As seen on TV: The houses up for sale that starred in everything from 'Rivals' and 'Black Doves' to 'Dad's Army'
As one of the houses used in the filming of Jilly Cooper's 'Rivals' comes on the market, we take a look at how a starring role can help those selling their country homes.
Good news! One of the houses from the Disney+ adaptation of Rivals is for sale.
The less good news is that it isn't one of the beautiful old Cotswolds piles that you've been yearning for. The home of Declan O'Hara and his family, as played by Aidan Turner, is a beautiful country pile near Tetbury called Chavenage House. And the ancestral home of Rupert Campbell-Black, portrayed by Alex Hassell, is a Grade-I listed home in Somerset called Ammerdown House.
Naturally, both have been featured in the pages of Country Life before now; just a couple of months ago, we even republished a piece from the archive about the history of Chavenage House:
Chavenage House in the Cotswolds as it appeared in Country Life in 1911...
...and as it is today. The house has starred in both 'Poldark' and 'Rivals'.
Ammerdown was featured in 1929, in a three-part series across several issues of the magazine. Life Chavenage, it's still instantly recognisable over a century later — despite the fact that there was, sadly, no naked tennis going on the day that Country Life's photographer visited.
Ammerdown House in Somerset as it appeared in Country Life in 1929
The Rivals house that's on the market at the moment is centuries newer than those two homes — and it's actually even younger than the book itself. Foxfield, known as Bella Vista in the show and home to Danny Dyer's character Freddie Jones, was only built in 1999.
Touse was a labour of love for a real-life 1980s entrepreneur: Peter Thomas, the former chairman of Cardiff Rugby Club who made his fortune running Peter's Pies with his brother, Stanley. The Thomases sold the pie business in 1988 and moved in to commercial aviation, where the family fortune grew still further.
Peter died in 2023, and despite the fact that pies were just a small part of his long and successful career, the irresistible lure of alliteration saw his home dubbed 'Peter's Pie Palace' when it first came on to the market at the start of 2025, and the name has stuck.
Something else that has stuck is the asking price: Fine & Country quoting 'offers over £8 million' for this house in 24 acres just outside Cardiff, making it the most expensive home in Wales.
It's a little surprising, given the fact that many similarly large homes have had price cuts in the last year or so: Ripley Castle, for example, has its £15 million asking price halved to £7.5 million. That includes the 14th century, Grade I-listed castle and 166 acres of land.
Ripley Castle is changing hands for the first time in centuries.
We can see why Ripley will need time to find the right buyer — Grade I-listed castles tend to come with a long list of caveats — but those looking for a country home in the £8 million bracket have some wonderful options out there right now:
Comparisons such as these are never like-for-like, of course, and Foxfield is a grand, slick, modern home with all sorts of features that a 250-year-old place could never match.
The most obvious of these things is the magnificent spiral staircase at the centre of the house. Made from American white oak, it was created by hand by local craftspeople, and its oval shape is a reference to the game of rugby.
The staircase wasn't the only thing that had such attention lavished on it. Unusually, the family have a section of the property listing that they've written themselves, explaining how they, 'worked with a Welsh architect and prioritised using local materials and craftsmen, making the construction of Foxfield a tribute to our cultural pride.'
The orangery is also worth a special mention, bringing in huge amounts of light to the house — something that carries on throughout.
The building work took three years, creating a house with a dining room that happily seats 16, a superb cellar, a grand dining kitchen, a bar, and — for those who aren't able to use that staircase — a lift.
Outside, the 25 acres of grounds include terraces, lawns, woodland, a tennis court, and an unusual trio of lakes. Slightly surprisingly, there is no swimming pool: the scenes involving a pool at the house in Rivals had to be shot at a different location.
There's no doubt, then, that Foxfield has a lot to offer — as well as a location near some of the best schools in Cardiff. But is that enough to make it worth twice as much as this wisteria-clad country estate a few miles away near Barry? Or £3 million more than Bertholey, an 18,000sq ft house on the market in Monmouthshire?
The answer might depend on the star power that the Rivals connection brings with it, for we've seen time and again homes with film and TV connections garner far more attention than they might otherwise do.
Take Lynford Hall, for example, a country pile in Norfolk which sold after going on the market at £3.5 million last autumn. It needed a huge amount of investment, but even in what's been a slow market it has now gone — and it's hard not to think that its history as a place used in the filming of classic sitcoms Dad's Army and Allo Allo might have helped, if only in terms of getting views to the listing.
In spring last year, another multi-million pound home found a buyer: this wonderful Victorian house in Crystal Palace, which launched on the market at £5 million. Was it because the enterprising agent had nicknamed the area 'South London's answer to Notting Hill'? Or was it because the home was used in the shooting of the wildly popular Keira Knightley show Black Doves, which was riding high in the Netflix top 10 at the time.
The classic 19th century house used to film the Netflix show Black Doves.
It's not only grand houses that enjoy this halo effect. Back in South Wales, the seaside town of Barry has seen two homes sold in recent months which played starring roles in the beloved BBC sitcom Gavin & Stacey.
Both are located on Trinity Road, a street of terraced homes. Uncle Bryn's house, over the road from Stacey and her mother in the show, and the house of Stacey's next-door neighbour Doris both went for over £220,000. That's in a street where most sales in the last few years have been in the £150,000-£200,000 bracket.
Trinity Road in Barry, South Wales, where Gavin & Stacey was filmed.
Still, at least it's plausible that the characters in Gavin & Stacey lived in Trinity Road. Another classic sitcom, Outnumbered, featured a couple and their three children living in a house that was located in Chiswick, according to London estate agency Martin & Co. The couple were a history teacher and a PA, yet managed to be living in a home with an estimated value of £1.8 million...
