91Èȱ¬

Sitting in a 90 acre area of parkland, Tredegar House is a late 17th century restoration mansion constructed for William Morgan.

It was the home of the Morgan family until 1951, whereupon it became the home of the St Joseph's Roman Catholic School, prior to its purchase by Newport Borough Council in 1974. The house and grounds are now open to the public from April to September.

The first visit to Tredegar House by the Doctor Who team was in July 2005 for David Tennant's debut as the tenth Doctor,The Christmas Invasion, for a pre-shoot day before the main recording on the episode. This covered the broadcast made by Prime Minister Harriet Jones (played by Penelope Wilton) from the headquarters of the British Rocket Group asking for help from the Doctor in the face of the alien threat to Earth.

Director James Hawes and his team were soon back at the property to record in the basement of the house for the next episode, New Earth. This time, the less ornate section of the house was used to represent the evil Cassandra's dungeon lair beneath the hospital in the New New York of the future.

Billie Piper was present on the first recording day, Monday 19 September, performing the scenes where Rose Tyler was possessed by Cassandra, the flat, embittered remnant of humanity. The other scenes in the dungeon and its adjoining corridor were then taped later on in the week, with David Tennant arriving on the final day for the sequence where Cassandra jumped into the Doctor.

Tooth And Claw was the third episode in a row - in transmission order - to visit Tredegar, with director Euros Lyn finding the house perfect to represent Sir Robert's Torchwood Estate in Scotland, 1879.

Numerous interior scenes were recorded in October 2005, with the first day spent in the kitchen, study and library and the final day focussing on events out in the courtyard, with a second camera unit recording insert shots of Father Angelo's monks overpowering the soldiers left on guard during the visit of Queen Victoria.

On the same day that the second unit team were taping the courtyard inserts, Euros and his crew were busy elsewhere on the Tredegar Estate recording material for The Girl In The Fireplace. The house was now featuring as the palace of Versailles in bygone France, with one of the interior rooms acting as Reinette's studio for Rose's encounter with the famed Madame de Pompadour and later Reinette realising how trapped the Doctor must feel.

The second unit also recorded the Doctor's point-of-view shot of Reinette's funeral for the end of the very moving episode. A few weeks later, director Graeme Harper was back with the 91Èȱ¬ Wales team to record the night-shoot cameo appearance of British medium and Most Haunted presenter Derek Acorah for the episode Army Of Ghosts.

Doctor Who didn't return to Tredegar for over a year, but in December 2006 the house offered some ideal period interiors for Farringham School in 1913, where the Doctor had taken refuge in the guise of a human called John Smith. In the two-parter Human Nature/The Family Of Blood, Tredegar House featured as various school corridors and the room where Martha Jones was in service as a maid, plus the bedroom of Mr and Mrs Smith where in the future-that-never-was, John Smith and Joan Redfern were glimpsed with their first child.

On the second day at the estate, director Charles Palmer and his crew recorded the classroom scenes and also the scenes of the heavily made-up David Tennant playing John Smith's deathbed scene. "It took a lot longer to make him up than it did to shoot," commented Charles Palmer on Doctor Who Confidential.

August 2007 found the 91Èȱ¬ Wales team turning Tredegar House into Eddison Hall, the setting for a bizarre murder mystery set in 1926 with famed crime novelist Agatha Christie as one of those involved in the tale of The Unicorn And The Wasp.

The team were present for three days, starting with numerous flashback scenes and the fatal attack on Professor Peach in the library on Monday 13, continuing with the attack of the giant wasp-like Vespiform on the Doctor and Donna Noble on the upper landing plus the lethal soup dinner party on Tuesday 14 August.

Work on The Unicorn And The Wasp concluding at Tredegar House on Wednesday 15 August with work including the poisoned Doctor's desperate detox and frantic game of charades with Donna in the kitchens.

A few months later, the stables and courtyard of Tredegar House were again required for a Victorian setting - this time London on Christmas Eve 1851 where the Doctor was to encounter The Next Doctor, played by David Morrissey. The first two days of recording in April 2008 saw scenes with the Doctor helping his apparent alter-ego to recover his true identity as Jackson Lake in the factory outhouse which the new Doctor had made his base of operations.

