Netflix’s royal drama The Crown is back for its fifth season, with its second full cast switch-up after Olivia Colman took over from Claire Foy in season 3.
This new season stars Imelda Staunton, Jonathan Pryce, Dominic West and Elizabeth Debicki, and while the cast have all changed, one aspect of the show certainly hasn’t – its stunning locations.
From Buckingham Palace to Balmoral Castle, the past four seasons have featured plenty of real-life royal locations, all recreated with a combination of sets and like-for-like locations made to look identical to the real deal.
Season 5 also saw some new filming locations, as the cast and crew jetted off to Mallorca for a holiday sequence. This follows season 4, which previously introduced new royal backdrops such as including Prince Charles and Princess Diana’s country and London residences, Highgrove and Clarence House.
But where else is the series filmed currently, and which locations have been used in the past? Here’s where the drama was filmed, including all the big locations from seasons 1 to 5.
Where do they film Windsor Castle?
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Windsor castle has played a large part in all four seasons of The Crown to date, just as it played a large part in the Queen’s life and continues to be an important location for the Royal Family.
In season 5 the castle will take on an extra level of narrative importance, as scenes are set to depict the real-life 1992 fire which took place there, causing extensive damage to the 11th century building.
For The Crown seasons 1-3 Belvoir Castle in Leicestershire was used to represent Windsor Castle, but since season 4 the show has opted to film such scenes at Burghley House in Lincolnshire.
Where do they film Downing Street?
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The Crown has always used the backdrop of the Royal Family to explore all aspects of life during the periods it is dramatising, meaning political figures have taken a central role in the drama since its very first season.
Season 5 sees Jonny Lee Miller play 90s Conservative Prime Minister John Major, who took over from Margaret Thatcher, played by Gillian Anderson in season 4 of the show.
As it did in season 4, Hedsor House in Buckinghamshire will be standing in for the Downing Street interiors, after previous seasons have also seen sets built to show the famous Prime Ministerial residence’s exteriors.
Where was Diana and Charles’ season 5 holiday filmed?
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At the start of season 5, Charles and Diana go off on a ‘second honeymoon’ along with their sons William and Harry, in an attempt to convince the public that their marriage is now back on track.
Scenes on speedboat during their holiday were filmed in Sant Elmo, Mallorca, with Dominic West and Elizabeth Debicki having been spotted shooting at the beachside town of Andratx.
Where do they film Highgrove?
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A key location introduced during The Crown season 4 was Prince Charles and Princess Diana’s country estate Highgrove, which Charles still inhabits today with his second wife, the Duchess of Cornwall.
The estate is located in the county of Gloucestershire and is well known for its gardens, which viewers see a preview of when Charles gives his mother the Queen a tour during the season 4 episode ‘Favourites’.
In both seasons 4 and 5 of the Netflix series, Somerley House stands in for Highgrove. Somerley is a large country house situated in Hampshire; it was previously used as a filming location for a TV adaptation of Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park.
Where do they film Clarence House?
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The London residence of The Prince of Wales (Prince Charles), Clarence House is positioned next to St James Palace. Previous royal occupants have included The Queen Mother, and The Queen and Prince Philip.
In season 4 we saw both Charles and Diana living inside the house; it sets the backdrop for the unravelling marriage, with Charles often retreating to Highgrove to be with Camilla Parker-Bowles. Clarence House is also where Diana conducts her affair with cavalry officer James Hewitt.
High Canons Borehamwood stood in for Clarence House in season 4; it’s a country manor house about a 40 minute drive from London.
Where do they film Gatcombe Park?
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Princess Anne’s country residence Gatcombe Park was also introduced in The Crown season 4; in the episode ‘Favourites’, in which the Queen visits each of her four children, we see she and Anne enjoy a horse ride and then picnic in the grounds.
The real-life house was purchased by the Queen as a gift for Anne and her first husband, Mark Philips. It’s located within the country of Gloucestershire, and is only six miles away from Prince Charles’ residence Highgrove.
