Snow White And The Huntsman | 2012
- Locations |
- Buckinghamshire;
- Berkshire;
- Surrey;
- West Sussex;
- Cumbria;
- Wales;
- Scotland;
- London;
- Republic of Ireland
- DIRECTOR |
- Rupert Sanders
Discover the locations for Snow White and the Huntsman. Surprisingly, there are no real castles used, but the film makes plentiful use of forests and landscapes throughout the UK and Ireland.
Rupert Sanders’ lavish retelling of the Snow White story was based at Pinewood Studios in Buckinghamshire. No real buildings were used as locations – the castles and villages were sets and CGI or a mix of both.
The huge entrance and courtyard of King Magnus’s castle were built outdoors on the Pinewood Studios’ North Car Park alongside the Main Entrance on Pinewood Road.
Staying on the lot, the snowy garden of the opening scene with Snow White's mother pricking her finger on a red rose is the old Pinewood Garden (digitally extended), the formal gardens of Heatherden Hall, the Victorian country house at the heart of the Pinewood complex, around which the studios were built.
When King Magnus goes forth from his castle to fight what turns out to be a phantom army, he faces them in familiar old Bourne Wood near Farnham in Surrey, which has become the go-to battlefield ever since Ridley Scott used it for the opening of Gladiator in 2000. Since then it’s appeared in Scott’s 2010 version of Robin Hood, as well as Steven Spielberg’s War Horse, Thor: The Dark World, Patty Jenkins's Wonder Woman and 2010's The Wolfman, with Benicio del Toro.
Magnus is tricked into 'rescuing' the scheming Ravenna (Charlize Theron) and naturally marries her. The wedding cathedral is a set (again, extended digitally), though the surf crashing dramatically around the foot of the promontory on which the castle stands is lashing the Cliffs of Moher, south of Galway on the Atlantic coast of County Clare in Ireland. The dramatic location was also seen in The Princess Bride and Harry Potter And the Half-Blood Prince.
The rocky curved beach alongside the castle, where Snow White (Kristen Stewart) washes up after escaping from the dungeon, is Marloes Sands, in the far west of Pembrokeshire in South Wales. This is also the stretch of beach used for the final spectacular charge on horseback and battle.
Snow White makes her way through the now-ravaged village (an exterior set) to the 'Dark Forest' which is a small group of Arthur Rackham-inspired fake trees cleverly built in a clearing in Black Park Country Park to give the appearance of extensive real woodland. Black Park borders the western edge of the studio lot and has been used for decades as a kind of unofficial backlot (often in Hammer and James Bond movies, more recently appearing in Deadpool & Wolverine).
The Huntsman (Chris Hemsworth), hired by Ravenna to find Snow White, realises he's with the wrong side and, after some reluctance, teams up with Snow White to help her.
The castle of Duke Hammond (Vincent Regan) where, unknown to Snow White, her childhood friend Prince William (Sam Claflin) has grown up is another set, the design of which is based on Arundel Castle in West Sussex. The real Arundel has been seen in productions including Wonder Woman, The Young Victoria, Elizabeth and The Madness of King George among others.
William manages to infiltrate the mercenaries looking for Snow White.
The reedy lake where Snow White and the Huntsman are welcomed by women in boats is Frensham Ponds, south of Farnham in Surrey (so it doesn't really have views of distant mountains). Another screen regular, the ponds were seen in The Mummy and Carry On Columbus.
The village set was built on the shore here and burned down for real. This is a designated Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, Special Site of Scientific Interest, Special Protection Area, and a Special Area of Conservation (SAC), so I guess the fire was very, very carefully controlled.
Fleeing the fire they're captured by eight dwarfs (oh dear, I assume one of them is doomed) in Burnham Beeches in Buckinghamshire, is an area of ancient woodland belonging to the City of London.
Due to its importance as a conservation area, filming is strictly limited to no more than twenty days per year and the revenue is used to fund the upkeep and management of the Beeches, but the woodland has still managed to appear in Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves (as Robin's camp), in Goldfinger, The Princess Bride, The Crying Game and a couple of Harry Potter movies.
Like the Huntsman, the dwarfs soon come to realise that Snow White's goodness and they lead her to the Enchanted Forest.
This is reached via the stunning Cathedral Quarry, Little Langdale in the Lake District, Cumbria. That huge chamber (since it's man-made it's not technically a cave), known as The Cathedral, is 40-feet-tall.
The 'Enchanted Forest' itself, as yet untouched by Ravenna's evil aura, is Bear's Rails, apart of Windsor Great Park. Yes, those gnarled twisted oaks are real. Bear's Rails possibly comes from the fact that George IV kept bears in an enclosure here, but the odd name may precede that and perhaps the original meaning is lost.
Even here, the mercenaries eventually discover Snow and the dwarfs, who take off, now with Prince William too, in a soggy trek across the wet and misty – though undeniably beautiful – Lake District, looking down to Blea Tarn, against the backdrop of the Langdale Pikes, a group of peaks on the northern side of Great Langdale.
The landscape becomes even more spectacular with views of the Quiraing, those amazing rocky landforms on the Isle of Skye, Scotland, which include the Old Man of Storr.
Understandably, this fantastical area has become something of a favourite on screen, seen in Ridley Scott's 2012 Prometheus, Transformers: The Last Knight (2017), Stardust (2007) and the 2015 film of Macbeth, with Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard.
After Ravenna (in disguise) inevitably gives her the poisoned apple, Snow White is laid in state in the aisle of another favourite, the Priory Church of St Bartholomew The Great, hidden away behind its Tudor gatehouse in West Smithfield, London (tube: Farringdon or Barbican, Circle Line).
The church has a fascinating history, having been founded in 1123 by Rahere, once a jester to Henry I then a monk, after he had a vision of St Bartholomew while stricken with malaria on a trip to Rome. You can see Rahere's tomb in the church, which is just the nave of a once much-larger church which stretched all the way to that elaborate 16th century gatehouse.
St Bartholomew's found screen fame in the Nineties in both Four Weddings and a Funeral and as the interior of 'Nottingham Castle' in Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves. Since then, it's had a very varied career, appearing in Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes; Neil Jordan’s The End Of The Affair; Shakespeare in Love; The Other Boleyn Girl; Elizabeth, The Golden Age, Suffragette and even Avengers: Age of Ultron and Transformers: The Last Knight.
It's here that it's the Huntsman who kisses her, bringing her back to life.
All that's left is for Snow White to lead her army in an attack on the castle with that spectacular charge along Marloes Sands.
