LONDON WITH A SCOTTISH ACCENT: BELGRAVIA

When Belgravia hit our screens recently, there were inevitable comparisons with Downton Abbey, both series being the work of Julian Fellowes and with the same team behind them.  There have been dark mutterings that Belgravia is “no Downton Abbey”, but in reality there is no reason why it should be.  Personally, I slightly prefer Belgravia,  as I think it has a more interesting storyline.  The one thing the two series do have in common is that they both make use of sumptuous period backdrops, both for the interior and exterior scenes.

Belgravia is a district of Central London where properties routinely sell for multi-million pound sums of money.  The area really began to move up in the world when George III moved into Buckingham House (better known as Buckingham Palace) and construction began of the elegant streets adjacent to the King’s gaff.  The series follows the story of the nouveau riche Trenchards (Philip Glenister and Tamsin Greig) and the upper class Brockenhursts (Harriet Walter and Tom Wilkinson), whose London base is in Belgravia.  The two families find they have something in common due to a secret from the past which has come to light.   

However, fans of the series who want to visit the location where the scenes depicting the streets of Belgravia were filmed will be disappointed if they head to London.  These scenes were in fact filmed in Edinburgh, in the New Town part of the city, in particular Moray Place.  The grand old houses of New Town make a good substitute for their London counterpart except that they are built from the kind of dull grey sandstone associated with this period in the Scottish capital.  The production team behind Belgravia overcame this discrepancy by the use of computer-generated imagery (CGI) to change the sandstone to the white exteriors seen in the real-life Belgravia.

Moray Place, Edinburgh 002. Photo by Brian McNeil, via Wikimedia Commons.

Some of the interior shots featuring the homes of the Trenchards and the Brockenhursts were also filmed north of the border, making use of Manderston House near Duns in the Borders area of Scotland.  This elegant Edwardian country house, built on the site of an earlier house dating from the late 18^th century, is now used as a wedding venue, and is open to groups of visitors by appointment.

Meanwhile, heading back down south, one property which particularly stands out is the one used as Lymington Park, Lady Brockenhurst’s country estate, where she and the Earl of Brockenhurst host weekend parties.  The real-life estate is another wedding venue, Wrotham Park, Hertfordshire.  The estate, to the north of Barnet, is a Palladian Mansion built in the 18^th century by Admiral John Byng, and features a long, sweeping lawn leading from an ornamental lake to a light grey facade with a grand pillared entrance.

Wrotham Park, Middlesex by Brayley (1820).  Via Wikimedia Commons.

These are just some of the locations for fans of the series to seek out, demonstrating that there is much more to Belgravia than Belgravia.