Where to find your favourite Potter places

• Many of the scenes from the Harry Potter books are filmed on location in Britain, with real buildings and landscapes standing in for magical fictional ones. For example…
• Hogwarts School, the centrepiece of Harry’s life, is comprised of the exterior of Alnwick Castle, Northumberland; the cloisters of New College, Oxford; and interiors from Harrow School, Durham Cathedral, Gloucester Cathedral, Lacock Abbey (Wiltshire), the Bodleian Library and Christ Church College, Oxford.
• Privet Drive, the street where Harry’s awful foster family the Dursleys live, is shot in the leafy suburb of Martins Heron, near Bracknell, Berkshire. The area is also the location of many Tesco TV ads.
• Malfoy Manor: the home of Harry’s enemies the Malfoys, which features in The Deathly Hallows, was inspired by and partly shot at Hardwick Hall, a Tudor mansion near Chesterfield, Derbyshire.
• Gringotts Bank, the financial heart of wizardry, is actually Australia House in The Strand, London.
• Diagon Alley — the shopping street where Harry buys his wizard supplies — is Leadenhall Market in the City of London.
• The Forbidden Forest, the dangerous territory near Hogwarts School, is actually the delightful woodland of Ashridge, near Berkhamsted, Hertfordhshire.
• One other place dear to the hearts of all Potter fans is… the Buffet King all-you-can-eat Chinese restaurant in Edinburgh, which used to be Nicholson’s Café, where a near-penniless J K Rowling wrote a lot of the early Potter stories.