This Is The Real Country House We See In BBC’s The Guest

This time last year, Welsh stars Eve Myles, Gabrielle Creevy, Sion Daniel Young and more journeyed to the south of their home nation to start filming a gripping new television series, produced by the same company that has in recent years brought us the likes of The Stolen Girl, Fool Me Once and After The Flood, Quay Street Productions. As Myles tells C&TH, ‘The Guest is an intense, female led thriller. It is a story about ambition, opportunity, trauma and love.’

Myles adds playing Fran – a wealthy business owner who hires Ria (Gabrielle Creevy) as her new cleaner – as ‘a very challenging role’. There is an obvious class dynamic in The Guest: Ria is a gritty working class woman, while Fran leads an opulent life splurging on luxury. But speaking to the BBC Myles commends how ‘both worlds are shown with richness and respect’. ‘It’s rare to see Wales portrayed like this – opulent, ambitious, creative,’ Myles says. ‘There’s always been wealth in Wales, and this series puts that on screen.’

The main setting of the four-part thriller is Fran’s home – Maybury Court – which Myles describes as ‘a beautiful home’, adding ‘the land around it is stunning, filled with all types of animals’ like ‘peacocks and donkeys and cockerels’. And it’s the nucleus of the drama: where Fran and Ria’s class disparity is at its starkest, but also where Ria’s door into a new life opens.

‘It’s an oasis of otherworldliness which lends itself to the otherworldliness of The Guest,’ Myles summarises, speaking to the BBC. But is Maybury Court real? Here’s what you need to know.

Fran (EVE MYLES) in The Guest. (© BBC/Quay Street Productions/Jake Morley)

Where Was The Guest Filmed? Inside The BBC’s New Thriller

Much of The Guest centres around Maybury Court, Fran’s mansion in southern Wales. Filming took place at Whitson Court, a real Grade II* listed country house in Goldcliff, Newport, thought to have been designed by John Nash for William Phillips, the High Sheriff for Monmouthshire, around 1791.

Predominantly a private house through time, the three-storey Whitson Court had a short second life as a convent and Christian college in the early 20th century before reverting back to private ownership, as it remains today. It was listed in the ‘60s as an example of one of Wales’ finest smaller country houses, thanks to retaining many of its original features.

One former resident of Whiston Court, Olive Maybury, was an avid animal collector, creating a striking similarity to Fran in The Guest. While Fran houses peacocks, donkeys and cockerels at Maybury Court, the real Whitson Court was once home to exotic animals from overseas, including Bornean sun bears, Himalayan bears, one lion, three lionesses and a large collection of monkeys, reptiles and exotic birds including flamingos and wild macaws. With the help of her family, Olive turned her property into a popular local zoo attraction in the ‘60s and ‘70s, but Whiston Zoo was shut down in 1980 with the animals rehomed.

Behind the scenes at Whiston Court. (© BBC/Quay Street Productions)

When Olive died in 1998, aged 99, her family sold the house and grounds, though Whitson Court ended up empty and was noted on Newport’s Council’s register of at-risk buildings by 2009. Collingbourne Properties then purchased the property and, with the help of Cadw (the Welsh government’s historic environment service), restored the property to its former glory – and then some.

We can see this glory in The Guest: the series’ opening shot is Maybury Court, Fran’s beautiful mansion surrounded by greenery and soundtracked by birdsong. Inside, her charming black cat watches her robot vacuum skate across the carpet in the entrance hall before Fran descends her statement spiral staircase – complete with a pristine white runner carpet – with her eyes glued to her mobile phone. We watch as she moves through the opulently decorated property, passing under the slick kitchen’s chandelier, and past the bespoke cabinetry and shining island, from which Fran collects a used mug to wash up. And then that contrast: Ria’s council flat, where sunlight is an unwelcome visitor to the young woman reluctant to get up and face the day.

Back at Maybury Court, Fran sips coffee on her perron, dwarfed by her home’s magnificent facade. ‘All the mugs are dirty,’ her husband Simon (Julian Lewis Jones) says. ‘I know,’ Fran responds. ‘We need a new cleaner.’

Fran (EVE MYLES) & Ria (GABRIELLE CREEVY) in The Guest. (© BBC/Quay Street Productions/Simon Ridgeway)

Thus begins the journey that leads Fran to Ria – and the two becoming irrevocably intertwined. When we asked Gabrielle Creevy – who co-leads The Guest as Ria – for her standout moment from filming the series, she noted this beautiful setting in particular. ‘Filming in the Gower for sure,’ Creevy said. ‘Lush to see that part of Wales on the screen.’

Speaking to the BBC, Creevy adds: ‘When you first see those gates [to Whitson Court] open, it feels almost magical, like stepping into a fairy tale or a grand castle.’ We viewers get to experience Ria’s awe in the first episode, as her tiny car trundles towards those domineering gates. She pauses her music and is buzzed into the property, with endless landscaped greenery unfolding as her car rolls across the long gravel driveway. ‘Wow, no way,’ she laughs to herself as she pulls up. ‘What the hell?’

‘It’s that feeling of wonder you get when you’re younger, imagining what it would be like to live in a place like that,’ Creevy says. ‘That is exactly how Ria feels when she first sees it; it’s like her chance at a new life. The location is stunning; the grounds are vast, and the landscape of Wales looks beautiful. It really adds a layer of charm and mystery to the story.’

‘The location for Simon and Fran’s house is just jaw-dropping,’ Jones adds. ‘When you drive through the gate for the first time, you just think, “wow – these people have made it”. The house is stunning, it’s genuinely one of the most beautiful locations I’ve worked in.’

Finding the perfect property was no mean feat. ‘How can we find a house that gives us everything we needed from the scripts?’ executive producer Davina Earl recalls pondering. ‘We couldn’t believe it when we found Whitson Court.’

‘The house does everything we needed it to and it’s breathtakingly beautiful,’ Earl tells the BBC. ‘It’s such a special place, not just the house but the grounds, the garden, all the land. It’s magical.’

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The Guest premieres tonight at 9pm on BBC One. New episodes air on Mondays.

All four episodes are available to stream now on BBC iPlayer.

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