MOVIE NEWS – Twenty years after serving as Bruce Wayne’s home in Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins, the real-life “Wayne Manor” is sliding toward ruin. Mentmore Towers, the grand neo-Renaissance country house used by Warner Bros. as Christian Bale’s on-screen residence, has been left to decay for so long that it now risks becoming one of Britain’s most spectacular, and preventable, heritage disasters.
It is hard to imagine Bruce Wayne without a mansion worthy of his name. The home of Gotham’s richest man has been Batman’s base of operations in countless stories, and in one form or another, it has appeared on the big screen in almost every major film adaptation of the character. Christopher Nolan’s 2005 film Batman Begins was no exception: for that production, Warner Bros. chose the imposing neo-Renaissance estate of Mentmore Towers to play the role of Wayne Manor and Christian Bale’s “home”.
Two decades on from that big-budget shoot, the fate of the so-called Wayne residence looks grim. The mansion has fallen into a heartbreaking state of disrepair after years of neglect. Despite still having a striking, almost regal beauty from a distance, the building is suffering serious structural damage, with compromised roofs, crumbling walls and long-neglected floors. Its future appears bleak, and British authorities have had it on Historic England’s Heritage at Risk Register for years now, with no real solution on the horizon.
Worth An Estimated £31 Million
Its lavish interiors and intricate architectural details once made it a perfect filming location. Beyond Nolan’s Batman Begins, the mansion also hosted productions such as Stephen Sommers’ The Mummy Returns and Stanley Kubrick’s 1999 film Eyes Wide Shut. Today, Mentmore Towers is estimated to be worth around 31 million pounds sterling, a price tag that only a Wayne-like fortune could comfortably cover. Below, a photo gallery of the villa shows how much of its former grandeur still survives, even in decay.
“It’s a shame. (…) The ceilings are falling in. It’s hard to see how anyone could do anything about this because rehabilitating the building would cost a lot of money. There’s a library with secret rooms behind bookshelves. I recognized it from the Batman movie. It’s sad when you think about its history and what was filmed there, especially since it’s such a beautiful house.” These were the words of photographer Ben James, who visited the site about a year ago and spoke to the Bucks Herald about what he saw.
More than a year later, his comments remain painfully accurate, and the situation has not improved. Mentmore Towers was built in the mid-19th century, during the Victorian era, and in 1997 it was bought by a British property developer who planned to transform it into a luxury hotel with a range of amenities and 171 rooms. Those plans never came to fruition, partly because of the 2008 financial crisis, and the building has effectively been abandoned ever since. The latest official word is that local authorities and Historic England are still in talks with the owner to force through a conservation plan, but the lack of visible progress means Mentmore Towers continues to deteriorate at an alarming rate.
Wayne Manor itself has often been shown in ruin in various stories and films, a direct consequence of Batman’s endless war on crime. In Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, for example, the house appears as a completely abandoned shell, a state the “superhero” is later meant to remedy by rebuilding it as the first Hall of Justice – a renovation that is mentioned in the lore but never actually depicted on screen.
Source: Daily Mirror