The team then returned a week later for a night shoot in the factory yard which featured the other Doctor's TARDIS -Tethered Aerial Release Developed In Style - or rather a balloon basket raised by a crane.

A year later, David Tennant was back at Tredegar for his final adventure, The End Of Time, with the house actually playing the present day mansion home of millionaire Joshua Naismith for a week's recording. Accompanied by Bernard Cribbins as Wilf Mott, Tennant's Doctor landed the TARDIS in the stables of the estate on the first day of recording. The stables was the same venue which had been Jackson's refuge in The Next Doctor.

Much of the rest of the week was spent indoors taping sequences in Naismith's study, and also in the basement which had once held Cassandra and was now being used by the two Vinvocci to monitor work on the Gate.

Episode synopsis: The Christmas Invasion

Disorientated by his regeneration, the Doctor is cared for by Rose Tyler and her mother Jackie as the TARDIS crashes back to the Powell Estate in London on Christmas Eve. Out shopping with Mickey, Rose is attacked by a lethal band of Santas, whom the Doctor reveals to be merely the pilot fish which have arrived ahead of a new threat to Earth... the enslaving Sycorax.

Episode synopsis: New Earth

Arriving in the year five billion and twenty-three, the Doctor shows Rose the future of humanity on the world of New Earth in a distant galaxy. A strange summons to Ward 26 on the Doctor's psychic paper leads the pair to a hospital in the nearby metropolis of New New York where the feline Sisters of Plentitude minister to the stricken... and hide a dark secret beneath the infirmary.

Episode synopsis: Tooth And Claw

The TARDIS materialises on a moorland in Scotland in 1879 where the Doctor and Rose Tyler join Queen Victoria's party as it heads for the Torchwood Estate of Sir Robert MacLeish. However, on arrival the estate is already playing host to the sinister Father Angelo and his caged prisoner, who - at the full moon - transforms into a wolf.

Episode synopsis: The Girl In The Fireplace

The famous Madame de Pompadour frantically calls through a fireplace, summoning her life-long friend the Doctor for help as clockwork killers rampage through the palace of Versailles in eighteenth century France. Meanwhile, the TARDIS arrives on an abandoned space vessel in the far future, where the Doctor passes through a strange fireplace and finds himself in the bedroom of a little girl in Paris 1727.

Episode synopses: Army Of Ghosts/Doomsday

When Rose Tyler and the Doctor return to Rose's home to visit her mother, Jackie, the Doctor is soon intrigued by the appearance of "ghosts" across the world, and their connection to the mysterious Torchwood Institute. The spectres are soon revealed to be Cybermen, breaking through from a parallel universe via a Void. The aliens are soon engaged in battle over London with the occupants of a strange spacecraft from the Void: the Daleks.

Episode synopses: Human Nature/The Family Of Blood

November 1913, and Martha Jones is working as a maid to John Smith, a school master at Farringham School for Boys. Only John Smith looks like the Doctor, and has strange dreams about adventures in time and space. While Smith falls in love with Matron Joan Redfern, Martha has to stand alone when local scarecrows are animated by the arrival of the alien Family.

Episode synopsis: The Unicorn And The Wasp

Donna Noble and the Doctor are both delighted when, upon arriving at Lady Eddison's party in 1926, they are introduced to crime novelist Agatha Christie. At the same time, Professor Peach makes a discovery, only to be murdered in the library with some lead piping. As more of the household fall victim to the mystery assailant, the Doctor ponders on how Agatha's creativity seems to be at the centre of the tragic events.

Episode synopsis: The Next Doctor

The TARDIS deposits the Doctor in London on Christmas Eve 1851, and soon he hears his name being called to deal with a strange alien encounter in the form of a Cybershade. Only it isn't this Doctor who is being summoned. The Time Lord is confronted by a heroic frock-coated figure who seems to have acquired the Doctor's memories as the result of an encounter with the Cybermen.

Episode synopsis: The End Of Time

The Doctor's failure to respond to the summons of the Ood allows his arch-enemy the Master to resurrect himself, but in a feral, dying, skeletal state. Kidnapped by the wealthy Joshua Naismith who believes that he can bestow the gift of immortality on his daughter, the Master hatches a plan to turn all humanity into versions of himself. The Doctor and Wilf Mott battle to foil his scheme as events spiral out of control and the Time Lords on Gallifrey are called back into existence.

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