Where Was Sense & Sensibility (2026) Filmed? Behind The Scenes With The Locations Manager

If Sense & Sensibility (1995) is ‘sense’ then this new adaptation is ‘sensibility’. For every Capability Brown garden, symmetrical manor and tightly coiled curl of the former, this film gives us jagged cliffsides, crumbling cottages and matted manes.

For those rare few still unfamiliar with the Jane Austen classic, the story follows the tale of two sisters, Elinor (here, played by Daisy Edgar Jones) and Marianne (Esmé Creed-Miles), as their father’s death throws them from the safety net of their family estate into the big wide world – where they must navigate the tangled web of romance with little dowry to their name. 

Like so many that came before him, location manager Ian Hutchinson first fell in love with the story through Emma Thompson’s 1995 film (directed by Ang Lee). It would be easy to feel trapped in its shadow, but for Ian it was ‘the absolute opposite’. As he explains, director Georgia Oakley wanted to bring this story to a modern audience without touching on what had been done before. ‘We wanted to have a new take on it, and I think we achieved that,’ he says. ‘I never really thought about the original film, if I’m honest, and I haven’t gone back and watched it; I almost don’t want to. It’s a different memory in my mind, and this is a new era.’

As any good Austen fan would be, Ian was enticed by the prospect of scouring the West Country for the most beautiful homes he could find. But where the original film is all manicured lawns, the brief for this adaptation, says Ian, was to ‘make it quite raw and quite natural’. ‘I love that brief,’ he adds, ‘because you can really get into the rustic side of things, and I was instantly drawn in. I was thinking of places that we could go straight away.’ So where did they end up? Here’s your complete guide to the Sense & Sensibility filming locations.

Sense & Sensibility Filming Locations

Daisy Edgar-Jones stars as Elinor Dashwood and Esmé Creed-Miles as Marianne Dashwood in SENSE AND SENSIBILITY. (Focus Features)

Norland Park

The Dashwood family estate, Norland Park is where we first meet our core cast. As such a key location, Ian tells us that they started the scouting process for Norland early on, about three months before production. ‘And we looked everywhere,’ he says. ‘We wanted to keep it in the West Country, true to where Jane Austen set the book. So we started in Dorset, and we scouted the whole of the south coast all the way down to Penzance.’

After looking at ‘lots and lots of houses’, as often happens in the business Ian and his team ended up in the same place where they started, in Dorset. His key scout, Eddie, was on his day off, cycling around the county when he happened to catch a glimpse of a house. He picked up the phone, called Ian, and knocked on the door. ‘That was an exciting time.’

Named Kingston Russell House, the 17th century mansion is privately owned by a ‘lovely family,’ says Ian. ‘They welcomed us with open arms and were extremely accommodating and put up with all the ups and downs of the process. They were a younger family and they embraced it and thoroughly enjoyed the experience […] They became part of that crew.’

Barton Cottage

‘Dartmoor is always good’ – if there’s one lesson the Sense & Sensibility crew learnt from this shoot, that was it. So much so, that the assistant director framed the words on a map of a region, signed by the cast. It’s no wonder, then, that this is where they found their cottage.

If you’re a stickler for book accuracy, don’t go back and compare the novel’s description to the film. For Austen describes it as ‘defective’ as a cottage: ‘The building was regular, the roof was tiled, the window shutters were not painted green, nor were the walls covered with honeysuckles.’ By contrast, Ian’s brief was ‘absolutely remote, very rustic. We could say rundown’ – a bid to make the audience feel the full effect of the Dashwoods’ fall.

Searching round Dartmoor – ‘where we could find the most remote, bleakest, open to the elements kind of area’ – many of the houses they scouted were too modernised. Eventually they found the derelict cottage of their dreams: Ditsworthy Warren Farm. So derelict, that they had to do it up to make it workable. ‘When I was shown photos I honestly didn’t believe that we would go down the process of making this into Barton Cottage,’ says Ian. ‘But when we started to do some imagery and set design, it was like “Oh yes, that’s how we can make that”.’

Despite the can-do attitude, its remoteness and vulnerability to the elements made Barton Cottage by far the most ‘logistically difficult’ filming location. There were no windows, so they needed to add them, plus a period accurate door. While trying to prepare it for filming, Ian says that within an hour there would be ‘beautiful sunshine’ then it would turn to grey ‘and we were in 30mph winds and driving rain, and we had to put down tools and stop.’ There was also plenty of mud to contend with, plus the fact the cottage was around a 45 to 50 minute drive from civilization. Whispers of bats and migrating birds also piled an ecological survey into the mix. 

