Haddon Hall celebrates a century of movie making at the historic Derbyshire stately home

Derbyshire’s 900-year-old Haddon Hall, the family home of Lord and Lady Edward Manners, is marking a celluloid century. Most recently, the uniquely-preserved Elizabethan hall has featured as one of the main locations in BBC One’s Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light.

Sitting amidst the beautiful Derbyshire Dales, its largely unspoilt medieval battlements like something from a fairytale, Haddon’s rich history cannot be measured in years or even decades, but in centuries. It is a place where tales need to be told, so it is no surprise that almost immediately after its restoration in the early 1920s, Haddon’s beauty began to inspire the first ever generation of movie makers.

Haddon first featured on film in Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall, the 1924 silent movie starring Mary Pickford. The film was actually shot in Hollywood, but the sets were a detailed replica of Haddon’s interiors. Mary Pickford, who played Dorothy Vernon, and Douglas Fairbanks, her husband at the time, visited Haddon prior to filming to get a feel for the hall’s atmosphere.

Since then Haddon Hall has been featured in some of the world’s favourite films and television programmes.

In 1987 it became Prince Humperdinck’s castle in Rob Reiner’s cult classic The Princess Bride.

Haddon Hall has played Mr Rochester’s Thornfield Hall in three adaptions of Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre – Franco Zeffirelli’s 1994 film starring Charlotte Gainsbourg and William Hurt, the BBC’s 2006 serial adaptation starring Ruth Wilson and Toby Stephens, and Cary Fukunaga’s 2011 film starring Mia Wasikowska and Michael Fassbender.

Haddon has featured in numerous films set in the Elizabethan era, including Elizabeth (1998), The Other Boleyn Girl (2006) and Mary, Queen of Scots (2018).

In 2024, Haddon was the only location in Karim Aïnouz’s Firebrand, starring Jude Law as Henry VIII.

Haddon Hall is featured in the BBC’s Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light. In an interview with Radio Times, Wolf Hall director Peter Kominsky was asked which of his locations he would recommend as a place for fans of the show to visit. ““Either Haddon Hall near Bakewell in Derbyshire, or Berkeley Castle in Gloucestershire. Both perfect,” he said.

Lady Edward Manners, the current Chatelaine of Haddon Hall, says: “If there is any place in England to stir the imagination, to transport visitors to another time, to inspire the storyteller in us all, it must be Haddon Hall.”

Haddon Hall is a fortified medieval manor house dating from the 12th Century, and is the home of Lord and Lady Edward Manners whose family have owned it since 1567.

Described by author Simon Jenkins in 1000 Best houses as "the most perfect house to survive from the middle ages", this remarkable old house is surrounded by terraced Elizabethan gardens and is set amongst the rolling countryside of the Peak District National Park.

The house is open to visitors from March to December, with a number of special events being staged throughout the season.