Welcoming a film crew into your home can bring fame and a little fortune
WHEN Luckington Court, Wiltshire, was launched onto the market last year (COUNTRY LIFE, May 3, 2017) the media excitement—long before the rumours that a certain newly married Royal couple were interested—was as high as when Colin Firth, as Mr Darcy, scrambled out of a lake in that sopping-wet shirt. For this exquisite, creamy Cotswoldstone house, near Badminton, had played the part of Longbourn, the Bennet family home, in the acclaimed 1995 BBC series of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. It’s more than 20 years since the show was compulsory Sunday-night viewing, but Luckington Court’s starring role has generated an extraordinary level of interest.
‘We’ve had people from as far as Canada and America who have been over to look at it,’ confirms Richard Nocton of Woolley & Wallis in Marlborough (01672 515252), who re-launched the house in January, with a reduced acreage, at a guide price of £5,750,000. ‘It is a beautiful country house, now with a manageable amount of land,’ he continues, and, being ‘incredibly private’, could easily be used as a film location again, should the new owners so wish. Luckington ticks many boxes for location scouts, being close to a big city (Bristol), with rooms and land spacious enough to accommodate a large film crew, plus privacy from curious fans. It also has a head start in the film business, because, as Caroline Lowsley-Williams of Chavenage, near Tetbury, Gloucestershire, explains, ‘filming breeds filming’ (Cotswold landowners, May 2).
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