Where is Downton Abbey?

Downton Abbey is filmed at Highclere Castle

Downton Abbey is filmed at Highclere Castle, an estate now forever recognizable as the iconic Grantham home. In real life, Highclere Castle is home the 8th Earl and Countess of Carnarvon. It’s been in the family since 1679 but real estate prices have gone up since then. If Highclere Castle were for sale today, its estimated value is about 150 million British pounds. And Downton Abbey’s set needs about 11 million pounds in repairs. Rumour has it, next door neighbour Andrew Lloyd Webber, offered to buy the estate. “Cats” must have been pretty lucrative.

Located about 50 minutes from Heathrow airport, the Highclere estate is over 1000 acres, bigger than New York’s central park. The Tatler referred to the area around Highclere as “Downtonia”. The house is estimated to have about 50 bedrooms. The countess of Carnarvan, a blonde dynamo, isn’t quite sure how many rooms the castle boasts. “I suppose if you know how many rooms you’ve got, you haven’t got a very big house”, the Countess said in the “Telegraph”. The countess is writing a book about the 5th Earl of Carnarvon. He and Howard Carter discovered the tomb of Egypt’s boy king Tutankhamun in 1922.

Get hitched Downton style

While filming Downton Abbey at Highclere, the estate is only open to the public on certain dates. However, the castle is available for Downton-esque weddings starting at about $30,000 for the day. And what a day it would be… “You enter the Park gates and drive through the undulating, spectacular landscape to arrive eventually in front of a romantic, Victorian Castle. The Saloon, which lies in the heart of the Castle, is licensed for the civil ceremony. Brides can prepare for their wedding in a bedroom in the Castle. The music begins and the bride walks around the Gallery above the guests, before walking down the sweeping Oak Staircase.” The latter is quoted from Highclere’s website. Imagine coming down the staircase… A girl would be jumpier than a deb at her first ball.

If you’re lucky enough to visit Highclere, only the exterior will be recognizable. Most of the indoor scenes in Downton Abbey are filmed at a London studio, particularly the kitchen and servants’ quarters drama. Most of Highclere’s interior has been modernized. The production designer Donal Woods says, “There’s a lot of great houses in England, but all the below-stairs stuff has gone. So we realized we had to build it ourselves.”

Highclere Castle has been featured in other notable filming beside Downton Abbey. The saloon was a location in “The Four Feathers” starring Heath Ledger and Stanley Kubrick’s last film, “Eyes Wide Shut”. The exterior appeared as Lord Graves’s house in “King Ralph”. In Hallmarks’ Hall of Fame 1987 version of The Secret Garden, both the interior and exterior were used as Mistlethwaite Manor.

Downton Abbey Fashion

Lady Mary's very '20s wedding headpiece

Each new season of Downton Abbey offers the same breathtaking countryside, intrigue upstairs and downstairs and all the witty one liners we’ve come to expect. But some of us most looking forward to Downton Abbey’s costumes. Every season of Downton continues the show’s tradition of lavish period fashion. Since 2010, Downton has made its footprint in the fashion world.

Classic Lauren styling

Out on the streets, sales of long silk gloves, pearls and empire waisted dresses have soared since Downton Abbey aired. The popularity of Downton Abbey and its beautiful costumes has inspired a whole new demand for 1900s fashion accessories like hats, shrugs and Ralph Lauren clothes. Nicole Richie’s beaded headpieces for House of Harlow have also been popular, selling out on several online stores.

Susannah Buxton, the former fashion designer for Downton, was nominated for an Emmy for costume design. The department is now run by her former assistant, Caroline McCall. According to Buxton, Downton Abbey clothes don’t strictly adhere to the period, but use the same aesthetic while trying to make Downton style attractive to modern audiences. She says it’s more a translation than historically accurate.

Lauren's garden party dress

Ralph Lauren and Downton Abbey is a fashion partnership made in heaven. British hunting parties and opulent candlelit dinners of bygone eras have long inspired Lauren’s design career. As Vogue’s Mark Holgate says, Lauren’s clothes successfully ‘manage to speak to the past yet also live and breathe in the here and now’. Last year, Ralph Lauren sponsored PBS’ Masterpiece series in light of Downton Abbey’s popularity as a costume drama.

The stars of Downton Abbey have become fashion icons onto themselves. Michelle Dockery appears in fashion mags all the time. And the queen of fashion, Anna Wintour, has given the show her seal of approval. Pippa Middleton, another fashionista, visited the set for a guided tour.

A sure nod to Coco Chanel's 1920 gowns

Season 3 of Downton opens at the beginning of the 1920s. Downton Abbey dresses are shorter and less ornate than those of the Edwardian period. We’re seeing flapper and art deco influences in the clothes worn by the three daughters – the real fashionistas of Downton Abbey. We also see headbands and beading, art deco makes a solid apparent. This is probably a nod to Coco Chanel’s metallic and beaded evening gowns of the 1920s.

Lady Mary has a sophisticated and elegant style. Edith’s hair and clothes have greatly improved as she tries to snare a husband and hit the workforce. Late Lady Sybil’s style was more bohemian and whimsical. The grand dame of Downton, Violet, retains her exaggerated Edwardian style of corsets, gloves and hats. Violet looks positively old fashioned next to Shirley MacLaine’s Martha Levinson. The jazz upped grandmother shows her ankles, sports a modern hairstyle and is covered in jewels.

