Originally the winter home of Viscount Fairfax and his daughter Anne, Fairfax House’s richly decorated interiors and magnificent stucco ceilings make it is a masterpiece of Georgian design and architecture. Set in the heart of York, Fairfax House reveals the domestic interiors in which these Georgians would have walked, the tastes and fashions of the day for architecture, interior decoration, food and furnishings, as well as the customs and habits of York’s wealthy gentry and aristocracy. It was a place where the winter season could be enjoyed, and with it, all the entertainments and social engagements that this centre for ‘polite society’ had to offer. A beautiful collection of furniture brings the house alive and creates a special feeling of warmth. It evokes a life once lived in comfort and grandeur, vividly recalling a lost world of townhouse-living in the 1760s.

Fairfax House has been used as a location for both television and film on a number of occasions. In 2018, ITV’s Victoria filmed here, using the exterior and period rooms of the house as doubles for a number of locations including a gentleman’s club, a London townhouse and a Buckingham Palace bedroom. Fairfax even stood in for a castle in Ireland.

Most recently for the BBC drama series Gentleman Jack, written by Sally Wainwright, exploring the life of Anne Lister (1791 – 1840). Fairfax House has many different elements to offer as a film location: a fabulous collection of period furniture, furnishings and decorative arts, rooms filled from wall to ceiling with eighteenth century treasures, and intricate plasterwork ceilings adding fantastic vibrancy to sets, ideal scale and proportions of the rooms for domestic scenes plus a variety of rooms and locations to choose from encompassing bedrooms, drawing room, dining room, grand staircase, kitchen and the magnificent Saloon.