It’s that time of year once again where we escape into the idyllic Christmas story of The Holiday, where Hollywood characters swoon over each other in gorgeous locations across England and California. But where is The Holiday filmed?

Starring Kate Winslet, Cameron Diaz, Jude Law and Jack Black, The Holiday sees two women swap houses over the festive season to experience something new after two very different experiences of heartbreak.

The film is a classic, we love it, but where exactly were these iconic romantic scenes filmed, including sweeping scenes of the English countryside and the gingerbread country cottage of dreams?

Glamour did the research so you didn’t have to – here’s the top The Holiday filming locations used in the Christmas classic.

The Holiday filming locations

Holmbury St Mary, Surrey

©Columbia Pictures/Courtesy Everett Collection

Kate Winslet’s character Iris lives in a cookie cutter cottage in the film – but did you know that The Holiday cottage itself was actually a set built in Shere in Surrey, and was inspired by a real home named Honeysuckle Cottage in nearby village in Holmbury St Mary.

“The cottage … it was quite amazing to watch it being built. It started off as a field and four wooden pegs, and a cross bar held up by two tall men,” location manager Benjamin Greenacre has said. “Within four days, you could actually see the cottage. And then four weeks spent landscaping and gardening the outside to make it look like the garden has been there for, you know, 200 years. As long as the cottage has been there. So the house itself just appeared in one week.”

The White Horse Pub in Shere, Surrey

Jude Law‘s Graham and Cameron Diaz‘s Amanda have a few smouldering, flirty scenes in British pubs. Enough for us to hope for a similar cosy, cute experience with a man or woman of mystery this Christmas.

Turns out their pub antics were filmed in a real pub in Surrey with a quintessentially British name, The White Horse, in Surrey village Shere, which gives you the perfect vibe of winding streets, village green and a church. The perfect departure from city life. Shere is also said to be the most photographed Surrey town. Nearby town Godalming was also used for shots of Iris’ village.

On choosing this as a The Holiday filming location, the film’s production designer Jon Hutman explained “We came upon Shere in Surrey (which is in the south of England)  almost by chance. Once we found the perfect site,  production (for Iris’s house) began just up the hill from St. James Church and down the road from the 16th century White Horse Tavern.”