Our photographer Frank Dwyer and local resident Simon Bartle captured the photographs in the above gallery in 2015.

Filming took place in several locations in North Yorkshire and County Durham last year, including at Goodramgate and Rowntree Park in York.

The two-part drama, which stars Joanna Froggatt, is being shown on ITV at 9pm on October 31 and November 7.

It tells the story of serial killer Mary Ann Cotton, played by Froggatt.

She said: "We’ve been based in York a lot of the time and I’d forgotten how beautiful it is.

"We also had a couple of days at Saltburn, which is very close to home. So I got to stay with my parents for a few nights. And then filming at Beamish Museum in County Durham was good.”

York Press:

Producer Jake Lushington said: “It’s an amazing story about British history and probably one of the most infamous people within it that very few people know about these days.

"Unlike the endlessly told stories of Jack the Ripper. Mary Ann Cotton is an extraordinary character, an extraordinary part of our social history as well as somebody who did something quite unthinkable, both at the time and now."

He added: "We used some of the period streets of Hull for Sunderland, because Sunderland doesn’t have any. And then we’ve used various internal buildings in York. The York Museum for the jail. And a very posh street in York to depict a posh bit of Sunderland.”

In its promotional material, ITV said: "We meet Mary Ann as a loving wife and mother, newly returned to her native North East of England.

"But faced with abject poverty and an ailing husband, we see how ruthlessly determined she is to pursue her desires - and a better life ... Mary Ann is a serial killer, a poisoner whose methods leave no visible scars, allowing her tally of victims to mount unsuspected by a Victorian society unable to conceive a woman capable of such terrible crimes.

York Press:

"Travelling around the North East, she inveigles herself into the homes of unsuspecting families, marrying and creating new families of her own - before killing them, taking their money and moving on.

"Through adultery, bigamy, fraud and murder, Mary Ann betters herself socially and financially. But the more she kills, the greater the risk her heinous crimes will finally be exposed…"