When Colin Firth emerged from the lake in front of Lyme Park in Cheshire in his clinging, soaking shirt, it changed more than just the way the actor was regarded. The stately home is still reaping the benefits of standing in for Jane Austen’s Pemberley 20 years on, and now it’s hoping for a 2015 bumper spring as far as Tudor tourism goes.
The National Trust has had a windfall from renting out six of its properties as locations for filming of Wolf Hall, BBC2’s biggest success in a decade, with nearly 4m viewers tuning into episode one. Now it has high hopes for the Wolf Hall effect.
“It’s a win-win for us,” said Harvey Edgington, the trust’s head of filming and locations. “It’s a very good way of getting people interested in a property.
“We’re still feeling the Pride and Prejudice effect at Lyme Park. Attendance was up by 176% afterwards. Sometimes we know people are only turning up because they have seen it in a film, like the Game of Thrones in Northern Ireland has seen lots of visitors following the trail. Some are genuinely interested in the story. After the filming of the Other Boleyn Girl we had two maps, one the real locations and one the movie locations, both were a success.”
Alice in Wonderland by Tim Burton helped quadruple the numbers of visitors to its filming location at Cornwall’s Antony House. “If we get just a small amount of that effect with Wolf Hall we’ll be delighted,” he said.
Most of the houses connected to Wolf Hall are just starting to re-open for the new season, so the trust plans to put a downloadable, interactive map on its website to help visitors find their way from location to location. These include Montacute House, in Somerset, acting as Greenwich Palace, and Lacock Abbey, Wiltshire.
Dozens of other Tudor sites can expect more visitors thanks to the TV drama, based on the bestselling Hilary Mantel novel of the same name and starring Mark Rylance and Claire Foy: among them are Anne of Cleves House in Lewes, East Sussex, and the Tower of London, where two queens with the misfortune to marry Henry were beheaded.
At London’s key Tudor landmark yesterday, Henry VIII’s Hampton Court Palace, a camera crew was filming yet another TV drama set in Tudor times. A sunny day had brought many people to the remarkable gardens but inside the warren of echoing rooms, to mention Wolf Hall was to court controversy. Martin Garrett, a retired engineer, from Suffolk, said “historical inaccuracies” meant he wouldn’t be watching the second part of the six-part drama. “I think Henry really had to do what he had to do in those times. They were very different times and I feel he was a more convivial man than he is depicted as.”
This makes mother and daughter Anne and Stephanie Brownsley, wearing the velvet costume cloaks visitors can don as they tour the palace, press the pause buttons on their audio guides. “If he hadn’t been a king we’d have thought he was a monster!” said Anne, 56. But they loved Wolf Hall. “It was marvellous. Mark Rylance, all the acting. We love coming to castles and we’re National Trust members but I think more people will get the bug thanks to Wolf Hall.” Her favourite character was Anne Boleyn, although she was swayed towards Catherine of Aragon after watching the scene where she makes her appeal to the Legatine Court.
One of the volunteer guides, who asked not to be named, added quietly: “I think we can agree Wolf Hall might be a mixed blessing!”
Like most old houses, Hampton Court, celebrating its 500th birthday, has been much altered since it was conceived and built by Henry and cardinal Wolsey, which is why Wolf Hall had to use so many different locations in place of, or as well as, the originals.
The cardinal’s house, York Place, is long gone, although parts of its skeleton remain in the Banqueting House and wine cellar in Whitehall, London. Esher Place, in Surrey, where Wolsey was kept under house arrest, has been replaced, although its 15th-century gatehouse, Wayneflete Tower, remains.
Historian and author Alison Weir says it is the remnants that we still have that help to ensure our fascination with the Tudors, more so perhaps than other historical characters. Americans too “adore” the period and with Wolf Hall to be shown there too, we could see it drawing in a few extra tourists this summer.
“It’s the most dramatic period in English history,” she said.
“A king with six wives, a 16-year-old girl is a queen for six days, all this intrigue and revolution. It is the first period for which we have a wealth of information on the private lives of monarchs. We have a visual record, great palaces, images, we know what people might have looked like.”
Weir was in the middle of promoting her book about Anne Boleyn, The Lady in the Tower, when she suddenly noticed a change in the kind of questions she was being asked by people. “Suddenly it was all ‘but wasn’t Cromwell misunderstood?’ Wolf Hall had come out.
“I’d be saying, but Wolf Hall is a novel! Don’t get me wrong, Hilary Mantel is a fine writer, but when as a historian you spend your whole life trying to get things right, it feels rather like a betrayal when someone takes a cultural liberty and historical characters are distorted. If you want to write fiction, write fiction, but if you want to write around authentic events, it should be credible,” she said. But equally she approves of the popular fascination with the period.
“It was a turbulent age, but of great magnificence and splendour. An age of revolution. It’s when England changed.”
Watching the filming wrapping up at Hampton Court are Maggie Ashton and her partner Steve. “We’ve lived just on the doorstep in Wimbledon for six years and have always meant to come over here but never have. We watched Wolf Hall and so we came down to have a look. Just out of interest. I hated the Tudors at school, but Wolf Hall made it interesting.”
Wolf Hall’s first episode hit around 3.9m viewers, while in 1995 Pride and Prejudice won 10m. Whether Damian Lewis as Henry VIII in his codpiece can yet beat the breeches off Colin Firth as Mr Darcy in bringing visitors to Britain’s stately homes remains a gentlemanly gauntlet thrown down on the flagstones.
