TATTON Locations has officially opened a new workspace for the film and TV industry at its studio HQ in Altrincham.

The development of the North Range at Ashley Hall has followed an amazing year for Tatton Locations, which has welcomed some of the biggest players in broadcasting, including the BBC, Netflix, Fox Searchlight, ITV, Channel 4 and Sky.

Recent productions filmed at Tatton Locations’ sites include some of the UK’s most popular TV shows – Peaky Blinders, The Worst Witch, Coronation Street and Hollyoaks.

In addition, locations have been supplied to Fox Searchlight to film scenes for the ‘Tolkien’ biopic starring Nicholas Hoult and Lily Collins; Netflix TV series ‘Safe’ starring Michael C Hall, and Sky One’s upcoming TV series ‘Curfew’ starring Sean Bean, Billy Zane, Miranda Richardson and Adrian Lester.

In all more than 850 freelance and film crew jobs have been supported through productions at Tatton Studios in the last year.

Now, with the 560sqm/6027sqft North Range filling up quickly and the increasing interest in Tatton Locations’ offer from major industry companies, plans are being progressed to expand it further.

Tatton Locations is part of the Tatton Group, and offers film makers and producers a mixture of rural and historic locations across 6,500 acres in Cheshire.

Charlie Greenstein, head of TV & & Film, Tatton Locations, said: “The North Range is our ‘creative hub’ at Tatton Studios, and we want to attract a range of different trades within the industry to provide a kind of one stop shop for incoming filmmakers and it’s already proving very attractive.

“Already on site we have companies doing independent production, set design, event and equipment hire as well as an independent camera operator and a web designer and a broadcast lighting company is about to move in.”

Abbie Morrow, Tatton Locations’ TV and Film co-ordinator, said: “The catalyst for the North Range has been the tremendous interest we’ve had in using our unparalleled portfolio of land and properties, which are all available as locations and include diverse landscapes, working farms, numerous historic houses and estates, and more than six hundred domestic properties.

“We’ve only just launched, but the North Range will be full by the end of the year and it means that we will have to expand further next year to meet the interest we are generating from across the industry.”

Charlie, a BBC trained production manager with an extensive background in production, said the appeal of Tatton Studios was the outside space on offer.

She said: “We are in the countryside and there is so much scope for people to think ‘big’.

“We are currently talking to some well-known production companies who are looking for homes for one of their big shows, which is a really exciting prospect. If that happens they may well take on the North Range as their production office.

“TV production has shot up, driven by the generation of original content by the major players, but London is saturated and the industry is looking north, because there is space here for both interior and exterior set builds. We have this, it’s our USP.”