The Grass Is Greener | 1960

Strapped for cash, minor members of the aristocracy Lord and Lady Rhyall (Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr) are obliged to open their stately home to the public. Among the gawping tourists is American oil millionaire Charles Delacro (Robert Mitchum), who has his eye on the lady of the manse in this adaptation of a stage romantic comedy, directed by none other than Stanley Donen.

The grand Rhyall estate is Osterley Park House, Isleworth, West London.

Osterley is no stranger to the screen. In 1965, it became the ancestral pile of Lord Carfax (John Fraser) in James Hill’s Sherlock Holmes vs Jack the Ripper shocker A Study in Terror. The house was seemingly moved to ‘Wimpole Street’ for Patricia Rozema’s 1999 Jane Austen adaptation, Mansfield Park, while the estate held the school concert, where Krishi is supposed to sing Do Re Mi, in Karan Johar’s 2001 Hindi smash Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham....

Since then, Osterley supplied the bustling kitchen in the ‘Wimbledon’ home of abolitionist William Wilberforce (Ioan Gruffudd) in Amazing Grace; and both an art gallery and a tearoom for biopic Miss Potter, with Renée Zellweger and Ewan McGregor. It’s a popular place to find Queen Victoria – Osterley not only stands in for the interior of ‘Buckingham Palace’ in Mrs Brown, with Judi Dench, but also in Young Victoria, with Emily Blunt.

Since then, Osterley has appeared in The Duchess, with Keira Knightley but most famously, if somewhat anonymously, as the interior (and only the interior) of 'Wayne Manor' in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight Rises.

The elegant Elizabethan mansion, transformed by Robert Adam between 1760 and 1780, is now a National Trust property and open to the public. It's easily accessible from central London by tube (Osterley Station, Piccadilly Line)

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