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What do an enigmatic Caped Crusader, a sopping-wet Mr Darcy and Lord Eddard Stark of Winterfell have in common? Believe it or not, British country houses, says Ben Lerwill, as he set-jets around the countryside

- Ben Lerwill

CHAUFFEUR-DRIVEN cars sweeping down manicured drives. Tail-coated lords summoning butlers. Steely-eyed dowagers glowering across the formal gardens. In the world of film and television, a country house—with its grand halls, rolling grounds and upstairs-downstairs intrigue—can lend a production instant cachet and drama.

Quite what the architects of yesteryear would have made of Netflix and iPlayer is anyone's guess, but, when they set to work on the Baroque palaces and Palladian piles of the UK countryside, their designs were based on pomp and grandeur. These are places of soaring façades, oak-panelled bedrooms and manicured lawns. Such houses are expensive to maintain—making filming income a godsend (‘And now for something completely different’, April 30)—but their timeless air means they can double as backdrops to anything from genteel Jane Austen films to Four Weddings-style romcoms.

Thanks to all this, the map is studded with imposing historical properties with impressive filmographies. Here are 10 of the best.

Wilton House, Wiltshire

THE royal connections come thick and fast at Wilton House. It owes its very existence to the Dissolution of the Monasteries, which saw Henry VIII grant the land—previously the site of a 9th-century nunnery—to Sir William Herbert, 1st Earl of Pembroke. Almost 60 years later, in 1603, William Shakespeare's acting troupe performed As You Like It here to an audience that included the new James I.

More recent drama viewers will recognise it from