CREDITS BATMAN, 1989 dir: Tim Burton Michael Keaton Jack Nicholson Kim Basinger Jack Palance Michael Gough

Tim Burtonís ëGotham Cityí, a nightmare fantasy of New York, was actually built in England.

The late Anton Furstís set covered most of the 18 soundstages at Pinewood Studio.

ëWayne Manorí, though, is real, and is a conflation of two buildings. The exterior is Knebworth House, a Gothicised Tudor manor house on the A1, 28 miles north of London.

It also provided gloomy Gothic mansions for, among others, the Ingrid Bergman Oscar-winner Anastasia (where it was passed off as the palace of the Dowager Empress of Denmark), Ken Russell's kitschy Lair of the White Worm (with a pre-stardom Hugh Grant), Gene Wilder's Haunted Honeymoon and the deliriously daft schlocker Horror Hospital, starring Alfred himself, Michael Gough.

The interiors are Hatfield House, Hatfield, a Jacobean pile seen in the turgid Greystoke, the Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes (where it became the interior of Scotland's Floors Castle), the film of Virginia Woolf's gender-shifting fantasia, Orlando, and of course as the mansion of Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, among many others. The gaming room, where Kim Basinger asks ìWhoís Bruce Wayne?î, was filmed in the Long Gallery; Wayneís arsenal, with its two-way mirror, was shot in the Marble Hall, and the book-lined study, where Alfred (Michael Gough) advises Bruce Wayne to get married, is the house's Library.

The ëAxis Chemical Worksí, where Jack Nicholson plunges into the chemical sludge, was filmed at a disused power station in Acton Lane, West London. The exploding exterior was Little Barford Power Station, a couple of miles south of St Neots in Bedfordshire.

The first sequel, 1992ís Batman Returns, also directed by Tim Burton was shot in the US, and was completely studio-bound, taking up all seven of Warnerís large LA soundstages, plus one at Universal, where the lair of the Penguin (Danny DeVito) was built.

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