Practical Magic 2 | 2026
- Locations |
- London;
- Hertfordshire;
- Wiltshire;
- Buckinghamshire;
- Surrey;
- Essex
- DIRECTOR |
- Susanne Bier
The original Practical Magic was made in Washington State but the long-awaited sequel was made entirely (apart from aerial establishing shots) in Southern England – even the scenes in 'Massachusetts' – making imaginative use of locations in Hertfordshire, Buckinghamshire, London, Surrey, Essex and even Wiltshire. Find out exactly where.
Several years later and it's the next generation of the Owens family...
Sally's (Sandra Bullock) daughters Kylie and Antonia are at college. Husband Gary has succumbed to the family curse and, against the advice of her sister Gillian (Nicole Kidman), Sally is determined to keep her offspring in the dark about witchcraft and that curse.
While the original movie was shot in Coupeville on Whidbey Island, Washington State, the town for whatever reason, seemed reluctant to return to the screen. Since much of the second half takes place in England, the whole production, apart from scene-setting aerial shots, was moved to the UK.
Even for the original film, the Owens house was built from scratch. That was on San Juan Island, but this time it was meticulously recreated on the backlot at Warner Bros Studios Leavesden in Hertfordshire, about 20 miles north-west of London.
The studio began life as Leavesden Aerodrome, a factory and runway where Mosquitoes and Halifax Bombers were manufactured during WWII. Disused in the 1990s, the facility was used as a makeshift studio for the first Pierce Brosnan Bond movie, GoldenEye, in 1994 (the huge ‘St Petersburg’ set was built here to accommodate the tank chase).
The venture proved so successful that Leavesden was rented out to be used for the Harry Potter films and developed as a fully fledged studio, hosting productions including Wonka, Barbie, The Batman (2022), Wonder Woman, and Edge Of Tomorrow. It's now home to the Potter-themed Warner Bros Studio Tour - London.
The quiet churchyard where Sally and her daughters visit Mark's grave is St Mary and All Saints Church, Church Lane, Abridge in Lambourne, Essex, which despite being 900 years old looks convincingly American.
There are establishing shots of Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, but the pillared Quad where student Kylie (Joey King) meets cute with Gideon, and where he buys flowers and brides his bicycle, is the Royal Hospital Chelsea, Royal Hospital Road, just off the Kings Road in London SW3.
A retirement and nursing home for British Army veterans founded by King Charles II in 1692, the grounds are not open to the general public but you can book a guided tour.
'Harvard' room – and some UK interiors too – were filmed in Langleybury Mansion in Abbots Langley, Hertfordshire. This vacant 18th-century period house that has served as a backdrop for several productions including Mike Leigh's Topsy-Turvy in 1999, plus Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation and Paddington, as well as TV's Downton Abbey and The Crown.
Amazingly, the picturesque coastal town of 'Ashbury' was filmed in Surrey. Kudos to the location scouts – this had me fooled. It's The Hamptons Hall, Sherbrooke Way in The Hamptons, Worcester Park, a 645 home mixed development set around 30-acres of parklands and communal green space south of Wimbledon on the Surrey/London border.
'Ashbury Town Library' is the hall, but the interior with that stained glass dome was filmed inside the Bishopsgate Institute, 230 Bishopsgate, London EC2, a Reading Room available for quiet study near Liverpool Street.
If you're following the plot, you know that Kylie's declaration of love is not good news for Gideon. Don't panic – he's not written out yet but he is in a coma which gives Kylie the opportunity to visit her roots in England in a bid to lift the family curse.
Sally and Gillian of course follow her, and also to find Professor Ian Wright (Lee Pace), an expert in magic history who may be able to help.
His apartment is in Cromwell Buildings, 6 Redcross Way, just off Southwark Street, Southwark, London SE1 – only a few minutes away from Bridget Jones's lodgings above the Globe pub. For years I've waited to see this visually striking building to appear on screen (maybe I've missed it before).
These flats were constructed in 1864 by philanthropist Sir Sydney Waterlow, founder of the Improved Industrial Dwellings Company, one of England's earliest providers of industrial dwellings for working-class families.
Kylie meanwhile comes across the name of 'Lockland Manor' and she's immediately off to a little village in England where secret to lifting the curse might be uncovered.
The charming little countryside railway station at which she alights the train on her way to the village of 'Thornfield' is North Weald Station the Epping Ongar Railway in Essex. It's a heritage railway run by a small number of paid staff and a team of volunteers. It was the final section of the Great Eastern Railway branch line (which became part of London Underground's Central line).
'Thornfield' itself turns out to be the familiar and lovely village of Hambleden, in Buckinghamshire, about three miles northeast of Henley-on-Thames (which is confusingly across the border in Oxfordshire). Hambleden's charm has been seen onscreen before in the live-action 101 Dalmatians, 1998 big screen version of cult TV show The Avengers, Fifties-set true-life crime story Dance With A Stranger, fantasy musical Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, the film adaptation of Steven Sondheim's Into The Woods, Hammer Films’ 1966 The Witches, with Joan Fontaine and 1946 drama The Captive Heart.
In the churchyard of St Mary the Virgin she comes across the eagerly helpful Tom (Solly McLeod).
The overgrown cottage to which he invites her was filmed in the walled garden on the private Wormsley Estate, Stokenchurch, High Wycombe in Buckinghamshire, a 2,700-acre estate owned by the Getty family, hosting the Garsington Opera and cricket grounds. Astonishingly, Tom too is descended from a witch who was burned back in the day. Just a coincidence?
'The Three Bushes', the charming 'Thornfield' inn owned by Prof Wright's mum (Diana Quick), in which Sally and Gillian stay, is is The Royal Standard of England, Forty Green Road, Forty Green, near Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire – a wonderfully atmospheric timbered bar, which claims to be the oldest free-house in England.
Did you recognise it as the interior of 'The Crown', site of the spectacular shoot-em-up in Edgar Wright's Hot Fuzz, or as the ‘Cambridge’ local of a young Stephen Hawking (Eddie Redmayne) in The Theory Of Everything.
Finally, we get to the burned out ruins of 'Lockland Manor' where evil is confronted. This turns out to be , which turns out to be Old Wardour Castle, off the A30, between Salisbury and Shaftesbury in Wiltshire. Recognise this as the ruin of ‘Locksley Castle’, the destroyed family home in Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves?
