Two years ago, The Haunting of Hill House struck fear into our hearts with its story of family trauma unfolding inside a big, creepy Massachusetts house. Now, creator Mike Flanagan and several of the same cast members return for The Haunting of Bly Manor, which tells a very different kind of ghost story inside a very different creepy house, this one set somewhere in the English countryside.
The series kicks off as Dani Clayton, a plucky American teacher played by Victoria Pedretti, applies for a job as an au pair to two orphaned children in 1980s England. The new gig takes her out of London and into the countryside, to a huge manor with sprawling grounds, endless mysterious rooms, and an infestation of ghosts. But is Bly Manor a place you can visit in real life? Here’s all the details.
Netflix
Is Bly Manor a real place?
Sadly—or maybe not so sadly, depending on how much you’ve seen of the show—Bly Manor is completely fictional. It was invented by Henry James in his 1898 novella The Turn of the Screw, which is the basis for The Haunting of Bly Manor.
In the series, Bly Manor belongs to Henry Wingrave (Henry Thomas), who is the children’s uncle. He spends most of his time in London, where he buries himself in his work to avoid dealing with his own demons. He describes the manor to Dani as “a great good place,” and reassures her that the children are happy there, since they used to spend summers and holidays at Bly before their parents died. He neglects to mention it is incredibly haunted.
Netflix
Where in England is Bly Manor supposed to be?
The show doesn’t specify a location, but we can make a decent guess based on some clues. Henry primarily lives in London and keeps Bly Manor as a weekend and holiday home, which suggests it’s probably within reasonable driving distance of the city. This is confirmed when Owen (Rahul Kohli) picks up Dani in central London and drives her to Bly.
In The Turn of the Screw, Bly Manor is in Essex, a county just southeast of London, and there’s nothing to contradict that in the show. For reasons that soon become clear as you watch more of the series, we never see anything beyond the borders of Bly Manor’s grounds. We hear about a town nearby where there’s a pub, and at least a couple of the characters go there offscreen, but we never go with them. Except for the present-day wedding that bookends the series and brief early scenes with Dani in London, the entire show takes place within the grounds of Bly.
EIKE SCHROTER/NETFLIX
Where was The Haunting of Bly Manor filmed?
Authentic though the show’s English countryside setting seems, it was actually filmed entirely in Vancouver, British Columbia. Production began in September 2019 and wrapped in February of this year. As for the location of the Bly Manor house exterior, Netflix hasn’t released that information, but they have released something that is arguably even better—a Zillow listing for Bly Manor.
Yes, you read that right. And while the listing is spoiler-free, we highly recommend going back to it after you’ve finished the season to really appreciate the layers of meaning in the descriptions. “As you make your way up the drive, notice the ivy crawling the length of the manor and the parapets for overlooking the estate,” a note on the exterior reads. “We pride ourselves on our immaculately kept grounds that float free of time.” Meanwhile, there are a few quietly terrifying details buried in the very attractive listing photos, and the house appears to have been listed on Zillow for all of eternity.
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