On Location: How Netflix Created ‘Bridgerton’s’ Grand British Estates

Everything about Bridgerton, the new-age production from Shonda Rhimes’ production company, is over-the-top. From the vast array of Regency costumes (there are nearly 7,500, according to costume designer Ellen Mirojnick) and lavish gold-plated interiors to the plot ripped straight from the pages of a romance novel, the show, which debuts on Netflix on December 25, goes to great lengths to create a vivid, fantastical world. While every aspect deserves a deep dive, we spoke to production designer Will Hughes-Jones to find out which parts of the eponymous Bridgertons’ lives we could visit in real life. Spoiler: Most of the epic interiors were built entirely on sound stages.

“They’re some of the biggest single rooms I’ve ever built,” Hughes-Jones says. “They’re unlike anything I’ve ever seen on stage before, and when the [filming] crew walks in, their jaws drop.”

But don’t worry, that doesn’t mean you can’t start planning a trip to the Duke of Hastings’ estate or the Queen’s drawing room when travel restrictions are lifted. Just know that you’ll have to travel across pretty much the entire UK—from Bath to London to York in the north—to see it all. Here’s what Hughes-Jones had to say.

The costumes on the show are lavish. What locations did you find that would set the characters apart, but also match that level of extravagance?

Since it revolves around the Bridgertons and [rival family] the Featheringtons, finding those properties—their homes—was a huge task. And to be honest, we built them. For Bridgerton House, the only location [we shot] was the drawing room, or the entrance hall, and one of the wood-paneled rooms—the rest, we built on a stage. And for Featheringtons, the entire interior was a build, and that was mainly because of that: we would never be able to repaint a Grade I listed property and start changing the fabric on the walls to get the colour scheme that we needed. So that was a very early decision that we made.

When we shot on location, we chose them very carefully. To create the illusion of colour schemes there, we put in a lot of very large curtains, a lot of flowers, and a lot of furniture that was the right colour to portray the characters.

The two locations that I think you can’t build are the parks where the cast goes for walks and relaxes. Where do you find those green spaces?

For [the episodes] that featured the lake, our locations team went hunting and found a location called Painshill Park, which is a public park in West London. It’s actually very close to the airport, so we had a plane crash while filming there. [In another early episode], there’s a shot that goes under a bridge and along the edge of the water before getting to where our characters are walking, and that’s at Wilton House, which is in Wiltshire, and we also used it for the interiors of Buckingham House. It was a great location that gave us all sorts of interesting things: some shots of Hastings House, some shots of Lady Danbury’s house, and the Queen’s drawing room. The gardens were a bonus—not only because they’re gorgeous, but because we could ride horses on their lawns.

What was it like to be able to use a single plot of land or property for so many different scenes in a show?

Generally, every property we film at, we have to create multi-purpose spaces, mainly because of the schedule. It’s part of the game we have to play when looking at locations, where we’ll say, ‘Well, it could work for that, but what else could it work for?’ So Wilton House—which is owned by the Earl of Pembroke—is actually a private home but they’re very used to filming there. It’s the kind of location you might recognise from other shows. We used it for the exterior of Hastings House in London, as well as for Hastings’ study. As I said, it was also used for the Queen’s drawing room—the scene with the contortionists was filmed there—and for the society presentation from the first episode. We also had a garden party outside. The house that stood out the most to me was the Duke’s estate where he and Daphne went on their honeymoon. It was amazing. Where was it filmed?