I went on the set of the new Blueberry Inn movie being filmed at Castle Howard
Over the years, Castle Howard has been used as a location for some star-studded films and TV series. It featured in Peter Ustinov’s 1965 comedy Lady L, starring Sophia Loren, David Niven and Paul Newman, and the following year it doubled, somewhat improbably, as the Kremlin in the spoof cold war thriller, The Spy with a Cold Nose.
It’s arguably best known as the focal point for Granada Television’s monumental adaptation of Evelyn Waugh’s masterpiece, Brideshead Revisited, with the 1981 TV series becoming a huge hit not only in Britain, but the US and beyond, putting Castle Howard – apparently Waugh’s inspiration for the fictional Brideshead Castle – on the global tourist map, and giving Jeremy Irons his breakout role.
In more recent times, the historic North Yorkshire country house has gained a whole new generation of admirers through Bridgerton, the smash hit Netflix series inspired by Julia Quinn's bestselling novels, which was partly filmed at Castle Howard with the house doubling as the Duke of Hasting's country home, Clyvedon Castle.
Since the ‘60s, Castle Howard, its grounds and the wider estate has provided the backdrop for costume dramas, feature films and documentaries. But perhaps none of its film production collaborations have been as consequential as its latest one with the producers of Blueberry Inn, a whimsical British comedy starring Jack Davenport (Pirates of the Caribbean) and written and directed by Sonia Guggenheim (The Mad Whale) and due for release in 2026. Blueberry Inn is an uplifting story about a community battling to preserve the local environment. It revolves around a modern-day butler who inherits a ramshackle inn from a local lord and is tasked with uniting three chaotic employees and a plucky pig and stopping the lord’s children turning the land into a golf course.
What makes this collaboration unique is the film’s producers, Dancing Fox Entertainment and Fever Dream Studios, are supporting Castle Howard’s landmark habitat restoration project. Launched at the end of 2024, the Bog Hall Habitat Bank is a wide-ranging nature restoration and rewilding scheme, designed and delivered in collaboration with the Environment Bank, to almost triple the biodiversity over the next 30 years. It focuses on a 440-acre area of the estate known as Bog Hall, greater than the space inside the York city walls, which will be transformed from difficult-to-farm, low-yielding agricultural land into a thriving space for nature, where beavers will be reintroduced.
The film has been shot at Castle Howard, particularly around Bog Hall farm and the farmhouse, which doubles as Blueberry Inn in the film and which the production has spent money renovating as part of the collaboration.
For producer Hadley Greswold, from Dancing Fox Entertainment, the partnership was a no-brainer. “It’s such a unique opportunity to have messages in a film that are then brought to life through a partnership like this. Castle Howard is doing this incredible habitat restoration work and in the story of the film we have these companions of the inn who are defending their livelihoods and the land they’re on from being turned into a golf course and displacing the wildlife. There’s a lot of overlap between the messages in Castle Howard’s initiative and our own ethos and we saw an opportunity to come together,” she says.
“They’re supporting us with access to all these amazing locations and with Bog Hall itself, which is a disused house that hasn’t been used for the past couple of years. When we came here there was a lot of debris which we cleared out and inside we repainted the walls.”
In recent weeks filming has been drawing to a close with the cast and crew basking in the unseasonably dry and warm weather (North Yorkshire in springtime isn’t normally like this). And for fellow producer Katrina Kudlick, from Fever Dream Studios, the partnership between the film production team and Castle Howard has been hugely beneficial. “They’re graciously lending us what’s turned into a campus where we can have so many different locations,” she says. “Sometimes film sets come in a little bit like a wrecking ball where you think ‘is this location going to be left in the same condition?’ So to be able to leave it in better condition than when we came in is great, because you don’t always get that opportunity. We really owe that to Castle Howard and hopefully they get something from us, too, coming in and fixing it up.”
Kudlick hopes these kinds of partnerships become more common in the future. Hadley believes it could become part of a growing trend. “There’s definitely a push in the film industry towards sustainable film production. I think sometimes what that can mean in practice is decreasing the negative impact, which is true of a lot of industries. But it’s been incredible to take that a step further with this film. We’ve been able to use some of the capital invested in the film and put it towards restoring something and helping with this vision of a rewilding visitor centre. It’s a unique opportunity but I hope this kind of thing becomes more common.”
From Castle Howard’s perspective, it puts the spotlight on the Bog Hall Habitat Bank project and helps renovate a building that has been unoccupied for 18 months. “We’ve been used as a location for some famous films and TV shows, but when it comes to this particular location, it’s in a farm building which would otherwise be redundant,” says Guy Thallon, Castle Howard’s Head of Natural Environment. “As a filming location there are a lot of opportunities to have films and TV programmes made here at Castle Howard, but to have that additional component of values and messages that align with ours makes it even better.
“It’s great to see a building being used that otherwise wouldn’t be used, so to have money invested in the house to bring it back up to scratch is great. On top of that there’s the film’s message around conservation and communities engaging with nature, which is directly aligned with what we’re doing here at Castle Howard with Bog Hall.”
The Habitat Bank will reinvigorate the estate's natural character and restore historic ecological features, as well as creating space to support flourishing wildlife and plant life. The plan includes expanding hedgerows, managing woodland, and introducing plants that attract rare birds like turtle doves.
Bog Hall sits adjacent to a public bridleway and safari tracks and walking trails are being planned so people can visit the site without impacting the developing habitats. Thallon says there are long term plans to turn the farm into a conservation hub with the farmhouse used as accommodation for ecologists and researchers working on the project. All of which are helped by this partnership. “It’s been an ideal filming location for what the production team were looking for, so it has been serendipitous for us both,” he says.
Greswold agrees. “A percentage of the film’s proceeds will go to this habitat restoration project so there’s a nice dovetailing there as well because we want this film to reach as large an audience as it can and so does Castle Howard. We both benefit from that because audiences often get excited about seeing the location where a film was shot.”