First look: Behind the scenes at Yorkshire’s new film studios

"This is the throne room," she says, holding the drapes aside so I can see better.

We step through. It doesn't, at first glance, look much like a throne room. There's no throne, for a start: and everything is dim and shrouded in sheets of filmy plastic that hang from on high like spooky veils.

If anything, it looks like Miss Havisham's house in Dickens' Great Expectations: or the Sleeping Beauty's slumbering fairytale palace. The silence is deep, and those plastic drapes could almost be cobwebs.

Fans of ITV's hit new drama Victoria would recognise it at once, however.

The series, starring Jemma Coleman as a young Queen Victoria, was filmed at locations across Yorkshire. But the interior scenes were all shot here, at the new Church Fenton Studios not far from York.

Production company Mammoth effectively recreated Buckingham Palace in this one enormous hangar at the former Second World War airbase. In the huge space beneath the hangar's roof they built recreations of the throne room, the ballroom, the Long Gallery where some of the palace's finest artworks are displayed, the kitchens, and even one of the external balconies.

All is dark and eerie now. The sets huddle in the centre of the huge hangar, presenting their backs to you as you step through the doors. They look like a giant flatpack castle from Ikea.

Hangar 1 at Church Fenton, where Victoria was filmed

It is dark inside, the light coming from just a few light fixtures high overhead. The smell of sawdust hangs in the air. But push through a gap where the different pieces of set lean together and you get to wander around the spaces trodden by Coleman and her co-star Rufus Sewell (Lord Melbourne) in the drama. Long chains dangle from the ceiling high overhead, ringing gently as you brush past them - presumably something to do to with the lighting rigs. Black plastic covers the floor of the Long Gallery: the great chandeliers that once hung suspended from the ceiling of the ballroom are draped in more plastic.

A few short months ago, this enormous studio was alive with noise and bustle: thronging with actors, extras, camera crews, sound and lighting technicians, wardrobe and make-up assistants and the host of other helpers vital in the filming of a big TV production. More would have been using the canteen in another part of the hangar, or sitting on the tarmac outside, grabbing a coffee during a break in filming.

Filming of Victoria on set at Church Fenton. Photo: ITV

The TV crews, stars and extras are all gone now, leaving the giant hangar to return to silence. But the hope is that a second series of Victoria will be commissioned. So the sets are all still here, draped in plastic, slumbering in the darkness, waiting for the day when the lights, camera and action return...

There's very tight security, as you'd expect. Our visit had to be pre-arranged and meticulously organised. But it made for a memorable experience.

Hangar 1, where the Buckingham Palace interiors have been built, is huge. There's 34,000 feet of floor space. But what is every bit as important is the towering height of the building, says Sally, the chief executive of Yorkshire film and TV investment organisation Screen Yorkshire. There is room in here to build those complete palace interiors, with the imposingly high walls and ceilings you expect - and still have plenty of room above to suspend lighting rigs.

There probably isn't a film/ TV studio like it anywhere else in the north of England. And Victoria, the first major production to be shot here, really does mark a new era in film and TV production for Yorkshire, Sally says.

The Church Fenton hangar which is now a film studio

We've always had glorious locations for filming. What makes Yorkshire special - and what has always attracted the location scouts - is the sheer diversity of the locations we can offer, Sally says.

"We've got country houses from all periods, and we've got fantastic coastline. We've got rural market towns, and we can do gritty urban, contemporary urban, café culture. We've even got the curry houses of Bradford.

"You can do almost anything in Yorkshire except desert or possibly a Norwegian fjord!"

Through Screen Yorkshire and its European Regional Development Fund-backed Yorkshire Content Fund, there is also access to financing: Screen Yorkshire actually invests in many of the productions it helps bring to Yorkshire.

What we haven't had until now is decent-sized studio space - the kind that major productions require for constructing the sets they need to shoot interiors. "So productions would come to Yorkshire to do location filming, but for the interiors, the studio work, they would have to go elsewhere," Sally says.

