Richard Hammond - '' Host '' Henry Douthwaite as Guy Fawkes Stuart Liddle as King James I Matt Rozier as Robert Catesby Jonathan Dunstan as Thomas Winteur Daniel Hoadley as Thomas Percy Toby Knight as John Wright Tallulah Boote Bond as Princess Elizabeth John Joyce as Father Henry Garnet When approached with the idea of building a full-size replica of Parliament , stuffing the basement with gunpowder and blowing it up , presenter Richard Hammond considered it a hoax . He " simply did not believe that anyone would be crazy enough to recreate the Gunpowder Plot . " Production , historically and scientifically correct , took six months . While historical research was underway in England , Hammond and explosives expert Sidney Alford had to travel to Spain to buy some gunpowder , as not enough was available in the UK . They were stopped at the French border by customs because , as Hammond recounted , " our expert unsurprisingly turned out to be contaminated with traces of just about every form of explosive known to man , triggering a security alert . " Hammond recounts that during filming the 2005 London Bombings put the production in a different frame of reference : Production designer Jo Manser built part of the House of Lords ( the Westminster tower ) to scale as it was in 1605 , and then " blew it up to see if Guy Fawkes would have succeeded 400 years ago " . Manser said the set ( 11m by 23m and 16m high ) required a production crew of 45 people , and cost £ 200k . The set was built between July and September 2005 . AP Structural engineers were consulted to assess the equations used building the structure to ensure accuracy and safety . Despite preparations , Manser noted that while sets are eventually discarded , " this was a more exciting way to dispose of it . " For the interior filming , fifteen small digital cameras were used , including PD150s . For the external shots of the explosion , a slow motion camera was used , not the type typically used in television filming . Advanitca used them to study the explosions frame by frame
2005 London Bombings
7 July 2005 London bombings
The Gunpowder Plot: Exploding the Legend