Herstmonceux Castle revealed as secret location for celebrity fugitives on Channel 4 show

A TV programme which saw three celebrity fugitives head to East Sussex, aired on Channel 4 this weekend.
Posters circulated on social media in a bid to catch the celebrity fugitives. Photos courtesy of Twitter/Hunted HQ.Posters circulated on social media in a bid to catch the celebrity fugitives. Photos courtesy of Twitter/Hunted HQ.
Posters circulated on social media in a bid to catch the celebrity fugitives. Photos courtesy of Twitter/Hunted HQ.

Celebrity Hunted recruited eight well-known personalities to see if they could avoid capture for two weeks in aid of Stand Up To Cancer.

The celebrities – who included The Only Way is Essex stars Lydia Bright and Lucy Mecklenburgh, as well as Boris Johnson’s father Stanley Johnson and Made in Chelsea’s Georgia Toffolo – were on the run from the ‘hunters’, a group of former police and intelligence officers.

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Those four celebrities were all caught by the hunters before the programme’s finale, as was rugby player Martin Offiah MBE. That left three competitors in with a chance of beating the ‘hunters’ – Welsh Rugby Union star Gavin Henson, and chefs Aldo Zilli and Jean-Christophe Novelli.

The trio’s aim was to make it to a secret location for a specific time, where they would be extracted by either helicopter or boat. To find out the location, the celebrities had to decode an advert in the national Metro newspaper.

The advert said: “To my love, where shall we run away to for a weekend break? Chester, Bath, Ascot, St Ives, Liverpool, Inverness, Ogmore by Sea, Oswestry. You choose...”

By taking the second letter of each location listed, the fugitives were told to head to Hastings.

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Catching on to the possible extraction location, the team of ‘hunters’ issued wanted posters for the trio, circulating them far and wide on social media. Teams of ‘hunters’ also made their way to Hastings, and can be seen in the footage driving along Marina, standing on the West Hill with a pair of binoculars, and flying a helicopter over the seafront.

However, the fugitives had been given further details of their extraction point – at Herstmonceux Castle – and managed to escape Hastings without being captured.

In a race against time, the celebrities dashed through land surrounding Herstmonceux Castle to an opening behind the observatory, where a helicopter was waiting to extract them.

All three successfully made it on board before a ‘hunter’ was able to catch them, thus winning money for the national charity, Stand Up To Cancer.