09/19/2026
Wow!
That “$100,000 mansion in Beverly Hills” was a whole lot more impressive in real life than Jed Clampett ever seemed to realize!
When The Beverly Hillbillies began in 1962, producers needed a house that would instantly tell viewers just how dramatically the Clampetts’ lives had changed. They found exactly what they needed in Bel-Air: the enormous Kirkeby Estate, later known as Chartwell.
And this wasn’t just another nice Beverly Hills home.
The French château-style mansion had been built in the 1930s for engineer Lynn Atkinson. Contemporary accounts put its original construction cost at around $2 million—an extraordinary amount of money during the Great Depression. With its limestone exterior, ballroom, grand reception rooms and enormous grounds, it belonged to a tiny class of Los Angeles estates that even wealthy people would have considered exceptional.
By the time The Beverly Hillbillies came along, the property belonged to the family of hotelier Arnold Kirkeby. Series creator Paul Henning realized it was perfect for the Clampetts, and an arrangement was made allowing the production to film the mansion and grounds for about $500 a day. One important condition was reportedly attached: the producers were not supposed to publicize the home's address.
That request became rather difficult once The Beverly Hillbillies turned into one of America's biggest television shows. Fans recognized the mansion, sightseeing buses began coming through the neighborhood, and the house became almost as famous as the Clampetts themselves.
There’s another fun bit of TV magic: most of the series was not actually filmed inside this mansion. Chartwell was primarily used for the recognizable exterior and grounds; the Clampetts’ interior scenes were created elsewhere for production.
And the old Clampett mansion is still there today.
The estate remains in Bel-Air, Los Angeles, although decades of expansion and renovation have made the property even more spectacular. It eventually grew into roughly a 10-acre estate, with manicured gardens, a 75-foot swimming pool, tennis court, huge w**e cellar and underground parking.
Then came an incredible final chapter.
In 2019, Lachlan Murdoch purchased Chartwell for about $150 million, at the time setting a California residential sales record. So the house that television audiences once watched a family of newly rich hillbillies move into became, decades later, one of the most expensive homes ever sold in America.
More than 60 years later, that beautiful stone façade is still standing.
Jed struck oil and moved to Beverly Hills… but even Jed might have been shocked to learn what his old “Clampett mansion” would someday be worth!
