Today is Jane Austen’s birthday! The author was born on this day, December 16th, in the year 1775 at Steventon in Hampshire. As you might have guessed, I wanted to write something to celebrate her birthday on my blog, so I decided to share with you some of my favourite historic properties that have been used as period drama filming locations in Jane Austen adaptations.

A little self-indulgently, I’m also sharing illustrations I did of each of them – it’s been really fun teaching myself digital illustration recently!

If you’d like to read more about Jane Austen in Hampshire, read my post about it here.

Luckington Court

This beautiful house starred as the Bennet family home Longbourn in the 1995 Pride and Prejudice, starring Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle. It is a private house in Wiltshire (and was recently for sale!), and both interiors and exteriors were used as a Pride and Prejudice filming location.

The origins of a manor house on this site go all the way back pre-1066, when King Harold supposedly owned one here. The current house mostly dates to around the year 1700, with an Elizabethan core, and was further altered in 1921. It was owned by the Fitzherbert family from the early seventeenth to the nineteenth century, and has had an intriguing history surrounding spies and deception according to this article in Country Life.

It is easy to see why location scouts chose it for the 1995 Pride and Prejudice adaptation: the gardens and surrounding area are beautiful!

Firle Place

I really enjoyed Autumn de Wilde’s adaptation Emma., released in 2020 and starring Anya Taylor-Joy and Johnny Flynn. For the starring role of Hartfield, Emma Woodhouse’s home, Firle Place was chosen.

Firle is a privately-owned house in Sussex that does open seasonally for tours (and has a tea room, brilliant!). It has been the home of the Gage family for over five hundred years. A little like Luckington Court, it has been built and renovated in stages: stone from the Tudor building was recycled in a remodel during the eighteenth century that was completed in 1754 by Thomas, 1st Viscount Gage.

Something I found really interesting when doing my research was that the Gages were recusant Catholics, and actually, when the 1701 Act of Settlement took place (which decreased anti-Catholic fervour by securing a Protestant line of succession within British royalty in law), Sir William Gage decided to conform to the Church of England.

North Cadbury Court

2007’s Persuasion had this lovely country house as the filming location of Kellynch Hall, the Elliot family home that they must rent out at the very beginning of the story because of Sir William Elliot’s spendthrift ways. North Cadbury Court is a sixteenth-century house in Somerset that has had plenty of owners and alterations throughout the years.

It began life as a medieval hall built by the de Moel family around the year 1300, until the 1580s, when Sir Francis Hastings built a large Elizabethan country home. In the 1760s, it was bought by the Bennet family (I enjoyed the name link to Jane Austen’s novels!), who added a Georgian façade and a ballroom – perfect for the Elliots, and then Admiral Croft and his wife, to entertain.

Interestingly, during the twentieth century, North Cadbury Court housed evacuees from a London nursery and was the site of a training school for young men hoping to become farmers.

I love this Persuasion filming location – I can’t look at pictures of it without thinking of that final scene when Captain Wentworth brings Anne Elliot back to her beloved home!

Lyme Park

This spectacular house, run by the National Trust, was another star of the 1995 Pride and Prejudice. Lyme played the illustrious role of Pemberley, the home of Mr Darcy, and also was the host of perhaps one of the most famous scenes in period drama: Colin Firth jumping into a lake and running into Jennifer Ehle in a wet shirt.

It is so famous a scene that a statue of said moment was temporarily on show in the Serpentine as a promotion for the Drama channel.

As for it’s real life history, Lyme Park was owned by the Legh family for six hundred years, beginning life as a medieval deer park, then an Elizabethan house, before being remodelled by Venetian architect Giacomo Leoni from 1725 into the beautiful neoclassical house we see today.

Edgcote House

“Netherfield Park is let at last!”

The excitement that begins the plot of Pride and Prejudice, Netherfield Park has a lot to answer for. Edgcote House in Northamptonshire was chosen as the filming location for Pride and Prejudice in 1995.

The current house, which is privately lived in, was built between 1748 and 1754 by architect William Jones for London merchant Richard Chauncy, and the park redesigned at a similar time. The poet Mary Leapor briefly lived here, and her country house poem Crumble Hall was based upon Edgcote.

Lismore Castle

Lismore Castle played the title role in 2007’s Northanger Abbey. Located in County Waterford, the castle is the Irish home of the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire.

Some of the castle dates to 1170, but most of the current structure is from the nineteenth century. After being damaged heavily during the Cromwellian Wars, the sixth Duke of Devonshire had major work done to the castle and it was completed in the Gothic Revival style, largely designed by Pugin.

Lismore Castle is actually available to rent in its entirety for groups and events, so if you fancy a full weekend in a Northanger Abbey filming location and have the cash to spare, why not?

So happy birthday Jane Austen! In your honour I will make sure to pick up one of your novels and watch a little bit of my favourite adaptations this weekend! (And have more fun illustrating my own blog posts!)