Filming at Tring Park Mansion

The Grade II listed Rothschild mansion is nestled in the market town of Tring, Hertfordshire. There has been a manor on the site of Tring Park since the Doomsday book, with a house being passed down through royalty adjacent families, two generations of the Gore family until it was bought by Lionel de Rothschild in 1872. During the late 1880’s the Rothschild family made many significant structural alterations to the house, with a red brick front added, the orangery being demolished, the whole roof being lifted to make way for a top floor. In 1938 the estate was dissolved and sold piece by piece, during WWII it became a safe house for important documents, and now it is finally home for the Tring Park School of Performing Arts.

With the grandeur of the main hall and staircase, the intricate details of the wall decorations and doorhandles, and the rich history behind it, the mansion has made an incredible home for blockbuster movies and binge watched TV series.

The grand staircase, with the wood panelling, Fleur de Lys ceiling and ornate wall & bandstand lamps have created that luxurious feel that has provided a background for many movies and series. From Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) walking down to see the Russian ballerina school in Avengers: Age of Ultron, to Aidan Turner stood at the bottom of the stairs in the TV series Fifteen-Love.

The landing at the top of the stairs was used for the filming of Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire. For this, the production crew built a fake wall with doorway into a frozen dining room. Many parts of the mansion were used for the opening of this film. The fire engine on the horse and cart flies past the facade of the old barn which was decorated to look like a Victorian New York road with mud and gravel floor covering, ornate wall lamps and several extras. They then pull up outside the front of the mansion, enter the main doors and race up the staircase before finding the frozen door.

The exterior of the mansion has also provided a filming location for a few of the films and TV shows based at the mansion. As discussed above, the production team for Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire visited the location when they brought the production across to the UK. There are also a few scenes from The Boys in the Boat which was filmed outside the front of the mansion. For the television series Fifteen-Love, the crew had to build a few tennis courts in the grounds of the mansion. These however were never used for filming due to the incompatibility of the court grounds with the tennis balls. With the sprawling grounds, the site has helped to gather the attention of film crews, including the 1959 movie ‘The Devil’s Disciples’ which shot in the Tring Park grounds.

On the ground floor of the mansion there are a couple of rooms that have been graced by stars of film and TV. The main one of these is the dark wood panelled dance room, which has been seen as a hotel dining hall in the 2019 movie Judy and a Russian dance school in Avengers: Age of Ultron.

For Avengers: Age of Ultron the ballerinas in the Russian dance school were actual students of the Tring Park School at the time of filming.

In other news of filming, the 2021 BBC series ‘The Serpent’ visited the school for filming. The crew were filming the 8 part series with Jenna Coleman and Tahar Rahim in Thailand, with two weeks left on their filming schedule, when the first COVID pandemic hit in March 2020. With this, they hit a massive obstacle in that they couldn’t get back to Thailand to finish off their filming. For director Tom Shankland, the plans had to change and in August of 2020 the filming recommenced, but this time not in Bangkok and Budapest, but in Tring andHertfordshire. With most of the scenes already completed, the crew only had to shoot the missing parts of the scenes. So they moved to the now vacant Tring Mansion, which was closed due to the pandemic, and built the sets they required. You can see how they filmed a small part of a hotel room set in the ballroom and how this cleverly fit into the series.

But now the majority of the filming in the mansion has taken place in the stunning and labyrinth like basement corridors which appear to have once been home to the servants of the Rothschild family.

The basement corridors have been walked through by many famous names including Colin Firth, Renee Zellweger and Lucy Boynton.

With its white and floral patterned tile walls throughout the corridors, it has provided a period piece backdrop for many stories, whether it be a prison corridor or a mortuary in WWII or Victorian era.

Some of the things filmed in these corridors include:

• Judy (2019 movie) - Theatre dressing room

• Operation Mincemeat (2021 movie) - Mortuary corridors

• Say Nothing (2024 Disney series) - British Army base

• A Cruel Love: Ruth Ellis Story (2025 ITV series) - Prison corridor

• Essex Serpent (2022 Apple TV series) - Mortuary corridors

You can see the photos for these in the gallery below

I hope you enjoyed looking around Tring Park Mansion, to see where some of your favourite TV shows and movies were shot! And for those planning to film at this stunning site the building is managed by Events Manager Clare, who kindly showed me around, as well as the Location Collective.