‘Bridgerton factor’ sends visitors flocking to
English stately homes
Hit Netflix show responsible for renewed interest in
filming locations around the country, industry says
Nadia
Khomami Arts and culture correspondent
@nadiakhomami
Fri 1 Apr
2022 13.36 BST
Bridgerton,
the steamy soap-opera take on Regency England full of decadent costumes,
dashing dukes and elegant backdrops, has once again shot to the top of the
Netflix charts. And one industry is reaping the benefits – England’s stately
homes.
The regal
properties are reporting a “Bridgerton factor” aspeople enchanted by the
baroque interiors and bucolic gardens of the hit show decide to visit its real
life landmarks.
Google
searches for stately homes in the UK have already increased by 23% in the last
month, with more than 8,000 searches, according to the luxury bedroom
specialists The French Bedroom Company, which analysed hashtags and Tripadvisor
data.
Among the
buildings featured in the show are Ranger’s House, in London, which was used as
the exterior of the Bridgerton family home and Castle Howard, used for outside
the Duke of Hastings’s home.
Castle
Howard said the number of visitors aged 18-24 to their website increased by
3,408% after the programme was released.
“We know
that screen tourism is a big factor when potential visitors are making
decisions about where to plan days out,” said Abbi Olive, Castle Howard’s head
of marketing sales and programming. “We were the original screen tourism
destination in many ways, having played such a starring role in the original
Brideshead Revisited and then in the subsequent film.”
She added:
“As attractions open up and travel and tourism recover post-pandemic we do
expect to see an uplift in visitor numbers due to the Bridgerton factor.”
Similarly,
English Heritage said visits to the Ranger’s House webpage had increased by 81%
compared with the previous month.
Chris Small,
English Heritage’s London operations manager, said: “Since the launch of
Bridgerton in 2020 we have seen many people who were previously unaware of the
site inspired to visit. We have even seen some fans of the show pose outside
the gilded gates to the house, in full Georgian costume.”
The show,
he added, had provided an opportunity to introduce a new audience to the The
Wernher collection in the interior of the house, one of the greatest surviving
private art collections assembled in Europe – which includes Madonna of the
Pomegranate (Madonna della Melagrana) from Sandro Botticelli’s workshop.
The
interest is reflected in the increasing number of Bridgerton-themed tours
popping up. Tours International, which offers bespoke group getaways to the UK
and Europe, takes fans tofilming locations such as the city of Bath.
There are
three main benefits to being featured on a smash hit such as Bridgerton,
according to Harvey Edgington, the National Trust’s head of filming and
locations and co-author of National Trust on Screen – fees, extra visitors and
economic generation from crew using local hotels, restaurants and tradespeople.
“Any
revenue goes straight back into the property that hosted the filming. Quite
often that means a conservation issue that’s perhaps on the backburner waiting
for funding can come forward,” Edgington said.
The show
shines a spotlight on many of the National Trust’s properties such as Stowe,
Buckinghamshire, which was used to depict Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens, with its
Temple of Venus providing the glittering backdrop to the outdoor Vauxhall Ball.
Season two
also features Petworth, West Sussex, Ashridge, Hertfordshire, and Basildon
Park, Berkshire, where an evening party scene takes place. For this, the
production design team brought in about 5,000 artificial flowers to fill the
rose garden with summer blooms and added more greenery and foliage.
“We’ve had
lots of interest from the public because of Bridgerton,” Edgington said.
“Generally with filming we know that the show attracts extra visitors.”
He pointed
to a report by Olsberg SPI to measure the impact of “set-jetting”. “It found
that the 1995 drama Pride and Prejudice is still worth £900,000 a year in
visitors to Lyme Park in Cheshire [where Mr Darcy – played by Colin Firth –
takes that dip].”
But the
most popular surge was following Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland, when the
number of visitors to Antony House in Cornwall quadrupled. There was also a
Harry Potter effect at Lacock and other places.
“There’s
always a fascination with going to see somewhere for real, because the
film-makers make the locations look glorious. And I think people get a joy out
of thinking, ‘I’m walking where film stars walk’,” Edgington said.
No comments:
Post a Comment