In The Crown, Hertfordshire country house Wrotham Park is used for the scenes featuring Gatcombe Park. Wrotham has been used for multiple filming projects, including the likes of Bridget Jones’s Diary and Kingsman: The Secret Service.
Where do they film Buckingham Palace?
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The Crown’s producers have stitched together a patchwork of locations to make a convincing on-screen Buckingham Palace, seeing as they couldn’t actually get the real-life Queen to let them take over her house for filming.
Over the years many interiors have been filmed at Lancaster House, which is owned by the Foreign Office and stands very close to Buckingham Palace itself. In particular, The Crown has made use of its ornate central entranceway and staircases – as seen in season 3 when the Apollo 11 astronauts visit the Palace.
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Wilton House in Wiltshire is another stand-in for parts of Buckingham Palace, as is the Old Royal Naval College. Other interiors have been filmed at Waddeston Manor.
In season 3, we see Lord Mountbatten (Charles Dance) breaking some bad news to Prince Charles (Josh O’Connor) in the courtyard of Buckingham Palace. The scene was filmed at the University of Greenwich.
The Queen’s audiences with her Prime Ministers are shot at Wrotham Park in Barnet, Hertfordshire. In real life they take place in a private Audience Room in her apartment at Buckingham Palace.
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Where was Winston Churchill’s funeral filmed?
In season 3, Winston Churchill’s funeral took place at St Paul’s Cathedral in London on 30th January 1965, when the wartime Prime Minister was given a State Funeral – an honour usually reserved for royals.
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But what we see on screen in The Crown season 3 was actually filmed at Winchester Cathedral in Hampshire.
Winchester is one of the largest cathedrals in Europe but is located in a city of only 45,000 or so people. It’s built in the Gothic style and is exceptionally long, with a vaulted stone ceiling; it doesn’t look much like St Paul’s on the inside or on the outside, but it is very grand.
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Where was the White House filmed?
Princess Margaret and Anthony Armstrong-Jones may have travelled to Washington DC to meet with President Lyndon B Johnson, but actors Helena Bonham Carter and Ben Daniels didn’t get to make the trip for season 3.
Instead, they filmed scenes as The Hylands House in Essex, which looks strikingly similar to the northern facade of the US President’s HQ. This Grade II-listed neo-classical villa is owned and operated by Chelmsford City Council; it used to host the annual music festival, V Festival, and is often hired out for weddings and private events.
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Where was the Aberfan episode filmed?
Because of the sensitivity of the subject matter, episode 3 of The Crown’s third season – which covers the Aberfan disaster – was actually shot at Cwmaman in Wales’s Cynon Valley. Cwmaman is located a handful of miles away from the site of the coal waste tip which – one morning in 1966 – catastrophically collapsed and sent a deluge of slurry down the mountain slope onto the village of Aberfan.
The children of Aberfan attended Pantglas Junior School, and this is where the majority of the 144 victims died. Glynhafod Junior School in the Cynon Valley was used as a stand-in for Pantglas to film the scenes in the lead-up to the collapse, and a local street was transformed into a 1960s terrace of miners’ houses – with a machine brought in to recreate the torrential rain, according to Wales Online.
Where was the Welsh Investiture filmed?
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The Crown season 3 did actually shoot the Investiture of the Prince of Wales at Caernarfon Castle itself, with Josh O’Connor (Prince Charles) filming on location.
Welsh filming also took place in Ferndale, Rhondda and at Big Pit National Coal Museum in Blaenavon.
Did they film on the island of Mustique?
Nope!
In season 3, we see Princess Margaret partying with young Roddy Llewellyn (Harry Treadaway) at her Caribbean villa and relaxing on the beach – but these scenes were actually shot in Southern Spain.
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Where is Balmoral filmed?
