Netflix’s Pride and Prejudice Turned Rye Into Regency England: Inside the Filming Locations
Mermaid Street, a transformed shopfront and a little September snow offer the clearest look at where the new adaptation was made.
Rye got September snow while filming Netflix’s Pride and Prejudice in 2025.
The six-episode series premieres December 3, 2026, with Emma Corrin as Elizabeth Bennet, Jack Lowden as Mr. Darcy and Olivia Colman as Mrs. Bennet. Dolly Alderton wrote the adaptation, directed by Euros Lyn. Its English locations have to do more than look handsome: they must accommodate a story driven by visits, walks, chance encounters and the scrutiny of neighbors.
Market Street became a working Regency town
Rye News dates the shoot to September 8, 2025. Market Street gained horses and stalls; a house beside the town hall became the Cross Keys Inn.
Simon the Pieman’s window traded cakes for game birds, tea and produce, becoming a Regency grocer.
Mermaid Street and Ypres Tower completed the shoot
Filming continued on Mermaid Street and outside Ypres Tower, with snow machines appearing on day three.
Mermaid Street already has much of the texture a period production needs. Visit 1066 Country describes it as one of the main routes into Rye’s old citadel, a town of cobbles, narrow passages and surviving historic buildings. Look at the rooflines and the way the street rises before concentrating on individual doorways. Those larger shapes survive a shopfront makeover.
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Rye’s coastal history is less obvious from a tightly framed street scene. The town was once surrounded on three sides by the sea and became part of the Cinque Ports Confederation. Its present landscape includes views across Romney Marsh. That is the real East Sussex geography beyond the production’s much smaller, carefully dressed town center.
Ypres Tower adds an older layer. Rye Castle Museum says its precise construction date is uncertain, although castle references begin in the 13th century. The site includes later cells, a medieval-style herb garden and the Women’s Tower, built as a prison in 1837.
Rye plays Meryton
Writer Dolly Alderton confirms the match in her production diary for British Vogue. Her September 8, 2025 entry places the crew in Rye for Meryton scenes, including a market populated with livestock.
In Austen’s novel, Meryton is the nearby market town that draws the Bennet sisters away from Longbourn. Shopping, family visits and the arrival of the militia turn it into a center of news and flirtation. A market street matters because the story’s social life happens in public as well as in drawing rooms. A brief encounter can travel through an entire neighborhood.
Golden Parsonage became the Bennet family home
Longbourn has a confirmed real-world address too: Golden Parsonage in Hertfordshire. Alderton places the first day of filming there on July 28, 2025, beginning with Mrs. Bennet and her daughters in the garden after the Netherfield ball. She says the surrounding private land helped the production avoid photographers. The filming connection does not establish public access to the estate.
London, Derbyshire and the unanswered Pemberley question
Alderton also records London filming in Spitalfields on August 8, 2025, including carriage work with Jack Lowden. VisitBritain identifies the Peak District among the production’s other locations.
Derbyshire also has a place in the novel itself. Elizabeth travels there with the Gardiners, and their visit to Pemberley lets her encounter Darcy through his home, his household and his surroundings. The county is therefore more than generic Austen scenery. It is part of a change in how she understands him.
The building playing the 2026 Pemberley has not yet been confirmed. Older answers belong to older adaptations: Chatsworth was used for the 2005 film, while Lyme supplied Pemberley’s exterior and Sudbury Hall its interiors in the 1995 series. Those are rewarding screen locations in their own right, but none should be presented as Jack Lowden’s Pemberley without new confirmation.
How to make a Rye location visit worthwhile
Ypres Tower sits uphill past St. Mary’s Church, in the Gun Garden. The museum warns of uneven floors and steps, low doorways and no elevator. A virtual tour is available on the main floor; consider the exterior separately if stairs are difficult.
Winter hours are shorter, which matters if the December premiere inspires a trip. The museum lists a 3:30 p.m. closing time from November through late March, with last admission at 3 p.m.; check holiday arrangements before traveling. You can explore the streets independently, while a tower visit needs to fit its own opening schedule.
Alderton has described nature and walking as central to the Bennet women’s daily lives, with costume designer Charlotte Walter using period textiles and a deliberately limited wardrobe. The clothes, pathways and weather are meant to belong to the same lived-in world.
Featured photograph: Mermaid Street in Rye, before the Netflix production’s temporary Regency makeover. Location photograph. Photo: Tony Hisgett, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
