(Credits: Far Out / Burghley House Preservation Trust Limited)
Sat 7 March 2026 7:30, UK
Who doesn’t love a day trip to a good National Trust property? Maybe that makes me sound aggressively middle-class, but I can’t deny the many great memories I have of visiting stately homes as a child and imagining myself living another life, the expansive grounds mine to explore, and the great four-poster beds a vision of total opulence.
Of course, they are, first and foremost, a crazy display of wealth; in a country where homelessness and poverty are increasingly on the rise, seeing the sheer number of massive houses scattered up and down the land, which we pay to admire in all of their unattainability, makes for a powerful contrast.
These stately homes are symbols of what only a select few could afford to build, and the legacy of such status and nobility lives on, but there’s something about exploring these historic time capsules, with their gorgeous paintings lining the walls and expensive fabrics covering the windows, that is undeniably eye-opening, wherein steeped in history and aesthetic grandeur, these homes are both an education and a visual feast. Yes, the sharp class divide that has long defined our country can be found in every room, but you can learn so much from what books are on the shelves, whose paintings are framed where, and how large the servant’s quarters were.
Many great period dramas dig into such themes, and while Pride and Prejudice might be a love story, really, though, the romance just serves as a conduit for Jane Austen to explore societal expectations and class relations. It was only fitting, then, for one of the most opulent prodigy houses in the country to be used as Rosings Park in the 2005 film adaptation, a giant estate featuring an entire room dedicated to heaven and hell.
Burghley House, which is situated near the market town of Stamford in Lincolnshire, bordering on Cambridgeshire, stands proud in the film, home to Judi Dench’s terrifying Lady Catherine de Bourgh, sneering at Lizzy, who, while of a respectable landed gentry class, isn’t part of an aristocratic family.
The house began construction in 1555, and it remains one of the most striking buildings in the country, surrounded by endless stretches of green occupied by deer. In later years, sculptures and an interactive water garden have been added to the estate. With a design by Capability Brown, one of the leading landscape architects of the time, the place was made fit for the Queen, although Elizabeth I never actually got round to visiting it.Â
These days, the house is better associated with the films it has become a backdrop for, with Pride and Prejudice being one of many movies shot at Burghley. You can see the house in The Da Vinci Code, serving as a location for several places, like the Chateau de Villette, while Elizabeth: The Golden Age used it to represent John Dee’s house.
Of course, The Crown has used the building too, with Burghley standing in for Windsor Castle’s interiors, and then there’s the most recent Frankenstein by Guillermo del Toro, which utilised some of its most spectacular rooms to bring the Mary Shelley tale to life.
So, if you’re ever near Peterborough, an admittedly boring city best known for having good train links to get you out of there, you can immerse yourself in one of cinema’s most iconic stately homes, which is not too bad for a city deemed ‘one of the worst places to live in the UK’.