of Turner paintings and a 700-acre Capability Brown deer park, used as a filming location for Barry Lyndon (1975), Elizabeth: The Golden Age (2007), Maleficent (2014), Mr Turner (2014), Rebecca (2020), Bridgerton (2022), and Napoleon (2023).

About this location

Petworth House stands in the town of Petworth in West Sussex, immediately adjacent to the market town from which it takes its name. The house in its present form was built between 1688 and 1696 for Charles Seymour, 6th Duke of Somerset — known as “the Proud Duke” — replacing an earlier medieval manor on the same site. The west front, facing the park, is a long unbroken elevation of 320 feet in the French classical style; the original designer is uncertain, though the form closely resembles contemporary French château architecture. The interior contains a sequence of state rooms on the piano nobile, remodelled in the 17th and 18th centuries, including the Marble Hall, the Grand Staircase with ceiling paintings by Louis Laguerre, and the Carved Room with carved limewood decoration by Grinling Gibbons.

The house passed to the Percy family and then to the Wyndham family, Earls of Egremont, in the mid-18th century. George Wyndham, 3rd Earl of Egremont, who inherited in 1763, established Petworth as one of the principal centres of artistic patronage in England. He commissioned Lancelot “Capability” Brown to landscape the 700-acre deer park in the 1750s, creating the sweeping lawns, lake, and tree belts that remain today. The 3rd Earl was patron to J. M. W. Turner, who stayed repeatedly at Petworth and produced more than twenty oil paintings of the house and its park; twenty of these remain in the National Trust collection at Petworth. The house and deer park were given to the National Trust in 1947.

The park contains a herd of fallow deer descending from those in the medieval deer park. The house and park together form one of the most complete 18th-century landscape compositions in England.

Petworth has been used as a filming location for a wide range of productions. Barry Lyndon (1975, directed by Stanley Kubrick, starring Ryan O’Neal) used Petworth’s state rooms for its 18th-century interiors. Elizabeth: The Golden Age (2007, directed by Shekhar Kapur, starring Cate Blanchett) filmed at Petworth. Maleficent (2014, directed by Robert Stromberg, starring Angelina Jolie) used the . Mr Turner (2014, directed by Mike Leigh, starring Timothy Spall as J. M. W. Turner) filmed at Petworth, the house where Turner himself had painted. Rebecca (2020, directed by Ben Wheatley, starring Lily James and Armie Hammer) used Petworth alongside other locations. Bridgerton (Netflix, 2022) and Napoleon (2023, directed by Ridley Scott, starring Joaquin Phoenix), which filmed in the in March 2022, also used the estate.