

Alongside Wrotham Park, in Barnet, North London, 18th-century home of the Byng naval dynasty, where Her Majesty’s audiences with her Prime Ministers are shot, there’s Lancaster House on Pall Mall, the 1820s home of the Duke of York (the Grand Old one, indeed), now owned by the Foreign Office and previously seen in royal flicks Young Victoria and The King’s Speech. Londonįor Winston Churchill’s funeral in Episode 1, St Paul’s Cathedral was played by Winchester Cathedral in Hampshire, a medieval Gothic giant that’s one of the largest places of worship in Europe but still a great deal less busy than the real thing.Īnd, of course, there’s always Buckingham Palace, played as ever by several stately homes as well as a large set at Elstree Studios. The unused Glynhafod Junior was turned into Pantglas Junior School and further filming took place at Blaenavon’s Big Pit National Coal Museum. For the recreation of the Aberfan disaster of 1966, where a south Wales primary school was covered by a landslide, the production turned to Cwmaman. This was, remarkably, filmed in the place itself, amid the Edwardian battlements of Caernarfon Castle in the north-west of the country. With the rising profile of Charles, we saw his 1969 investiture as Prince of Wales. With the arrival of the regally wonderful Olivia Colman, this run took us from 1964 to 1977, bringing some groovy fashions, industrial unrest and a new focus on Princess Margaret (Helena Bonham Carter) and Prince Charles (Josh O’Connor) and their variously complicated love lives. The Crown season 3 Des Willie/Netflix Season 3 Throughout the filming of The Crown, grand homes have proved as useful for period details as for scale, as in the case of South London’s Eltham Palace, which lent its beautifully preserved Art Deco panelling and glass ceilings to scenes supposedly set in Bermuda’s Government House, and also in the Royal Yacht Britannia. KenyaĪs in Season 2, a good deal of time was spent in South Africa, this time standing in for the then Princess Elizabeth’s tour of Kenya, where she hears about her father’s death. It’s dramatically positioned on a cliff overlooking the North Sea, but its ruined state meant it only furnished exterior shots.

One particularly spectacular location was Slains Castle, in Aberdeenshire, which appeared as Castle Mey, bought by the Queen Mother as a getaway. While the first outing, taking us from 1947 to 1955, established the familiar locations that have endured through five seasons, there were a few settings that remained one-offs. The Crown season 1 Alex Bailey/Netflix Season 1
