Throughout the years, set builders and designers working on Westeros have had their work cut out for them, developing some of the biggest and most majestic sets on television — look no further than those used to transport viewers into King's Landing, Winterfell, The Wall, and so on. In House of the Dragon, the series beat its own records with Tumbleton. A well-known market town in the Reach, Tumbleton features prominently in the Game of Thrones prequel, and the crew pulled out all the stops to make it as big, sprawling, and authentic as possible.
When the set designers of House of the Dragon developed King's Landing and other places, they had a road map; we've seen these places depicted before in the original series. But for Tumbletown, it's the first-ever time we've seen the location featured on our screens, so the crew had the opportunity to work on a place from scratch, letting their imaginations run wild. Turns out, a healthy chunk of the season's budget went into the development of Tumbleton, an exterior set at Leavesden Studios.
To call the set impressive would be something of an understatement. “This is the most incredible set I’ve ever filmed on," star James Norton (Ormund Hightower) said of the set in The House That Dragons Built, an official behind-the-scenes series of featurettes. "I think it’s one of the most incredible sets ever built. It’s three-quarters of an acre — it is literally a whole town.”
According to showrunner Ryan Condal, no set in House of the Dragon history has ever reached the same scale. “It’s the biggest set we’ve ever built," he said. "As anyone that’s read the book knows that Tumbleton plays a major role. And we wanted to introduce it in a big way here that made it really satisfying.”
So how did the team tasked with piecing it together achieve such a feat? Well, they thought big from the outset. “Right from the very first steel frame that went up for where the gates are, the main gates, you are 40-off feet high. It is twice the size of King’s Landing; it’s a big build. A lot of tube, a lot of fittings," construction manager Malcom Roberts said. “I was thinking, will the details ever stop coming, from the windows to the shutters? One of our biggest challenges is making those roofs in a way that we could just drop them on afterwards. “
For number geeks out there, senior art director Nick Wilkinson has you covered. It's a 75x140 meter set. They used 4300 sheets of 18 millimetre plywood; 25,366 of 4x2 timber; and 800,000 screws.
All things considered, it was a gargantuan effort, but not without its initial faults. “The waterproofing wasn’t great," Malcolm Roberts said, adding that the issue was promptly fixed.
House of the Dragon season 3 returns Sundays on HBO.
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