Ardross Castle is privately owned and closed to the public. Thanks to The Traitors, it is also one of the most recognisable locations on British TV. The Highland estate has hosted the BBC show since its first series, and searches for the castle reportedly rose by around 4,500% as the third series aired. With the celebrity edition back on our screens, its halls and towers are once again in millions of living rooms.
For the castle’s owners, that profile is a business, with the venue hired out for weddings, corporate events and film crews. For heritage insurers, it raises a question that reaches well beyond Ardross: what happens to a private building’s risk once the public decides it belongs to them?
“In people’s minds, almost as though it’s, I now have a right to go there because I’ve seen it on TV, so therefore you’ve allowed me into the property,” said Laura Carter (pictured), customer segment director at Ecclesiastical.
The so-called 'Saltburn effect' is the cautionary tale. Drayton House, a Grade I-listed Northamptonshire home that had never been used for filming, became the set for Emerald Fennell’s 2023 film. After its release, owner Charles Stopford Sackville told the Mail on Sunday that more than 50 people had strayed off a public footpath onto his grounds and that staff were patrolling the estate. He had agreed to the shoot for the hire fee.
Carter said the case exposed a two-stage risk. The first is physical and sits within the shoot itself, from set-up to dismantling. The second arrives with fame. It covers trespass, security pressure and visitor management, as well as reputational fallout, whether from neighbours who suddenly cannot reach the village shop or from the building’s association with the subject of the production. A property that doubles as a wedding venue may find strangers filming social media clips behind the bride and groom. Valuables that appear on screen can make it a theft target after broadcast.
The time lag compounds it. A production can air years after filming, by which point an estate may have changed hands or the village may have forgotten the crew was ever there. Anonymity agreed at the outset may not survive local knowledge and social media, she said.
Ecclesiastical has also pointed to a reported incident at Highclere Castle, the set of Downton Abbey, in which a turquoise chest belonging to the Countess of Carnarvon was knocked to the floor and broken. When filming damages something irreplaceable, whose policy responds depends on the contract between owner and production company. Producers generally carry their own employers’ and public liability cover, but a public liability claim needs evidence of negligence.
“Sometimes that damage might not be because of negligence, it might just be because of the age of the building,” Carter said.
Where negligence can be established, the production company’s public liability insurance may respond. But heritage buildings create a more complicated problem as damage can arise simply as a consequence of the age of the property, without anyone necessarily being negligent. The exposures are particular to heritage fabric, ranging from camera tracks laid across old floorboards and smoke near tapestries to fires lit in unswept chimneys and alarms covered for period shots.
Carter said a robust remediation agreement becomes important, under which the production is responsible for putting the property back as it found it even where no one was to blame, alongside a detailed record of the property’s condition before filming and followed by a post-shoot inspection to give both sides a baseline. She advised watching for clauses that place responsibility back on the owner, and has heard of one owner who, after a poorly agreed contract, spent part of the fee cleaning and reinstating the property.
Carter said the insurer has seen an uptick in filming. The largest stately homes still lead, but smaller, privately owned properties are increasingly being approached, some for the first time. Those owners lack the track record of houses that regularly host period dramas and adverts, and may not know that conservators who specialise in filming can advise in advance.
The owners who get it right “look at this as a big operation or more of a commercial operation as opposed to some people turning up to do some filming in a couple of the rooms in my property,” she said. That means bringing in their broker and insurer before anything is signed, with time to establish the scale of the shoot, who carries each part of the risk, how the building is secured and what fame could mean for future revenue.
“The later it comes that they’re involved, as opposed to, oh, and by the way, I’ve got a film crew turning up on Monday, then that’s not right,” Carter said.
Being chosen can feel flattering, she acknowledged, which is when owners most need to be clear-eyed. With repair and operating costs rising across the heritage sector, the commercial case for filming is real, and it is drawing in estates with no history of filming. Ardross shows how far a single show can carry a private building’s profile. For owners new to the screen, the terms agreed before filming will decide how much of that exposure they are left holding.
