Britannia, Season 3

In this season, Aulus’s villa was scripted in multiple episodes as a composite interior and exterior, so this was built on a backlot location as a freestanding two-storey structure. It was framed in timber and OSB sheet, and waterproofed with a self-adhesive rubber membrane roof. Towards the end of the shoot, the villa interior was revamped to become a burned-out and damaged Roman fort.

Because COVID interrupted production, the villa ended up standing watertight for more than a year. Other key sets include ‘The Hovel’ where Zoe Wanamaker’s character is enslaved by an inbred family. This set was being prebuilt at Bovingdon when it was flattened by an unexpected winter storm and scattered across the back lot. The all-timber structure was then built and filmed on location in a chalk quarry in Surrey before being burned to the ground during a night shoot.

We had built the stone chimney stack from fireproof plaster so that the hovel could be filmed the following day in its destroyed state.