Margam Country Park

[archaeologist-d.livejournal.com]

Margam Country Park is a combination of beautiful grassland and wood, an imposing Victorian castle and 12^th century ruins. It's been used in a number of tv shows including Doctor Who, Torchwood and Merlin.

How it's used in Merlin

Well, we don't know just yet. The knights were spotted there in spring 2012 but no pictures of filming were allowed. When I was there, several of the employees pointed out where the filming had taken place (note: the employees said that it was a lone tree but there were two lone trees in that area). On the downloadable map, the forested area between #6 (Visitor's Centre) and #9 (the Go Ape! fun section) was used as well as the wall just outside Charlotte's Pantry near #6.

The place itself

It's over 1000 acres of parkland. There is an 18^th century Orangery (used in Torchwood), a Cisterican abbey ruins dating from 1147, and a very impressive Tudor-Gothic style Victorian Mansion House built in 1827 (also used in Torchwood and Doctor Who).  In July, they were filming an American tv show, DaVinci Demons, so it's used extensively in film.

For the kids, there is a narrow-gauge railroad, a Fairy-tale land, farm trail and the Go Ape high wire adventure area.

Links and details

The official site for Margam Country Park
The Wikipedia entry for Margam Country Park
The location on Google Maps
The official map of the park
Pictures are also found on the merlinlocations flickr site.
There is a £3.90 fee for car parking.

The address is: Margam Country Park, Margam, Neath Port Talbot, Wales

Rating

It's a very pretty park and there are lots of things to do. Even though it probably will not be used extensively on Merlin, I'd give it 3 pointy hats.

The wall they used in filming.





The road up to the woods filming locations






This seems the more likely lone tree location the employees were talking about.









The Cistercian abbey that they used in Episode 1 of Series 5.