The Church Fenton Studios have changed all that.

It all happened very quickly. Church Fenton airfield is owned by fruit farmer Chris Makin of Makin Enterprise.

Screen Yorkshire began talking to him early last year about the possibility of using the hangars for film and TV production. Then Mammoth, who Screen Yorkshire had dealt with before, came north looking for locations to film Victoria. "And I said 'actually, we've got this big internal space now'," says Sally.

Mammoth came to Church Fenton, had a look around, and liked what they saw.

Church Fenton Studio: Hangar 1, where Victoria was filmed, is on the left. The other hangars could also be used for filming

Selby District Council were hugely helpful over the application for change of use of the airfield's hangars, Sally says. "They completely understood what we were trying to do." And incredibly, Mammoth were on site by October last year.

They spent seven months filming, both on the sets at Church Fenton and at locations around Yorkshire, and the first 90-minute episode of Victoria was broadcast on August 28.

Victoria is an incredible calling-card for the new studio, Sally says: a lavish, major production that will be seen around the world. It is proof positive that the new studio is able to host big-scale productions.

So are there any other productions lined up?

Hangar 1 is tied up at the moment because it still has the Buckingham Palace sets standing under wraps, awaiting what will hopefully be a second series of Victoria.

But there's another hangar of exactly the same size standing empty: and a third, slightly smaller, which is partially dismantled but could easily be brought back into use, Sally says. So the potential of the studio is enormous.

She's been talking to other producers - including from the US - and showing them around. All have been impressed. Not just by the huge hangars, but also by the original wartime outbuildings - which were used for everything from workshops to the art department and props warehouse during filming of Victoria - and, above all, by the acres of outdoor space, which stretches off across the runways.

It's ideal for all the vans and cast and crew cars, Sally points out. There's even an on-site airport. "So you can fly your talent directly here!"

An airport at your workplace? Quite a selling point - especially if we start getting some of the really big stars...

The Airport

Having an on-site airport at a film studio might be great for flying big-name stars to and from set.

But, as The Press reported last week, Makin Enterprise, which owns the Church Fenton airfield, is keen to develop it into a commercial airport.

East Leeds Airport, as the airfield is known, has been granted a licence by the Civil Aviation Authority to operate chartered flights from next year. Makin hopes to operate up to four commercial flights a day to European destinations including Malaga in Spain, Faro in Portugal and Cannes in the French Riviera.

The headquarters of East Leeds Airport at Church Fenton

That may be some way off yet. Selby District Council says it would need planning permission, and no application has yet been lodged.

But if it does happen, might not regular flights be quite disruptive for a film studio sharing the airfield?

Not really, insists Screen Yorkshire chief executive Sally Joynson.

The airfield is enormous. The film studio is at one side, and flights would be far away on the other side.

"It would be a small number of flights, pre-planned," she says. "There have been long discussions to minimise disruption to filming schedules. When a flight goes out or comes in, you would have a short break to grab a cup of coffee, then pick up straight after that."

Filming in Yorkshire

Film is big business, says Screen Yorkshire boss Sally Joynson.

In recent years, investment from Screen Yorkshire, coupled with the White Rose county's stunning locations, has helped draw a string of big productions here - 35 of them in the last four years alone, raging from the recent Dad's Army film and Swallows and Amazons (in cinemas now) to TV's Peaky Blinders, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, Victoria and Channel 4's four-part drama National Treasure, which hits our TV screens next week.

Locations across the county have been used - from Sheffield, Dewsbury and Halifax to York city centre, Whitby Pier, Harewood House, Newby Hall, Castle Howard, Beverley Minster and Bridlington old town.

Depending on the size of a production, location shooting generally pumps more than £20,000 a day into the local economy, Sally says. The industry as a whole is easily worth £100 million a year to the Yorkshire economy, she believes.

And if the Church Fenton studio really does take off - as there is every reason to hope it will - that will only increase.

"It really does open up new opportunities," she says. "Yorkshire is on the map!"