Is Bly Manor a real place? Here's where it was filmed

12 October 2020, 10:42

Behind the scenes of The Haunting of Bly Manor

By Katie Louise Smith

The Haunting of Bly Manor invites us into the ghostly English mansion – but is it actually a location? Here's where the Netflix show was filmed.

After a two year wait, The Haunting of Bly Manor has officially landed on our screens. While The Haunting of Hill House left us theorising about the ghostly goings on in the Crain family home, the follow up season plunges us straight into the heart of a new haunted mansion.

Bly Manor is a mansion located in the English countryside belonging to the Wingrave family. The two young Wingrave children, Miles and Flora, live there with the housekeeper Mrs Grose and eventually, their new governess Dani Clayton (Victoria Pedretti).

Bly Manor has everything: Stunning gardens, regal interiors, a forbidden wing, a creepy basement, a lake full of dark secrets, a few resident ghosts and a very chilling legacy.

But where actually is it in real life? Does it exist? Can you visit it? Here's everything you need to know about where The Haunting of Bly Manor was filmed.

Where is Bly Manor located? Is it a real place?

Is Bly Manor a real place?

Unfortunately for all you haunted house lovers out there, Bly Manor does not exist in real life. The haunted location is actually a fictional place in Henry James’ 1898 novel The Turn of the Screw, and serves as inspiration for the main location of the Netflix series. In the book, it’s also never actually referred to as ‘Bly Manor’ either, it’s simply just ‘Bly’.

As referenced in the show, Bly is in the English countryside. In James’ novel, it’s said to be located somewhere in Essex.

Unlike The Haunting of Hill House (which used Bisham Manor in LaGrange, Georgia as the location), Bly Manor appears to have used blue screen and CGI to create the exterior of the manor.

Bly Manor filming locations: Where was Bly Manor filmed?

Despite being set in the English countryside, filming on the new season took place in Vancouver, Canada. Production moved from Atlanta (where they filmed Hill House) to the Canadian city. Both Oliver Jackson-Cohen (Peter Quint) and Tahirah Sharif (Rebecca Jessel) both shared Instagram posts from the set with the location tagged.

Interior scenes were filmed at The Bridge Studios and exterior scenes were filmed at Foxglove Farm in Langley.

Hollywood North.buzz reports that the entire Bly Manor exterior set was built on an empty field, with shipping containers acting as the body of the manor.

Bly Manor is inspired by Thornewood Castle in Washington but no scenes were actually filmed there. Thornewood Castle was also used in Stephen King's Rose Red series.