Where is Sanditon filmed?

"Множественность интерпретаций и даже конфликт интерпретаций являются не недостатком или пороком, а достоинством понимания, образующего суть интерпретации." П.Рикер

While the great Andrew Davies has made his name with bold adaptations of classic literature, from the lake-diving Colin Firth smoulder of 1995’s Pride and Prejudice to a beautifully wrangled War and Peace in 2016, this year’s Sanditon offered him greater freedom than ever before. Jane Austen’s last novel was unfinished at her death, making Davies co-creator rather than interpreter – and giving all involved opportunities to create something bold and different.

  • Where is Sanditon filmed?

    Beyond newspaper-titillating sex scenes, the story of young country girl Charlotte Heywood (Rose Williams) and her arrival in the coastal resort town of Sanditon brought an air of changing times that the production picked up and ran with. Director Olly Blackburn called it ‘Regency England, but Regency England with a twist’, explaining that ‘a lot of Jane Austen’s novels are set in the country, not in the city. In her final book she was exploring different places… We used that as kind of licence to create a more cosmopolitan, brash Regency world.’ Production designer Grant Montgomery, one of those responsible for the time-clash aesthetic of Peaky Blinders, goes further, calling it ‘a frontier western Deadwood style meets Georgian superpower’.

  • Where is Sanditon filmed?

    Much of this is about the series’ use of real locations with extensive set building and CGI in the creation of the town of Sanditon. In the novel, Sanditon is probably based on Worthing, where Austen spent time in 1805, but for the screen it is mostly the small town of Clevedon overlooking the Bristol Channel, which went through the same expansion into a resort we see in the show, eventually reaching its peak in Victorian times. While CGI helped to enhance this pretty seaside town’s existing period buildings, a full-sized street set was built at The Bottle Yard Studios in Bristol, home to both Poldark and Wolf Hall, where a building site could be accommodated alongside shops and daily life (and which could also double for London scenes). We see the extent of this in an introductory aerial shot when Charlotte arrives in Episode 1.

  • Where is Sanditon filmed?

    The studio was also home to most of the building interiors, some of which are very grand indeed. This included the town Assembly Rooms, a boarding house for ladies and two hyper-real stately homes. One of these is Trafalgar House, where entrepreneur Tom Parker (Kris Marshall) lives, a flamboyant design based on Sir John Soane’s residence in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, whose columns and elaborate ceiling mouldings now house London’s most idiosyncratic museum. The second was Sanditon House itself, home to Lady Denham (Anne Reid), where the main hallway was given a black-marble finish inspired by the design of James Bond film Thunderball, three specially built chandeliers and an enormous golden statue of Neptune emerging from the waves.

  • Where is Sanditon filmed?

    For the exterior of this grand creation, the suitably splendid Dyrham Park was borrowed, the baroque home built by politician William Blathwayt in the south of Gloucestershire at the turn of the 18th century and previously seen in The Remains of the Day (1993), a 2011 episode of Doctor Who and 2014 wartime drama The Crimson Field. Here, the deer park and courtyard were also used, transformed into streets in a night shoot with more judicious use of CGI, while the house was repurposed for the scene of a London ball, with the help of eight transplanted apple trees.

  • Where is Sanditon filmed?

    The production also made use of Bristol locations including the Georgian House Museum on Great George Street, a building dating back to 1790 and preserved in the style of the period, and the New Room, a Methodist chapel built by John Wesley in 1739. The all-important sea scenes, meanwhile, were shot close to Clevedon, chiefly on Brean Beach. This seven-mile stretch gives us the memorable sequence in Episode 1 with horse-drawn bathing machines, though swimming scenes were shot in the more predictable conditions of the Marine Lake at Weston-super-Mare, another great 19th-century resort town. We also see the wilder coastal features of Sand Point, a natural peninsula a little further up the coast.

  • Where is Sanditon filmed?

    For Olly Blackburn, capturing the area’s natural beauty was another way of turning up the contrast on period drama, complementing the spirit of Andrew Davies’ script. ‘Because we had so much that was interior on these built sets,’ he told thelocationguide.com, ‘that meant that when we went outside we wanted the most beautiful, spectacular, wild landscape possible to counterpoint all those interiors.’ We suspect the ever-arch Jane Austen wouldn’t have batted an eyelid, but expect classic period drama to be just a little bolder from now on.

  • Where is Sanditon filmed?

    Sanditon continues on ITV1, Sundays at 9pm. Catch up on the ITV Hub

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Scroll down for more images of where Sanditon was filmed…

  • Where is Sanditon filmed?

    Clevedon beach

  • Marine Lake, Weston-super-Mare

  • Where is Sanditon filmed?

    New Room Methodist chapel, Bristol

  • Where is Sanditon filmed?

  • Where is Sanditon filmed?

  • Where is Sanditon filmed?

  • Where is Sanditon filmed?

  • Where is Sanditon filmed?