The Dark Knight Rises, the final film in the Batman trilogy directed
by Christopher Nolan, stars Christian Bale as Bruce Wayne, the billionaire CEO
of Wayne Enterprises, whose alter ego spends his time out and about fighting crime
dressed in a bat suit, in a bid to avenge the brutal murder of his parents,
Thomas and Martha Wayne, when he was a young boy. The ancestral home of the Wayne family is
Wayne Manor, and the exterior of the manor is magnificently depicted in The
Dark Knight Rises by the16th century Elizabethan mansion in the suburbs of
Nottingham known in real life as Wollaton Hall (the interior scenes were shot
at Osterley Park House near London). In summer
2011 the cast and crew of the film descended on Wollaton Hall along with Bruce
Wayne’s Lamborghini Aventador for the exterior shots. Apparently they left their mark while there:
a production truck accidentally backed into an ancient wall and demolished it.
The Hall was built in the 1580s by Sir Francis Willoughby,
and as well as the mansion includes extensive grounds with a deer park and a
botanic garden. The house itself now
houses the city’s Natural History Museum, as well as the Industrial Museum, the
Yard Gallery and some reconstructed room settings. Tours of the Hall are available for £5,
otherwise admission is free plus parking charges. Not surprisingly, since the release of the
film the Hall has experienced an upturn in visitors, especially foreign
tourists.
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| Wollaton hall from front. Photo by Lee Haywood, via Wikimedia Commons. |
But Wollaton Hall is not the only place in Nottinghamshire
associated with Batman. There is a village
in the county called Gotham which indirectly provided the inspiration for the
sprawling metropolis in the Batman stories known as Gotham City, which is
generally accepted as representing New Jersey in real life. The story goes that several centuries ago the
Gotham villagers acquired a reputation for madness when King John was due to
pass through the village. According to
tradition, any road the King travelled on would become a public highway, so the
villagers feigned insanity to deter the King. The antics of the villagers were
chronicled in various books including The Merie Tales of the Mad Men of Gotham,
published in 1565. The American author
Washington Irving got wind of this story and took to referring to Manhattan as
Gotham when writing satirical pieces about New Yorkers, and this eventually led
to the writer of the Batman stories adopting the name.
Today, all such tomfoolery has been forgotten and the
village is a sleepy little spot 2 miles south of the River Trent surrounded by
low wooded hills. However, the village
clings proudly to its past and the link to Batman, and in 2013 a sculpture in the form of a weather vane was
unveiled representing some of the legends of Gotham which features Batman
climbing up the side. Inevitably, the
connection to the Batman stories, comics and films has had side effects, not
all of them good. In 2014 the village
sign was stolen, presumably by a dedicated Batman fan. Last year, however, the village sought to gain some
benefit from its fame by urging Batman fans to help save a Royal British Legion
building in the village which had fallen on hard times. Also last year, Gotham Parish Council arranged
for Batman and Robin to turn on the village Christmas lights in a bid to raise
enough money for vital repairs to the historic Well House, a focal point for
the local community.
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| Gotham Legends weather vane. Photo by Palmiped, via Wikimedia Commons. |
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