A STATELY home in North Yorkshire is to star in a new TV costume drama which starts tonight on BBC2.

Duncombe Park, just outside Helmsley, features in Parade’s End, a five-part period drama adapted for the screen by Sir Tom Stoppard and starring Benedict Cumberbatch.

The house doubles as the country residence of the aristocratic Tietjens family in a production based on the novels of Ford Madox Ford and set in the dying years of the Edwardian era leading up to the First World War.

Jake Duncombe, from Duncombe Park, said filming had been “great fun”.

He said: “It was a delight to have Mammoth Screen and HBO filming at Duncombe Park for Parade’s End. Filming not only creates great excitement, but also brings local benefits and contributes substantially to the local economy.”

The series is the latest high- profile drama to shoot in the region, with others including The Woman In Black, filmed in the Yorkshire Dales National Park, Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows Part I, filmed at Malham Cove and The King’s Speech, filmed at Bradford Bulls Stadium and Elland Road, Leeds.

Creative England, which opened for business last October and aims to provide a “one stop shop” for productions, said it was encouraging owners and managers of a range of properties of all different shapes and sizes in the region to register on its new locations database.