All the School’s a Stage

Bolton School, an independent day school in Greater Manchester, is becoming an increasingly popular choice of location for use in film and television shoots! The School’s impressive CV includes being used as the venue in a recent Scottish Widows advertisement, as the school where Sarah Lancashire is Headmistress in the Last Tango in Halifax series and as the school of choice for James Nesbitt’s son in Cold Feet, a series co-produced by former pupil Deanne Cunningham. In recent years, the School has also featured in Bancroft, Our Girl with Michelle Keegan, in CBBC’s Creeped Out, in a Gambleaware advertisement and in the film Mark of Cain; previous to that it was used in Hetty Wainthropp Investigates.

Adele Hughes, who coordinates the hiring out of school premises, said: “We do seem to be on a good streak at the moment. The word about Bolton School being a great location for filming seems to have filtered out to various film companies and their location managers. This week we have just filmed some scenes for a new Netflix series called The Stranger with Richard Armitage and for a forthcoming Channel 4/Netflix comedy. We are also involved in some exciting negotiations over hiring out the premises this summer.

“We are lucky to have such spectacular buildings and visitors often say how it feels like they are on the set of Hogwarts. In fact, thinking about it, the school was even transformed into Hogwarts for an episode of Don’t Tell the Bride!  All the money that we make – along with revenues from hiring out our premises and services for weddings – is ploughed back into the School’s bursary fund which enables many pupils to study for free here.”

The all-through school includes co-educational Nursery and Infant Schools, as well as single-sex Junior and Senior Schools and its footprint stretches over a 32 acre site so there is no danger of over-use just yet. Location shoots have so far taken place in the Great Halls, Heads’ studies, on the sports fields, on the corridors, in the classrooms and laboratories, in the Arts Centre, in the Oxbridge-like quadrangles, on the Headmaster’s lawn, in the Sports Hall, the Sixth Form Centre and on the memorial staircase.

There must be something in the air at Bolton School, as the School itself has produced a good number of well-known actors and tv personalities including Sir Ian McKellen, Mark Radcliffe, Carol Klein and Ralf Little.