It was a thrill to see Knebworth House on television on Christmas Day. 6.6 million people watched the final episode of “Downton Abbey”, which – as it has been all this season and last – was introduced with a shot across the valley of Knebworth House. The image promoted Amazon’s sponsorship of the programme and its sequence of commercials – all shot at Knebworth House – which played throughout the show.
2015 was a good year for filming at the House, and in 2016 you we will see us pop up on television again in “Dr Thorne”, an Anthony Trollope adaptation by the Downton Abbey writer Julian Fellowes, and “The Crown”, a miniseries about the Queen written by Peter Morgan, who wrote the play “The Audience”, in which Helen Mirren played the Queen. In “The Crown” we play the interior of Balmoral Castle, as we did in the 2010 film “The King’s Speech” – flattering, if surprising, typecasting!
Filming is welcome unbudgeted business for us, especially in a year when we have no concert in the Park. We don’t budget for either film or music, as we cannot trust that we will secure the business, which is random and market-driven – and indeed this year again, at time of writing, it looks as though there will be no concert. This is a shame, because historically the sixth year of the decade has been a good one for Knebworth Park – the Rolling Stones in 1976, Queen in 1986, Oasis in 1996, and The Who (albeit at a private event) in 2006. With no music to go dance to, I guess we’ll just have to stay in and watch television!
Henry Lytton Cobbold
www.knebworthhouse.com