If you fold up your Marauder’s Map, you won’t see an image of Royal Connaught Park, but it still provided a few locations for the Harry Potter movies — and lots of other films too.
The Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry was shot in many locations for the franchise. Alnwick Castle provided the exterior, while fans will recognize various parts of Oxford from the school’s interior. But Royal Connaught Park also played a role in the first three movies, as the setting for the Great Hall. The tower, now part of one of the townhouses, was used as part of Dumbledore’s office in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. You probably don’t need to say “sherbert lemon” to get in, though.
Once known as the Royal Masonic School for Boys, the building, constructed in 1903 in the east of England, is now a luxury apartment complex. Royal Connaught Park is now home to 28 apartments, detached homes, and townhouses, costing between $996,961 and $4.3 million.
“We’ve tried to retain as much of that character as possible,” Caroline Comer of Comer Homes tells The Daily Mail. “The outside of the main building is the same, and we’ve retained a lot of the internal features too — the original staircases, windows, some original flooring, fireplaces and exposed roof beams. Basically, as much as we can.” The dining hall remains the same, which people have rented out for weddings and other functions.
Because of its imposing outline and architecture, the building was also used to film scenes from the TV show The Avengers, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, and Monty Python’s Meaning of Life. Before the renovation, many parts of the building were falling apart and had a creepy atmosphere. “It was cold and forbidding. We never saw a ghost, sadly, not even in the mortuary,” filmmaker Merlin Ward told The Guardian back in 2010. At least you won’t have to live with the Bloody Baron haunting the halls.
