A Peek into the Stately Home in ‘Fool Me Once’
Netflix’s eight-part miniseries Fool Me Once just dropped, and it’s the nail-biting thriller you didn’t know you needed to start the year off right. This crime drama, adapted from author Harlan Coben’s best-selling novel of the same name, follows Maya (Michelle Keegan), who is trying to come to terms with the brutal murder of her husband, Joe Burkett (Richard Armitage), when she shockingly sees him alive on her secret nanny-cam. Amid the ever-thickening plot, there’s an unexpected star of the show: Farmwood mansion, a colossal red stone country house occupied predominantly by the ultrawealthy Burkett family matriarch, Judith (Joanna Lumley).
Throughout the riveting drama, panning shots of the mansion in the fictional town of Winhurst, England, reveal a stately abode that is set over 15 acres of manicured gardens. In real life, the mansion called Arley Hall is located to the southeast of Arley village in Cheshire. The Grade II house dates back to the 1830s with land that has been occupied since the 12th century. Currently, it’s home to Viscount Ashbrook and his family. In addition to the mansion, made of Hollington stone, the estate boasts a chapel, a clock tower, an organic working farm, and a kitchen garden.
While scouting out filming locations, the mansion reportedly got author Harlan Coben’s immediate approval. “Harlan always says: ‘I want it to look really English,’ and when we showed him Arley Hall, he said, ‘That’s what I’m talking about,’” producer Jessica Taylor told Manchester Evening News.
In the mystery series, the mansion acts as a backdrop to major confrontational scenes that play out in the gallery and dining room. Beyond those high-intensity moments, Judith can be seen swanning around the massive residence, frequently phoning Maya from the main hall. Beyond the mansion, the chapel was the setting for flashbacks of Maya and Joe’s wedding as well as for Joe’s funeral, several woodland scenes were filmed on the grounds, and one of the cottages was used as the home of the family’s nanny.
If the huge house has you doing a double take, it might be because Arley Hall has appeared in BBC’s Peaky Blinders as gangster Tommy Shelby’s (Cillian Murphy) residence, as well as in long-running soap Coronation Street. It was also in another Harlan Coben series, Stay Close.
Arley Hall is open to visitors, with access to the gardens, a café, a children’s play area, and the chapel. The four cottages on-site—one of which Lumley lived in while the series’ filming took place, according to The Tab—are available for the public to rent, with prices starting at around $500 per night.
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