An estimated £3.4m was pumped into Bath’s economy last year by film crews using the city and surroundings as locations, according to new figures.
The report by Bath & North East Somerset Council’s Film Office comes less than a fortnight before Bridgerton, pictured, the most successful production ever shot in the city, returns for a third series.
The film office, which liaises with film and TV production companies, was one of the first in the UK when it was set up 30 years ago.
The first drama filmed in the city after its launch was the 1995 BBC adaptation of Jane Austen’s Persuasion, starring Cieran Hinds and Amanda Root.
Since then Bath has become a popular filming location, with its Georgian squares and crescents used for countless so-called bonnet-buster historical dramas dating back decades.
The Film Office has worked with teams behind a host of big and small screen productions, including Vanity Fair, in which Reece Witherspoon played Becky Sharpe, The Duchess, with Keira Knightley in the title role, and Sherlock, starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman.
Scenes for Les Misérables were also filmed in the city, including one in which Russell Crowe’s stunt double floats over Pulteney Weir.
More recently it has starred in contemporary detective TV series McDonald & Dodds, pictured below, and hit movie Wonka, pictured, bottom, for which a number of scenes were shot in Bath, with parts of the city transformed into a winter wonderland, including Bath Street, which was dressed in artificial snow.
But it was the huge success of Netflix period drama Bridgerton that has given Bath its biggest boost, allowing the city to join a select roll call of places that has become known for ‘set-jetting’, or screen tourism.
More than 70 scenes were filmed in Bath in four blocks between August and November 2019 – with the economic impact of this seen in the large numbers of Bridgerton-related tours in the city since.
In 2021 iconic international magazine TIME named Bath among the 100 greatest places in the world, noting that Bridgerton fans had been “pouring into the city to immerse themselves in the drama and scandal of the Regency-era romance with new guided tours”.
The Film Office does not only support dramas – it also facilitates filming for documentaries, adverts and large photoshoots, including at Keynsham Recycling Centre, which features in the popular BBC One series Money for Nothing.
The office also provides advice and support to students who want to film in the area.
The pulling power of Bath as a TV and film location was underlined in March when research carried out for Visit West, the region’s destination marketing organisation, revealed that 30% of tourists to the region were attracted by films or shows shot locally.
Cabinet member for economic and cultural sustainable development, Cllr Paul Roper, said: “Bath and our surrounding towns and villages are a fantastic destination for filming and the council works hard to balance the needs of a production, however large or small with those of our residents and businesses.
“The film office does a great job to support film requests – congratulations on a 30-year anniversary.”
The £3.4m boost to the economy from filming is based on daily filming rates provided by Creative England and includes spending by production companies on accommodation, location hire, local crew and other services.
McDonald & Dodds image © ITV. Wonka image © Jamie Bellinger
