The mansion featured in the wildly popular 2023 thriller “Saltburn” is not a soundstage. It’s real, and it’s been around since the 14th century.
The namesake and main shooting location of director Emerald Fennell’s satire of the rich is in fact a historic estate known as Drayton Hall, located in Northamptonshire.
And while producers added a few flourishes for the sake of the film, the real property does not disappoint.
Constructed around 1300 and repeatedly renovated in the following centuries, the 127-room property maintained a low-profile before being used for the film, which was its first — and possibly last — time as a set.
To gain access to the 200-acre compound, producers had to sign a contract promising not to reveal its location or owners, neither of which stayed secret for long after the film’s runaway success, Vanity Fair reported.
As a result of the public catching on to the real location of the mansion— owned by the notoriously private Stopford-Sackville family, who’ve lived there since 1770 — the decadent residence has closed its doors to the public and is no longer accessible by tours, nor available to rent for private events.
“The house is NOT open to the public nor is it available for hire,” the property’s archivist, Bruce Bailey, told the publication City AM in response to a private event request. “We are not interested in any further publicity.”
Although genuinely sprawling and opulent, visitors may have been disappointed by a few aspects of the site that appeared in the film but are not true to Drayton.
Namely, the hedge maze was partially constructed by a designer but was significantly enhanced with the use of CGI, according to Architectural Digest.
Thanks to Drayton not having certain landmark protections that other manors of its size and age do, production designer Suzie Davies was able to change around the interiors significantly.
“We flipped [the decor] around, painted [the walls], took tapestries down, and put them back up,” Davies told Elle Decor. “We turned a bedroom into a bathroom and a bathroom into a dressing room.”
It was all an effort, she added, for the mansion “to feel lived in and fully inhabited by our characters.”