The Dark Knight's Hertfordshire Home
Knebworth House could almost have been built with Batman in mind.
If you're old enough to recall the original Batman television series, then you'll no doubt remember how bright, camp and gaudy a show it was. Adam West's Bruce Wayne was anything but the dark, brooding figure we associate with the comic book vigilante today.
In the 1960s version, Bruce was a wealthy gadabout, forever to be seen in the company of young sidekick Dick Grayson (Burt Ward) - that was on the rare occasions when the dynamic duo weren't donning tights to fight crime. All this being so, 380 South San Rafael Avenue, Pasadena, California, was the ideal stand-in for 'Stately Wayne Manor', being luxurious and anonymous in equal measure.
Fast forward 20 years from the cancellation of the TV show and the Caped Crusader was on the verge of a big screen comeback. With the character having become darker with each new comic book series and goth-friendly filmmaker Tim Burton at the helm, this Batman was going to be a very different kind of superhero. The carefree playboy of the past had given way to a tortured, intense individual meting out justice in revenge for the deaths of Thomas and Martha Wayne, the parents slain before his eyes when he was still in short trousers.
With Michael Keaton set to play the title role (acting speciality: tortured intensity), Burton's Batman could no more live on South San Rafael Avenue than he could wear a light blue Batsuit. Burton's search for a suitably gothic pile reached Hertfordshire and Knebworth House. Famous around the world for its rock concerts, the stately home also had a growing reputation as a film location. It was 1989's Batman, however, that really put the Lytton-Cobbold's home on the movie map.
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