Sam and I watched The Dark Knight Rises last night, the third in the Batman trilogy. Great film, as good as, maybe better than, numbers one and two. I was keen to see the interiors from Osterley House  which we saw when we were there in October. What I didn’t realise was that the exteriors of Wayne Manor were shot at a completely different location, at Wollaton Hall near Nottingham. I checked it out on the web, and was struck by another coincidence. It is quite close to where Mabel Butler’s father was born and spent his early years, in Risley. So while my mother’s father grew up near Osterley in the early 1900s, his mother’s father grew up near Wollaton in the mid 1800s. Though I feel fairly sure there was no connection between Ephraim Butler, born March 27, 1837 in the picturesque village of Risley, Nottinghamshire, and the great house of Wollaton. In the 1800s and early 1900s such great houses could only be experienced by the rich, the elite of society. My mother’s ancestors were far from such. But in the world of today all of us can experience such amazing places, preserved for future generations to enjoy, whether by visiting, or through the camera lens of the entertainments of our time.