It is while staying at Barton Cottage that Marianne and Willoughby first kindle their short-lived romance, most notably at an Assembly Rooms dance. This was filmed at Penshurst Place – a 14th century estate that has featured in Wolf Hall and Mary Queen of Scots.

Esmé Creed-Miles stars as Marianne Dashwood in SENSE AND SENSIBILITY. (Focus Features)

Barton Park

Though Barton Cottage sits on John Middleton’s Barton Park in the world of the film, in reality his house was shot at Broughton Castle in Banbury, north Oxfordshire. A moated and fortified 14th century manor house, it was selected as one of only 20 houses awarded five stars in Simon Jenkins’ England’s Thousand Best Houses. The site also doubled as the Hampshire Inn in the film, as well as the Cleveland House grounds where the duel is held.

Cleveland House

Home to the Palmers, the Cleveland House scenes were primarily filmed at Knebworth House. One you may very well recognise, the historic estate has featured in almost everything from Batman (1989) and the first Harry Potter, to The Crown and The Gentlemen. 

It is while staying here that Marianne catches her deadly cold, brought on by a rainy trudge through the hills. Out here, she howls from the hilltop at the sight of the manor house below (played by Wormsley Estate) – though it’s unclear if this is meant to be Cleveland, from which she’s ventured too far, or Combe Manga, the home of her lost love Willoughby and his new wife.

Daisy Edgar-Jones stars as Elinor Dashwood and George MacKay as Edward Ferrars in SENSE AND SENSIBILITY. (Focus Features)

The Countryside 

As for the countryside scenes, these tended to be shot away from the estates at hand. Ian explains that there was a second unit who went off to film around Dorset, South Devon and a little bit of Cornwall. ‘They were all made up to feel like they were in the area, but we actually searched high and low for some very beautiful and picturesque spots,’ says Ian. The lake in Norland Park, for example, was in fact filmed at Parnham Park, not Kingston Russell House.

One key difference from the novel, and prior adaptations, is the scene of Marianne’s infamous fall. In this film, it is transposed from rolling hills to rugged coast – a departure from Austen’s Devon-set book which contains no whiff of sea air. Though it was scripted, according to Ian, ‘as rolling hills and a beach scene’, it was Georgia’s vision which brought it to life.

‘We wanted to embrace the beautiful sharp rocks and the cliffs and make it just as dramatic as we can,’ says Ian. ‘We wanted to find that balance of fierceness and beauty, and I think we captured it well.’ The scene itself was shot along the Jurassic Coast, specifically Mothecombe Beach in the Flete Estate. ‘Ironically,’ adds Ian, ‘the Flete Estate is where the original film was shot,in some of the small cottages and the houses. We didn’t shoot in those […] It was not intentional whatsoever but it was a nice little link.’ 

Bodhi Rae Breathnach as Margaret, Daisy Edgar-Jones as Elinor and George MacKay as Edward in Sense and Sensibility (c) Alex Bailey / 2026 Focus Features LLC

London

As for London, the crew largely shot exterior scenes in and around Lincoln’s Inn Fields and Horse Guards Parade – where only the lightest touch of CGI magic was needed to transport us back to Regency era England. Many of the interior scenes, however, were shot far from the city walls. Mrs Jennings’ Portman Square home, for example, was filmed at Rainham Hall – a National Trust, 18th century manor house sat just on the edge of the capital.

Similarly, the scene of that cringe-inducing London ball (you know, the one where Marianne makes a fool of herself in front of the engaged Willoughby) was shot at West Wycombe Park in in Buckinghamshire. Ironically, this historic home is, in reality, owned by the real life Dashwoods. Described as one of England’s most theatrical and Italianate country houses, it has previously starred in Cranford and Little Dorrit, as well as Downton Abbey and Bridgerton.

One location that is very obviously in London, is of course, that heart-wrenching National Gallery scene. It was scripted that it would take place in an exhibit, but securing the National Gallery was a real coup. Having to film during closing hours was, admits Ian, ‘logistically challenging’. Adapting their schedule, they started setting-up at 2am, filming at 4am, and wrapped up around 6am. ‘It was quite a process,’ he adds, ‘but very much worth it.’

Out now in cinemas.