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The Royals have a summer residence in Aberdeenshire, Balmoral Castle – the location of many a royal getaway, and notably the key location for The Crown season 4 episode ‘The Balmoral Test’, when both British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and Lady Diana Spencer (the future Princess Diana) meet the extended royal family for the first time, and are supposedly subjected to a series of ‘tests’.
In previous seasons it’s also been the site of the much-ridiculed barbecue from that 1969 documentary Royal Family.
Ardverikie House in the Scottish Highlands has proved the perfect stand-in for external shots of Balmoral throughout every season of The Crown. Located near Inverness, it has classic Scottish baronial architecture and plenty of turrets just like the real thing.
The distinctive garden of Belvoir Castle in Leicestershire can be seen in season 3’s “Margaretology”, with its carefully-clipped shrubbery. The Regency house also provides many of the interiors of Windsor Castle in the drama’s first three seasons – with filming taking place in the Elizabeth Saloon and the Regent’s Gallery.
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When it came to interiors, producers also headed for Audley End House in Essex. In season 3, Audley End is on display in the scene where Elizabeth and Philip stroll around the Great Hall and discuss Princess Margaret’s desire to “share” the Queen’s official duties.
This Jacobean great house has a history dating back to a 12th century Benedictine Monastery, and was lived in by the Braybrooke family until 1948. The Great Hall is the heart of the house, with its walls lined with pistols and portraits; three grand arches open onto two flights of stone stairs.
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This is not the first time we’ve seen Audley End in The Crown. In flashbacks in the first season, the young princesses were tutored in the Great Hall, and the house’s library was also the location for a scene set at Eton College as the future Queen diligently worked her way through her private lessons.
Scenes featuring Elizabeth and Margaret’s childhood bedrooms were filmed upstairs in the old nursery.
Where was the Duke of Windsor’s French mansion filmed?
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Season 3 of The Crown sees us say goodbye to the Duke of Windsor (Derek Jacobi), who sickens and dies in France at his mansion in Bois de Bologne with Wallis Simpson (Geraldine Chaplin) at his side.
These scenes were filmed at West Wycombe House, a Palladian mansion in Buckinghamshire which is run by the National Trust.
Where was Westminster Abbey filmed?
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Ely Cathedral stands in for Westminster Abbey in season 1 during the Queen’s wedding and Coronation.
For the Coronation scenes, they filled the cathedral with hundreds of extras, representing the various factions of the military, the Commonwealth, and other international dignitaries and royalty.
Where do they film the airport scenes?
One location used by The Crown’s producers is Shoreham Airport, near Shoreham-by-Sea. It was here that Claire Foy’s Elizabeth II arrived back from South Africa after her father’s death.
Where was Gordonstoun School filmed?
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In season 2, Prince Charles miserably attended Gordonstoun – the rough, tough Scottish public school that his father had loved so much. External scenes were filmed at Woodchester Mansion, an uncompleted 19th-century building.
Where else has The Crown been filmed?
Eltham Palace is a stylish Art Deco house in South London, and it has been used for several scenes in The Crown – including the Queen’s quarters of the Royal Yacht Britannia, the Bermuda Government House, and the HMSS Queen Mary.
The Lyceum Theatre and Knebworth House have made appearances, as have Greenwich Naval College, Dundarg Castle and Hatfield House.
Englefield House is used as a stand-in for Sandringham, the Queen’s own private estate in Norfolk.
And in season one, we also get a look at the exterior of Slains Castle, a ruined structure which stands on a clifftop overlooking the North Sea. This works as a stand-in for the Queen Mother’s own personal getaway, Castle Mey.
Sets were built to create the exterior of 10 Downing Street and the Cabinet Room.
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The Crown season 5 will be released on Netflix on Wednesday 9th November 2022, while seasons 1-4 are available now. Sign up for Netflix from £6.99 a month. Netflix is also available on Sky Glass and Virgin Media Stream.
Looking for something else to watch? Check out our guide to the best series on Netflix and best movies on Netflix, or visit our TV Guide.
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