Look up at the frontage of Hinchingbrooke House, a stately home imposingly sited in Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire, and you might be overcome by a sense of impending dread. You might not think this of the former home of the 4th Earl of Sandwich, famously the (supposed) inventor of the self-named and much loved lunch food. Nor, we suspect, would you think it likely of a secondary school, the building’s current function. But legends linger here: once a convent, and the spectres of nuns are said to float within its walls still.
Now, illuminated in a mingling of blue and red lights, Hinchingbrooke House rings with the screams of the madness contained within. One of the most physical, massive, and deeply inventive haunts we’ve ever experienced, Horror at Hinchingbrooke House is in a league of its own.
The cast at Horror at Hinchingbrooke House is one of the most interactive troupes we’ve ever encountered in all our years of haunt going. Before we even entered the main house and following maze, clowns armed with tongs were already pulling at us near the portaloos, hammering on the doors, and even pinching our noses with their wrenches! Once inside, this physicality was entirely sustained: we were sometimes pinned to beds and detained in place by vampires, pushed and dragged through halls by hillbillies and clowns, and separated from our group for a more “personal” scare by malicious undead cowboys. Performers were skilled at shifting their acting styles; one moment ordering silence as they stalked your friends in front of you, the next exploding into overexcited laughter or compelling you into strange interactions (and testing our pole dancing skills in the process).
The variety of characters was amazing. Alongside classic horror icons like clowns and chainsaw-wielding fanatics were twisted versions of familiar faces from pop culture, from The Grudge to surreal, rotten Teletubbies wielding chainsaws that made full contact against our limbs, and to clowns who literally forced us into the boot of a car! Not every encounter was pure peril; some actors added unsettling wit, sweet-talking us into a dance or playing along before the next jolt of terror hit. One skeleton-man in the Old West segment even prepared us for execution, perhaps for rustling his cattle, the skins of which were hanging throughout his home. This involved being fitted for a noose, which was horrific and unsettling – was it performance or real peril?
There are simply too many characters here to do justice to mentioning them all in this review. Bandaged nurses and doctors, Egyptian mummies, Jason, Jeffrey Dahmer, Wednesday…the list goes on and on. The only way to see them all is to visit yourself.
As soon as we entered the site of Horror at Hinchingbrooke House and saw the unique aesthetic of the roaming clowns, we knew we were in for a treat in terms of costume, makeup and mask work at the attraction. Every single actor we encountered, and there must have been at least a hundred, if not more, was a complete character from head to toe, with some of the best costume, mask and makeup work we have seen all season. Many of the clown masks, especially in the clown maze, looked custom built, and the skeleton masks in the Western maze were really quite something. All of the characters were just so unique and unforgettable, such as the demonic Teletubbies or the bandaged nurses in Silent Hill, with clearly so much work put into each and every look. Another highlight of the night were the nuns we encountered early on in the maze, whose makeup was phenomenal, their glow-in-the-dark faces appearing so plastic like that we really could not tell which nuns were real and which ones were mannequins until it was too late!
All in all, our customer service experience with Horror at Hinchingbrooke House was great, with really helpful interactions with the company on digital platforms, as well as good interchange with staff onsite. The site was easy to locate, park at and navigate, with enough lighting and signage throughout. The only thing we would have liked is maybe a bit more information online about all the different zones, but then again perhaps it’s best for it to all be a surprise when experiencing it!
Horror at Hinchingbrooke House is sited at the eponymous Hinchingbrooke House itself, a stately home with grand entrance illuminated by dusky lighting. This creates a really great atmosphere as you line up, and a small graveyard is arrayed on the lawn before the imposing facade, with a soundtrack of alternative music to get you in the mood for fear. The real highlight here was the roaming actors, who attacked everyone both waiting in the queue and just outside the grounds (as we have mentioned in the cast section). It plunged you deeper into the feeling that you might actually be afraid for your life at this haunt.
Once inside, each segment built a well-realised and completely encompassing world of its own, and we felt even when there were lulls between the sections, the lighting and sound continued to subsume us within those worlds. The only places where this might have been a little jarring were between the Taylor Swift and Clown segments, where some slight noise bleed was noticeable. At the end, you are delivered into a small bar area with a roaming actor and then you can walk back through the entranceway to the carpark.
