WHEN the Far From The Madding Crowd film hits cinema screens there will be one person who will feel more at home than anyone else watching the latest adaptation of Thomas Hardy’s classic novel.

For three months, Countess of Sandwich Caroline Montagu hosted the film crew as they shot most of the major scenes in and around Mapperton, the beautiful 16th century manor house where she lives with her husband John, Earl of Sandwich.

Lady Sandwich said: “Mapperton is our home; it’s a very special and historic place, but it’s where we live.

“For the film, they transformed the front courtyard into a grubby, messy 19th century farmyard, complete with a longhorn cow and calf.

“This was right outside our bedroom window and was so realistic that one night it attracted a tawny owl hunting for rats.

The owl perched on top of the barn and hooted, which woke up the cow and calf, which started mooing. They mooed all night and I got no sleep at all.”

Visit Mapperton today and no trace of that farmyard remains. The elegant garden is a courtyard surrounded on three sides by golden stone and bounded on the fourth with a low wall and gates topped with griffins.

A special Dorset premiere of the Far From the Madding Crowd is being held at the Electric Palace in Bridport this Friday, April 17 – two weeks before the film’s release on May 1.

The film has been directed by Thomas Vinterberg with the screenplay by David Nicholls and stars A-listers such as Carey Mulligan, Matthew Scoenaerts, Michael Sheen, Tom Sturridge and Juno Temple.

The big screen treatment of Hardy’s classic novel is a collaboration between British production company DNA films, studio Fox Searchlight and the BBC.

It is hoped the film will repeat the success of the 1967 adaptation of the novel, which starred Julie Christie and Terence Stamp.

For the latest adaptation, filming also took place inside Mapperton House, Lady Sandwich added.

She said: “Life had to go on around the filming and we were here most of the time. It was great fun seeing behind the scenes, especially when things were being improvised as they have to be.

“It poured with rain for most of the night shots and they had to move the harvest supper scene into the stable yard block.

"We were all standing around under giant umbrellas watching them film with the rain tipping down.

“The night scenes were some of the most beautiful despite the rain. They put up these huge gantries and the whole place was illuminated, it looked fantastic.”