‘England Looks Glorious’: The Real Landscapes We See In The Magic Faraway Tree

Set to land in cinemas this weekend is a film that’s at once new and nostalgic. Based on Enid Blyton’s spellbinding series of novels and starring Claire Foy and Andrew Garfield, The Magic Faraway Tree brings a mid-20th-century story bang up to date, with technology and post-pandemic anxiety woven through the timeless tale.

At the heart of the story is, you guessed it, a tree – and also the woods that surround it as three precious children, Joe (Phoenix Laroche), Beth (Delilah Bennett-Cardy) and Fran Thompson (Billie Gadsdon) venture into their new local woodland and stumble across a towering tree with magical lands at its tippy top. 

Like many Blyton novels, it’s a love letter to the bucolic English countryside – so location manager Harriet Lawrence had a tall task on her hands bringing it to life. Speaking to C&TH, she describes this new film version, which is actually the first ever film version of the story, as ‘more modern, but very much true to the ethos of the books’. 

‘Technology is in the children’s lives, but I think the film would still be recognisable to Enid Blyton readers of the previous generation,’ Harriet says. ‘The landscape and the countryside that we tried to create is very much the bucolic England from the middle of the last century. Although these kids are modern and recognisable to the current generation, that bucolic English countryside never changes. And that’s really at the heart of it.’

The Magic Faraway Tree opens with the Thompson family’s relocation to the countryside, and it’s here that the three children enter the Enchanted Wood and stumble across the thick trunk the film takes its name from. ‘There was a lot of pressure for us to get it right,’ Harriet says, purely based on the number of people who told her, while she was location scouting, ‘that was my favourite book as a child’. 

So which pocket of English countryside clinched the starring role? Here’s everything you need to know.

Where Was The Magic Faraway Tree Filmed?

The Magic Faraway Tree wasn’t filmed in one place, location manager Harriet Lawrence tells C&TH. ‘We travelled around a bit, but very much rooted in the Home Counties, and pieced together our favourite bits to form this wonderful landscape,’ she says.

It’s true to the essence of Blyton’s novels, which are set in a nameless pocket of English countryside, largely inspired by the author’s home, at the time of writing, in Buckinghamshire. From her Beaconsfield abode, Old Thatch, Blyton penned both The Enchanted Wood (1939) and The Magic Faraway Tree (1943).

But, more than 80 years later, the film crew settled on Surrey. ‘We filmed mostly in the Surrey Hills, on a private estate south-ish from Guildford,’ Harriet says. ‘That forms the main location for where the family home is and so on.’ 

It was one of the first locations Harriet shared with the producers and the director Ben Gregor when the film was in its early stages. ‘We were trying to recreate glorious English countryside,’ Harriet recalls. ‘I took Ben there on a December day – but it was one of those picture perfect December days. The mist was just clearing, the sky was blue and it was cold, but it was oh so beautiful. Ben just fell in love with it.’ The team would go on to consider lots of other options, but all roads led back to that original Surrey estate. Filming there for several weeks in the end, ‘it was one of those places where every day you pinch yourself. This is picture perfect, glorious countryside.’

Andrew Garfield & Claire Foy star as Tim and Polly Thompson in The Magic Faraway Tree.

‘We also filmed in a very private bit of Windsor Great Park: that was part of our magic woodland, and the section isn’t normally accessible to the public, which made it feel very special – and hardly trodden on!’ Harriet adds. ‘Some of the village bits and more of their home was filmed in south Oxfordshire, just north of Henley.’

An unexpected additional filming location? Malta, which backdrops the Land of Spells – one of many mystical lands the children venture into – as well as the exteriors of Dame Snap’s strict school.

But of course the heart of the film is the woodland – and the titular tree – which became ‘a jigsaw, a conundrum,’ Harriet reflects.

Is The Magic Tree Real?

Reflecting on the early days of production, Harriet explains that the team was asking questions such as: ‘Where are we going to find the perfect tree? Where are we going to find the perfect woodland? Were we going to partly recreate the tree? Was it going to be CGI?

‘In the end, it’s a mixture of all of those things,’ Harriet says. ‘And it’s utterly magical, because it is our perfect tree.’

Delilah Bennett-Cardy as Beth Thompson, Billie Gadsdon as Fran Thompson & Phoenix Laroche as Joe Thompson in The Magic Faraway Tree.

‘The woodland is real,’ the location manager says, ‘but there were a number of reasons why the tree had to be built by our wonderful art department, and added to with CGI and visual effects.’ For one, trees as enormous as Blyton describes her Magic Faraway Tree to be ‘tend to be very old,’ Harriet says – ‘and having children and film crews climb all over it is probably not the best thing for the tree’.

As for the real woodland, ‘we were very lucky with the weather – that the sun was shafting through,’ Harriet reflects. ‘You know, with a bit of help from film wizardry! Mist and things like that were brought into it. But the sun did shine on us when we were on location, and England does look glorious.’

Before settling on visual effects, the team ‘looked at a lot of trees,’ Harriet laughs. ‘We really looked at a lot of trees – for several months. I felt like we had covered most of the woodlands in that arc from Oxfordshire around Surrey.’

Nicola Coughlan as Silky in The Magic Faraway Tree.

And while hunting the perfect tree, the team had to settle on a species for their film version; Blyton never narrows this down, simply describing her magical conifer as both gigantic and ancient. ‘We went through all the different types of trees, and stuck with that very English native woodland,’ Harriet recalls. ‘It needed to be deciduous woods – not pine, because pine woods feel like the darker side of fairy stories, and it’s not natural English deciduous planting, really! We also decided fairly early on that beech trees felt too big.’

And while one tree ‘actually came very close to being the tree’, the tree we see in the film is made with visual effects – but that’s no drawback, Harriet says. ‘I think we ended up with the perfect tree. It came out of lots of trees that we’d seen that were built into it, which was rather nice.’

Staycation Dupes

The Treehouses at Lanrick, Doune

Off-grid luxury treetop hideaways The Treehouses at Lanrick are set amongst woodland in the heart of Scotland, offering families the rare chance to actually live among the trees.

BOOK IT

Chewton Glen, New Forest

If you don’t want to venture too far from the lap of luxury, Chewton Glen’s treehouse suites are the perfect in between with woodland views and chirruping neighbours.

BOOK IT

Hinterlandes Cabin, Cumbria

This Scandi beauty is hidden deep in the countryside amid ancient woodland, hosting a well-equipped kitchen, wood-fired hot tub, fire-pit and enough space for two adults and two children.

BOOK IT