ITV's adaptation of Elizabeth Day's 2017 novel The Party lands on screens on Saturday 11 October 2026, and if the trailer's stately homes and wood-panelled corridors have you wondering where it all was shot, the answer is mostly Wales — with a little Oxford thrown in.
The story follows journalist Martin Gilmour (Luke Evans), who has spent his life in the shadow of his wealthy, magnetic friend Ben Fitzmaurice (Tom Cullen). Because both leads are Welsh, the production moved Day's Cotswolds-and-London-set book wholesale to Wales, a switch director Viviane Andereggen felt deepened the material: the country's underdog self-image mirrored Martin's own feelings of not belonging.
The Fitzmaurice family seat, Denby Hall, is actually two private houses near Bridgend. Merthyr Mawr House provides the interiors, while Llanharan House, a few miles away, stands in for the exterior. Andereggen wanted somewhere grand but not glossy — old money worn at the edges — to signal the class gulf between Ben's family and Martin. The infamous party tent went up at Dragon Studios, also in Bridgend.
The chilling chapel scene, where party guests stroll over gravestones in a renovated place of worship, was filmed at Cardiff's Temple of Peace, an events venue the director describes as feeling like a museum. The production had originally scouted a chapel inside a stately home, but it proved too imposing, so the two spaces were split between locations instead.
School days get generous screen time too. Howells School in Cardiff doubles as Burtonbury School for exteriors and classrooms, the dorm scenes were shot at the Margam Discovery Centre in Port Talbot, and the rugby scenes took place at Llandaff Rugby Club. When Martin and Ben reach Oxford, the production stitched together several stand-ins: Exeter College in Oxford proper, plus Cardiff University's main campus and Swansea Guildhall — the latter also pulling double duty as Denby Police Station, where Martin is questioned in a room Day says is perfectly mundane yet tense.
As for London, Cardiff played that role too. With barely any exterior shots needed, the crew used the restaurant Nightshade as a stand-in for a London eatery and a house in Cardiff Bay as a fake Shoreditch flat.
For travellers, this is a handy itinerary-in-waiting. Bridgend, Cardiff and Swansea are all within easy reach of each other, and several filming spots — Temple of Peace, Cardiff University, Swansea Guildhall — are either public buildings or host events, so you can genuinely walk through them. Day herself has said the locations became a character in their own right, semaphoring class and money without a word of dialogue, which makes seeing them in person all the more fun once you know what to look for.
Full credit to Condé Nast Traveller UK for the original interview.
