Kind Hearts and Coronets film locations
Film locations: Kent
Kind Hearts and Coronets location: ‘Chalfont’, family seat of the aristocratic d'Ascoynes: Leeds Castle, near Maidstone, Kent
Alec Guinness, despite a long and illustrious career as one of Britain's finest character actors, is probably best known to a new generation as Obi-Wan Kenobi in the original Star Wars. Guinness never seemed too happy about being taken for an ageing Jedi but, since he’d wisely opted for a percentage of the gross – on what many perceived as a low-budget kiddies film – there were compensations.
In Kind Hearts... Guinness famously plays all eight members of the aristocratic d’Ascoyne family, including suffragette lady d’Ascoyne. This grandstanding turn somewhat overshadows the underrated Dennis Price, in the lead, as Louis Mazzini. The embittered heir to the family estate, Mazzini schemes to remove the d’Ascoynes, who stand between him and what he sees as his rightful inheritance.
Best and – despite the apparently cosy surface – blackest, of the Ealing comedies, it boasts a fantastically literate script ( the Reverend Lord Henry d’Ascoyne has one of my favourite lines in a movie ever: "...I always say that my West Window has all the exuberance of Chaucer without, happily, any of the concomitant crudities of his period").
‘Chalfont’, the family seat of the d’Ascoynes, is Leeds Castle, four miles east of Maidstone on the B2163 (rail: Bearsted). Nothing to do with the city of Leeds in Yorkshire, it's named after the nearby village). The castle also provides a backdrop for the 1958 Civil War swashbuckler The Moonraker (not to be confused with the 70s Bond movie Moonraker).
The Norman castle, rising picturesquely from its own lake, and surrounded by 500 acres of rolling parkland, became a royal residence for Edward I, was home to six queens of England, and was transformed into a grandiose palace by Henry VIII. It’s open to the public daily, except Christmas Day.
And it houses a unique Museum of Dog Collars! What more could you ask?
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Kind Hearts and Coronets, 1949
Director
Cast
visit the film locations
Leeds Castle, four miles east of Maidstone (tel: 01622.765400) on the B2163 (rail: Bearsted, South Eastern from London Victoria)
Trivia
Leeds Castle is one of the historical backdrops for 1958 Civil War swashbuckler The Moonraker.
Other Ealing classics include The Ladykillers, Passport To Pimlico and The Titfield Thunderbolt