The Thursday Murder Club location guide: Where was it filmed?

"We wanted to create the 'Hogwarts' version of a retirement community," he said in the press notes. "Hogwarts was an aspirational place, a place that kids all over the world fantasised about getting a letter from, welcoming them to this school of witchcraft and wizardry."

He added: "Cooper's Chase was initially conceived by Richard Osman as a place unlike most of the traditional assisted living places we’ve seen in books and film, places that are unwelcoming, depressing and dreary.

"We wanted Cooper's Chase to be a sort of wish fulfilment retirement community, somewhere that audiences who saw the movie would say, ‘I’d love to spend the last 15 to 20 years of my life in a place like this.'"

So where was The Thursday Murder Club filmed? Read on for everything you need to know.

The Thursday Murder Club locations: Where was it filmed?

It turns out that the Hogwarts of retirement communities is not in Kent, where the books and film are set, but instead in various villages and manors around Hertfordshire and Buckinghamshire.

Fairhaven, the fictional town of The Thursday Murder Club, was filmed in the real-life village of Aldbury. With gorgeous old buildings, it's a suitable location to double for Fairhaven.

Cooper's Chase itself has a couple of locations to its name. Englefield Estate, along with its myriad gardens, became the external appearance of Cooper's Chase and was also used for some interior shots, with the production notes detailing that "many rooms and corridors were dressed to provide the residents with their elegant communal spaces".

Columbus explained: "The visual plan of Cooper's Chase was based on Richard Osman’s description, which included a stately home situated below a church and cemetery. This design was crucial to the story."

He added: "Almost magically, on the second day of location scouting, we found Englefield House in Berkshire, a visually stunning manor where the church and cemetery were actually located below the house. This layout would actually work for the entire film. We could shoot this location, as it was, without the use of any CGI."

Fans of The Crown may recognise Englefield, which doubled for Sandringham House in the hit Netflix series. And Englefield has welcomed movie royalty in the past too, as none other than Steven Spielberg visited the set during filming for The Thursday Murder Club, alongside a very happy Richard Osman.

Other interiors, meanwhile, were filmed inside Gaddesden Place in Hertfordshire and at the aforementioned Shepperton Studios, which housed some substantial set builds, including the Jigsaw Room where the gang congregates.

Another key location in the novels is Le Pont Noir, a gastro-pub. The Red Lion pub in Little Missenden was the choice to double as the film's Pont Noir, and with its aged architecture and classically British style it looks the part for the place.

Meanwhile, the cemetery set was inspired by a corner of the famous Highgate Cemetery in North London, and was constructed so convincingly that several members of the cast apparently thought it was real – with the production notes detailing that star Henry Lloyd-Hughes only realised his mistake when he accidentally chipped a plaster gravestone.

The Thursday Murder Club is now showing in select UK cinemas and will be available to stream on Netflix from Thursday 28th August 2025. Sign up for Netflix from £5.99 a month. Netflix is also available on Sky Glass and Virgin Media Stream.

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