The latest film adaptation of Mary Shelley’s 1818 Gothic novel, Frankenstein, has now landed on Netflix, and some eagle-eyed viewers may have spotted familiar stately homes among its spooky locations.
The project was spearheaded by Oscar-winning director Guillermo del Toro, who is known for his fascination with monsters and the uncanny.
The film was years in the making, and the Frankenstein crew undertook an extensive scouting process across Europe to find the best locations.
“I wanted it to feel like an old movie that was made in the heyday of Hollywood,” del Toro said. “I want it to be luscious and beautiful and operatic.”
Filming started in Toronto, Canada, in early 2024, before the crew headed to numerous UK sites for location and miniatures filming.
“The one thing you know in this movie is that everything was created, and most of it was handmade. You have… real sets, real locations,” del Toro explains. “We travelled, a caravan of people, for hours and hours to find one room that looked the right way.”
Victor Frankenstein’s ancestral home
Gosford House and Dunecht House in Scotland, alongside Burghley House and Wilton House in England, were used as the locations of Victor Frankenstein’s ancestral home.
It was the latter of which that was one of the director’s most beloved locations, as it was used in one of his favourite Stanley Kubrick films.
“I think part of the charm of it for Guillermo as a cinephile is that he was shooting in the Barry Lyndon house,” Frankenstein production designer Tamara Deverell says.
“That film has a very different vibe than ours, but we looked at it a lot as reference since it’s set during a similar period, and there’s candlelight, mood lighting, that kind of thing.”
Home to the 18th Earl and Countess of Pembroke, the Palladian-style Wilton House in Wiltshire stands within 21 acres of landscaped park. It is currently closed for the season, but will reopen to the public in Easter 2026, when guests can visit the house and grounds, including a rose garden, water features and a woodland walk.
The crew mainly used its dining room and cemetery in the film.
Alongside Frankenstein and Barry Lyndon, the house has been used for multiple period features, including the 2019 adaptation of Emma, as well as hit TV shows Bridgerton and The Crown.
The state rooms at Lincolnshire’s Burghley House were also utilised for the production, including the Great Hall, the Bow Room and the Old Kitchen.
Meanwhile, Gosford House was used as the main exterior. Its double staircase also features during the poignant wedding scene late in the film. The neoclassical mansion, plus 5,000 acres of parkland and coastline, can be accessed during public tours.
Dunecht House, an eclectic patchwork of 1820 Greek Revival features and Romanesque additions, is popular for its nine-hole wooded parkland golf course. Its ornate library was used in early scenes.
Shelley’s Edinburgh
Parts of Shelley’s novel take place in the Scottish capital of Edinburgh. Del Toro bought this element into his adaptation by featuring parts of the city, such as Parliament Square, plus well-preserved alleyways that have retained their historical charm, such as Lady Stair’s Close and Bakehouse Close.
“Old Edinburgh exuded that Gothic, wet cobblestone look we wanted,” Deverell told Condé Nast Traveller.
“It’s a great treasure of a city, almost 360 degrees of historic buildings. We shot right on the Royal Mile. It was crazy. We were working around all of the tourists.”
The snowy Arctic
Opening the film in the hostile Arctic, del Toro picks up on one of Shelley’s key themes in the book, highlighting the sublimity and power of nature.
Here, viewers meet Danish sailors on their way to the North Pole, whose ship has become frozen after running ashore, where they cross paths with a weary Victor Frankenstein.
Some of the snowy scenes were filmed on location at Lake Nipissing, in Canada’s North Bay, but the ship was built in a backlot in Toronto, bringing to life the harshness of the Arctic without having to trek to a polar extremity.
In keeping with the film’s tactile philosophy, del Toro refused to digitally create the ship.
Del Toro explained: “Most people would now build 20 feet of the ship, and the rest would be digital, but we wanted to make it a very dramatic, romantic declaration of an image. You open with that, you’re in the movie. You’re in the spirit of Mary Shelley.”
‘Frankenstein’ is now showing in selected cinemas and is streaming on Netflix.
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