While mostly simple, the special effects in this maze were quite spectacular. This was not a big high-tech haunt of animatronics, but was more about creating a sense of total immersion from one space to the next. Every single room felt completely realised, and we really felt like we were entering different movies and spaces due to the professional combination of lighting and scenic design. Every single room had a soundtrack appropriate to its space, whether that be a film score or a song associated with that media. Most memorable in terms of sound design were definitely the first series of mazes which included Silent Hill, as the intensity both sonically and aesthetically here was extremely high, and we felt like we really were living in the world around us. The Taylor Swift Goes Nuts section was also quite memorable in terms of soundscape, with each room dedicated to different Swiftie songs – quite ridiculous, but very fun!
The Grindhouse Cinema scene design was also fantastic – each of the films we encountered were unique worlds, from an Egyptian tomb to Camp Crystal Lake with tents and fire pits, and the design in between the spaces was great fun with silky velvet walls as if you were going through curtains to a real cinema. In another part we started off in an actual diner, continuing a journey through a freezer, and in yet another we entered a Western saloon, complete with cow hides hanging everywhere.
We also can’t forget the last two zones on the site, as these were certainly full of the most unique scene designs and special effects. The clown area actually had a full on play zone, forcing us to climb up, down and all around and through ball pits, all culminating in a clown dance party with stripper pole. And then the final part, Stinkyface World, was probably the most disgusting thing we’ve ever encountered in a haunt – the smell pods really reeked of faeces and we had disgusting things shoved in our faces, including toilet brushes, all while being forced to listen to vomiting and bathroom sounds – the intensity of sensory elements here was ridiculous!
There really is just so much going on in this hour long maze with what seemed like endless rooms jam-packed with so much to see and take in, and we also don’t want to spoil everything! But suffice it to say you will feel absolutely knackered by the end of this maze with just how many worlds you’ve ventured through and survived – it really is an incredible feat of design and theatricality!
21. How scary was it? (35% of score): 9
22. How well did they provide scares to everyone in the group? (15% of score): 8.25
23. How predictable were the scares? (25% of score): 10
24. How well did they provide a wide variety (types) of scares? (10% of score): 8.25
25. How strong was the ending / finale? (15% of score): 8.25
Where do we start with these scares? Scares at Horror at Hinchingbrooke House were extremely physical, which meant that you could be grabbed, pulled, tickled and made to do things around the site. Some of the most shocking scares were when hands reached out to grab you from underneath furniture, sometimes forcing you in place and not letting you go. At other times mannequins would suddenly come to life, enveloping you in their arms and pulling you into the depths and away from your party. Because anything and everything can touch you in this maze, you don’t know what is safe and what isn’t, leaving your adrenaline peaking the entire way through.
While there are some jump scares in this haunt, it feels much more ramped up than your generic pop scares – actors not only startle, but they touch, capture and just generally super creep you out while they do so! They also are great at using distraction techniques, with many rooms utilising decoys, forcing us to wonder what figure might suddenly attack us when surrounded on all sides. Quite a few characters love playing hide and seek here, eerily appearing before disappearing again, never making it quite clear where they might be hiding.
We can’t forget the final room of the night, which used sensational scare tactics to best effect with nauseating smells and sounds, along with being touched with disgusting liquids, which all created quite visceral and grotesque atmospheres.
This was certainly one of the scarier mazes we’ve attended, purely due to the psychological fear of never knowing where the next physical attack may come from, with all your senses completely overwhelmed by the environment around you and all the horrifying beings, both real and not, that enveloped us in an hour long trail of terror.
Factoring out any of the wait times, this experience took us roughly sixty minutes, and at only £27 for their off peak dates, this comes to an amazing minute per pound ratio of 2.23, and with the insane quality from start to finish with this maze we’re not sure what more you could ask for in terms of value. Sure, the entertainment outside of the experience itself is minimal, with a few concessionary stalls at the entrance and a fun bar after you survive the maze itself, and not to forget an amazing cast of incredibly interactive scare actors to keep you entertained while you roam the site and queue for the experience. This is undoubtedly one of the best mazes we’ve traversed in the UK, with incredible costumes, makeup, masks, scene design and scares, so the value here is off the charts. If you’re game for a contact maze and can only visit one attraction for the Halloween season, Horror at Hinchingbrooke House has to be it!
Hinchingbrooke House, Brampton Road, Huntingdon, United Kingdom PE29 3BN