Ok, wipe the drool off your screen. The glorious house you’re looking at is Highclere Castle, being used as Downton Abbey in the tv series you might have heard of.
The current castle was built in 1842 by Sir Charles Barry, the architect who designed the Houses of Parliament in London. The property has been owned by the Carnarvon family since 1679. The site has had one house or another on it since at least 1086 – the date of completion of the famed Domesday Book, which records a house being situated there. Today, the Hampshire estate covers 1,000 acres.
Does the Carnarvon name sound familiar? That’s because the 5th Earl of Carnarvon financed Howard Carter’s Egyptian archeological excavations. Carter laboured long and hard in Egypt for many seasons, and in 1922 was rewarded with the discovery of Tutankamun’s tomb, not wholly undisturbed, but still full of funerary treasure. Highclere has an exhibition of antiquities from Carter’s excavations. (Can you imagine a Downton episode with this worked into the story? Oh, please please please.)
The house is open to the public, but is currently closed until April. Here’s a happy quote from their website: “ITV have announced that a third Downton Abbey series is due to be filmed at Highclere Castle this spring and summer [2012] for release in the Autumn.”
There is a book out, “Lady Almina and the Real Downton Abbey: the Lost Legacy of Highclere Castle”, written by the current countess, Fiona. Almina Wombwell was believed not to be Mr. Wombwell’s daughter, but in fact the illegitimate daughter of banking tycoon Alfred de Rothschild, who never married. He doted on her, and made her his heir. In 1895, at age 19, Almina married the 5th Earl of Carnarvon. They had two children, a son and a daughter, so the succession was assured tidily, not all messy as in the Downton series.
The 5th earl died in 1923 of a perfectly normal infected mosquito bite, and not from the Mummy’s Curse, as was breathlessly rumoured. Howard Carter died years later, in 1939, at the age of 64, of lymphoma, thus putting a further kibosh on the Pharaoh’s Curse business.
An unsubstantiated rumour about the 6th earl having been fathered not by the 5th earl but by a close family friend, Prince Victor Duleep Singh, a godson of Queen Victoria and son of the last Maharajah of Lahore, has been woven into the tv series as that thread about the daughter and that guy (trying not to spoilerise here).
Also woven into the story is the fact that Almina was instrumental in having Highclere converted into an army hospital in 1915. The current earl and countess support many army charities, often using the estate for fund-raising purposes.
Almina remarried very soon after the earl’s death, became involved in a scandalous court case and died, sadly, in straitened circumstances, in 1969.
In the publishing world, booksellers are working hard to take advantage of Downton-mania to sell a few books. Here is a brief list:
- “The World of Downton Abbey”, by Jessica Fellowes, niece of Julian Fellowes, the series’ creator.
- “The Real Life Downton Abbey: How Life Was Really Lived in Stately Homes a Century Ago”, by Jacky Hyams.
- “Below Stairs: The Classic Kitchen Maid’s Memoir That Inspired ‘Upstairs, Downstairs’ and ‘Downton Abbey'”, by Margaret Powell.
- “Rose: My Life in Service to Lady Astor”, by Rosina Harrison. The book was originally published in 1975, with the title “Rose: My Life in Service”.
- “Brideshead Revisited”, by Evelyn Waugh. Granada Television filmed this acclaimed novel in 1981. It was filmed again in 2008, but that one doesn’t have Laurence Olivier giving a brilliant, snotty, condescending turn as Lord Marchmain.
- “The Life and Secrets of Almina Carnarvon: 5th Countess of Carnarvon, of Tutankhamun Fame”, by William P. Cross. This is a self-published title, and its scandal-laden contents seem to be little supported by real evidence.
Got any further Downton-ish recommendations?
