Summary

A Grade I listed English country house at Wilton near Salisbury in Wiltshire, the country seat of the Earls of Pembroke for over 400 years; built on the site of Wilton Abbey presented to William Herbert, 1st Earl of Pembroke by Henry VIII after the dissolution; substantially rebuilt after a 1647 fire with Inigo Jones and John Webb responsible for the south front and the famous Double Cube and Single Cube rooms; the 16th-century literary salon of Mary Sidney (Countess of Pembroke); associated with Shakespeare’s company performing there; further alterations by James Wyatt from 1801; set in gardens also Grade I listed including the Palladian bridge of 1736; used as a filming location for Barry Lyndon (1975), Sense and Sensibility (1995), The Madness of King George (1994), Bridgerton (Netflix, 2020), The Diplomat (Netflix, 2024), Emma (2020), Outlander (Starz, 2014), and many others.

About this location

Wilton House stands at Wilton in Wiltshire, approximately three miles west of Salisbury. The house was built on the site of Wilton Abbey, which Henry VIII presented to William Herbert, 1st Earl of Pembroke, following the dissolution of the monasteries. Herbert built the original house between around 1544 and 1563. The Pembroke family used the house as a centre of literary patronage: Mary Sidney, Countess of Pembroke (wife of the 2nd Earl), presided over the Wilton Circle, the most celebrated literary salon of the Elizabethan period, whose members included Edmund Spenser and Samuel Daniel. Shakespeare’s theatre company performed at Wilton, reportedly As You Like It for James I in 1603.

After a fire in 1647 destroyed much of the house, rebuilding was carried out. Inigo Jones (or his nephew John Webb acting on Jones’s designs) produced the new south front and the two most celebrated rooms in the house: the Double Cube Room (60 by 30 feet by 30 feet high) and the Single Cube Room (30 feet in each dimension). The Double Cube Room, with its gilded and painted ceiling, red velvet hangings, and family portraits by Van Dyck, is among the finest Baroque interiors in England.

James Wyatt undertook further alterations from 1801, contributing the cloisters around the inner courtyard — a two-storey gallery for displaying the Pembroke sculpture collection — and other interior changes. The east front retains the original Tudor great tower at its centre. The gardens and park are also Grade I listed and include the Palladian bridge of 1736, one of only three Palladian bridges in England. The River Nadder runs through the .

The house has been the seat of the Earls of Pembroke and their Herbert family for over 400 years and is still privately occupied.

Film and television productions at Wilton House include: The Music Lovers (United Artists, 1971, directed by Ken Russell, starring Richard Chamberlain as Tchaikovsky); Barry Lyndon (Warner Bros., 1975, directed by Stanley Kubrick, starring Ryan O’Neal); The Bounty (EMI/Dino De Laurentiis, 1984, directed by Roger Donaldson, starring Mel Gibson as Fletcher Christian and Anthony Hopkins as Bligh); Blackadder II (BBC, 1986, the Elizabethan series starring Rowan Atkinson); The Madness of King George (Goldwyn/Channel 4/BBC, 1994, directed by Nicholas Hytner, starring Nigel Hawthorne); Sense and Sensibility (Columbia/Mirage, 1995, directed by Ang Lee, starring Emma Thompson and Kate Winslet, adapted from Jane Austen’s novel — Wilton’s Double Cube Room appeared); The Portrait of a Lady (Propaganda Films/PolyGram, 1996, directed by Jane Campion, starring Nicole Kidman, adapted from Henry James); Mrs Brown (Miramax/BBC, 1997, directed by John Madden, starring Judi Dench as Queen Victoria and Billy Connolly as John Brown); The End of the Affair (Columbia, 1999, directed by Neil Jordan, starring Ralph Fiennes and Julianne Moore, adapted from Graham Greene’s novel); Pride and Prejudice (Working Title/Universal, 2005, directed by Joe Wright, starring Keira Knightley); The Young Victoria (GK Films, 2009, directed by Jean-Marc Vallée, starring Emily Blunt); Outlander (Starz, 2014 onwards, which filmed in the Double Cube Room); The Crown (Netflix, 2016 onwards); Tomb Raider (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer/Warner Bros., 2018, directed by Roar Uthaug, starring Alicia Vikander as Lara Croft); Emma (Working Title/Focus Features, 2020, directed by Autumn de Wilde, starring Anya Taylor-Joy); Bridgerton (Netflix/Shondaland, 2020 onwards); The Diplomat (Netflix, 2024); Frankenstein (Netflix, 2025).