The lakeside scene where Edward Ferrars skims stones in the new Sense and Sensibility adaptation? Filmed at Parnham Park, an Elizabethan house in Dorset with a history as dramatic as anything Austen cooked up. Built by Robert Strode around 1522, it saw Lady Strode killed defending the house during the English Civil War — legend says her husband's ghost still roams it. John Nash, the architect behind Buckingham Palace's remodelling, later reworked it, and the building has since been a 1920s country club, a US army base and a furniture-craft school under maker John Makepeace.
The modern low point came in 2017, when a fire gutted the house and left it roofless. Owner Michael Treichl died a couple of months later. Enter James Perkins — a former 1990s rave promoter who co-founded the label Fantazia — and his wife Sophie, whose previous restoration projects include Aynhoe Park in the Cotswolds.
Their playbook is working. The walled-garden restaurant opened first and landed in the Michelin guide this year, and overnight stays are now possible in two very different flavours. The five-bedroom west wing of the main house is a collector's fantasy: taxidermied white lions and a unicorn under disco balls, giant amethysts, robots, and a cellar speakeasy with a Dalek once owned by Robbie Williams. Fatboy Slim has reportedly DJ'd down there. Exclusive hire of the wing — butlers, housekeepers, a private chef and the whole grounds — starts at £13,000 (about $25,220) for three nights.
The three-bedroom Dower House is the softer option, from £900 ($1,746) for two nights. Expect arched stone windows, a four-poster bed with a vintage Louis Vuitton trunk alongside, shell-covered mirrors, and a heated pool.
The real draw of staying over is having the estate to yourself before day-trippers arrive. The writer's daughter gathered eggs from the hens for breakfast, watched white stags near the house, hunted for otters by the river and skimmed stones on the same lake used in the film. Dinner at the greenhouse restaurant means chandeliers, fountains and flower beds — with a Sunday roast featuring garam masala Yorkshire puddings.
If you fancy your own Austen pilgrimage, this one pairs nicely with the film: you can stand on the shore of the very lake from the scene, then wander an estate that has survived civil war, Nash, a rave promoter and a catastrophic fire — and come out the other side with a Michelin-listed restaurant.
