Villages and countryside to film in the United Kingdom
15 of them, 10 with a photo and 2 with practical details the location publishes itself. 11 have a documented shooting history. Every entry links to the location or to the body that manages it.
Villages, farmland, meadows and rural roads: open country with somewhere to put a unit base.
Shooting in the United Kingdom pays back through the Audio-Visual Expenditure Credit (AVEC) (34%): work out the net value on your own spend in the incentive comparison.
Avoncroft Museum of Historic Buildings
Village & countryside
19-acre open-air museum near Bromsgrove with 30 rescued historic buildings including a medieval town house, a 1940s prefab and a working windmill, available for commercial filming.
Seen in: Doctors, Nativity 2
Chiltern Open Air Museum
Village & countryside
45-acre open-air museum of rescued historic buildings near Chalfont St Peter, from rustic farmsteads and Victorian cottages to wartime Nissen huts, hired out for filming.
Seen in: Call the Midwife, Downton Abbey, Midsomer Murders, Grantchester, Taskmaster
Heaton Park
Village & countryside
Large historic park on the edge of Manchester with Heaton Hall, play areas, a boating lake, golf course and open grounds adaptable for period or contemporary scenes.
Seen in: Coronation Street, It's a Sin, Brassic, Ridley, Bancroft
Official siteFilm commissionCommission listingCompare this one
Painshill
Village & countryside
Eighteenth century landscape garden at Cobham with a serpentine lake, Gothic temple, ruined abbey, crystal grotto, vineyard and long open lawns.
Seen in: Dorian Gray, Suffragette, Black Mirror, Bridgerton
Portmeirion
Village & countryside
Italianate village on the Gwynedd coast built by Clough Williams-Ellis between 1925 and 1975, with pastel-coloured buildings, a piazza and subtropical gardens.
Seen in: The Prisoner
Richmond Park
Village & countryside
Former royal hunting park of 2,500 acres in south west London with ancient oaks, deer herds, ponds, walled plantations and long open grassland.
Seen in: Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows, Into the Woods, Heat and Dust
Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh
Village & countryside
Seventy acre botanic garden a mile north of the centre, with Victorian palm houses, a modern glasshouse range, rock garden, arboretum and Georgian Inverleith House.
Ryedale Folk Museum
Village & countryside
Open-air museum of relocated rural buildings at Hutton-le-Hole in the North York Moors, spanning Iron Age to 1950s interiors, hired out for filming.
Seen in: Death Comes to Pemberley, Hacker the Dog
St Fagans National Museum of History
Village & countryside
Open air museum in a hundred acre park west of Cardiff with more than forty re-erected Welsh buildings, from medieval church and farmhouses to a row of ironworkers cottages and a working mill.
Weald and Downland Living Museum
Village & countryside
40-acre open-air museum near Chichester with 50 rescued and rebuilt historic buildings from the 13th to 19th centuries and a reconstructed Saxon hall, used for period film and TV interiors and exteriors.
Seen in: The Repair Shop, Good Omens, The Hollow Crown: Henry VI Part II
Butser Ancient Farm
Village & countryside
Open-air archaeological site near Chalton with reconstructed Iron Age roundhouses, a Roman villa and Anglo-Saxon buildings set in working farmland.
Cotswold Farm Park
Village & countryside
A working rare breeds farm in the Cotswolds founded by broadcaster Adam Henson, with barns, fields and animal enclosures across open hillside.
Seen in: Countryfile
St John's Gardens, Manchester
Village & countryside
Small public garden square off Quay Street in central Manchester, laid out in 1932 on the site of a former church and graveyard, used for quieter scenes near the city centre.
Seen in: Domino Day, Cobra, Fresh Meat, Age Before Beauty
Official siteFilm commissionCommission listingCompare this one
Ulster Folk Museum
Village & countryside
Open-air museum at Cultra near Belfast with relocated cottages, shops, a meeting house and cobbled streets recreating rural and small-town Ulster life, hired out for filming.
Wharram Percy Deserted Medieval Village
Village & countryside
Earthwork remains of a deserted medieval village in a secluded Yorkshire Wolds valley, with a ruined church, used as a rural period-filming location.
Seen in: Yorkshire, Great & Small
Villages and countryside elsewhere in Europe
Other kinds of location in the United Kingdom
- Theatres, arenas and venues 47
- Industrial and derelict locations 39
- Offices, schools and public buildings 31
- Transport and infrastructure 42
- Film studios and backlots 37
- Hospitals, prisons and institutions 10
- Houses and apartments 33
- Hotels and interiors 22
- Bars, restaurants and shops 10
- Castles and estates 17
- Churches and monasteries 13
- Modern architecture 9
All locations in the United Kingdom · Villages and countryside across Europe · Search all 2827 locations