Hmm, here’s why the house in Netflix’s The Thursday Murder Club looks so incredibly familiar

Netflix’s new movie, The Thursday Murder Club, is filmed here in the UK, from the swanky halls of Englefield House to the equally swanky countryside of Buckinghamshire.

Based on the bestselling book by Richard Osman, The Thursday Murder Club is like if your grandparents decided to become sleuths. Starring Helen Mirren, Pierce Brosnan, Celia Imrie, Ben Kingsley, Tom Ellis, and David Tennant, the film follows a group of pensioners solving the murder of a property developer in the fictional village of Fairhaven in Kent.

Most of the Netflix movie takes place around Cooper’s Chase, a lavish retirement village, and you should most definitely recognise the house from these major projects.

The Thursday Murder Club wasn’t Englefield House’s first TV show

Englefield House is a huge property in Englefield, Berkshire, that was erected before 1558. It was owned by John Paulet, 5th Marquess of Winchester, before being passed to the Benyon family, many of whom have acted as members of parliament. In 2017, Pippa Middleton married at the Englefield estate, but that’s pretty boring compared to the TV shows and films that have used Englefield House as a filming location.

Englefield House in X-Men: First Class

Long before The Thursday Murder Club, Englefield House’s grandeur was seen in Hollywood flicks like Marvel films. Standing in for the Xavier Academy, Charles Xavier’s school for mutants, Englefield House was used as a filming location in X-Men: First Class starring James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender.

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The Thursday Murder Club wasn’t even Englefield House’s first Netflix project, because that was the Black Mirror season three episode, Playtest. It was the one where a terrifying horror virtual reality came to life, and a dimly lit Englefield House served its creepy purpose valiantly.

As a testament to Elizabethan architecture, Englefield House has also been used in very British projects like The King’s Speech, Great Expectations, Agatha Christie’s Marple, and Agatha Christie’s Poirot. It was even used as a stand-in for Sandringham House in The Crown.

Auradon Prep in Disney’s Descendants

Over the pond in America, Disney hired Englefield House for the Auradon Prep school in Descendants, Descendants 2, Descendants 3 and Descendants: The Rise of Red. Later, in 2024, they used the 20,000-acre estate for the Star Wars spin-off The Acolyte, and again in the origin story Cruella with Emma Stone.

Finally, there’s I Wanna Marry Harry, an American reality TV show where women thought they were fighting for the affections of Prince Harry. In reality, it was simply a lookalike called Matthew Hicks.

See, it does pay to be pretty as hell.

The Thursday Murder Club is on Netflix now. For all the latest Netflix news and drops, like The Holy Church of Netflix on Facebook.

Featured image credit: Netflix