Martha has the edge over Violet when it comes to fashion

Season 3 of Downton Abbey features a wedding or two. Mary’s wedding dress is sophisticated and stylish, but not as ornate as we might have expected. Downton Abbey’s current fashion designer McCall says she studied the catalogue of Lanvin from the time in its creation.

Ralph Lauren’s Fall 2012 show opened with the theme song of Downton Abbey. Models wore skinny plaid trousers and narrow cut blazers. Lauren’s spring show was more of a flouncy pastel affair suited to garden parties and formal dinners. The Fall collection is more of a love affair with the English countryside and shooting parties.

Everybody likes hunting chic, except Sir Richard. He doesn't like anything

The ladies of Downton dressed to kill. Or eat dinner at least. Wrapped in jet beading and money, Lady Mary, Lady Sybil and Lady Edith spend each day getting in or out of clothes for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Pants *gasp*. A fashion forward Sybil embraces harem pants. Countess Violet would certainly not approve. At Downton Abbey, just a hint of lace or a tiny glimpse of ankle can tempt scandal.

Mary's dress is as wistful as her lovelorn looks across the room at Matthew

Downton Abbey Cast Off Screen

On screen, it’s rare to see the black clad characters of Downton crack a smile or cut loose. It’s interesting to imagine what our favourite characters might be like off screen.

Countess Violet Grantham Quotes

The Queen of Mean dishes it out…

Dowager Countess of Grantham

Maggie Smith as Countess Violet is the undisputed highlight of each episode of Downton Abbey. Her favourite objects of scorn include unsuitable husbands, Americans, and of course, Isobel Crawley. Read on for some of the loveable snob’s most scathing zingers…

“What is a weekend?”

“Is this an instrument of communication or torture?”

“Things are different in America, they live in Wig Wams.”

“I was right about my maid. She’s leaving – to get married! How could she be so selfish?”

“First electricity, now telephones. Sometimes I feel as if I’m living in an H.G. Wells novel.”

“Hepworth men don’t go in for loneliness much. I knew his father in the late 60s. Mais ou sont les neiges d’antan?” (Where are the snows of yesteryear?)

“Why does everyday involve a fight with an American?”

“Alas, I am beyond impropriety.”

“I will applaud your discretion when you leave.”

“I knew this family was approaching disillusion, I wasn’t aware that illusion was already upon us.”

“Everyone goes down the aisle with half the story hidden.”

“We’ll have to take her abroad, in these moments you can usually find an Italian who’s not too picky.”

“Mary won’t take Matthew Crawley, so we better get her settled before the bloom is quite gone off the rose”

“Give him a date for when Mary’s out of mourning. No one wants to kiss a girl in black.”

Lady Mary: “I was only going to say Sybil that is entitled to her opinions.”
Countess Violet: “No, she isn’t, until she is married. And then her husband will tell her what her opinions are.”

“Twenty four years ago you married Cora against my wishes for her money. Give it away now and what was the point of your peculiar marriage in the first place?”

Cora Crawley: “Are we to be friends then?”
Countess Violet: “We are allies my dear which can be a good deal more effective.”

“I couldn’t have electricity in the house. I couldn’t sleep a wink. All those vapours seeping about.”

“Why do you always have to pretend to be nicer than the rest of us?”

“Edith, you are a Lady, not Toad of Toad Hall.”

“I don’t dislike him, I just don’t like him. Which is quite different.”

“Oh, I should steer clear of May. Marry in May, rue the day.”

“No doubt you will regard this as rather unorthodox, my pushing into a man’s bedroom uninvited.”

“I was watching her the other night, when you spoke of your wedding. She looked like Juliet on awakening in the tomb.”

“Wasn’t there a masked ball in Paris when cholera broke out? Half the guests were dead before they left the ballroom.”

“Don’t be defeatist, dear, it’s very middle class.”

“I do hope I’m interrupting something.”

Cora: “I hope I don’t hear sounds of a disagreement.”
Countess Violet: “Is that what they call discussion in New York?”

“Last night! He looked so well. Of course it would happen to a foreigner. No Englishman would dream of dying in someone else’s house.”

“Sometimes I feel as if I were living in an H.G. Wells novel.”

“I’m a woman, Mary. I can be as contrary as I choose.”

“If she won’t say yes when he might be poor, he won’t want her when he will be rich.”

“It always happens when you give these little people power, it goes to their heads like strong drink.”

Cora: “I might send her over to visit my aunt. She could get to know New York.”
Countess Violet: “Oh, I don’t think things are quite that desperate.”

“One can’t go to pieces at the death of every foreigner. We’d all be in a constant state of collapse whenever we opened a newspaper.”

Cora: “I hate to go behind Robert’s back.”
Countess Violet: “That is a scruple no successful wife can afford.”

Countess Violet: “Why would you want to go to a real school? You’re not a doctor’s daughter.”
Sybil: “Nobody learns anything from a governess, apart from French and how to curtsy.”
Countess Violet: “What else do you need? Are you thinking of a career in banking?”

Doctor: “Mrs. Crawley tells me she has recommended nitrate of silver and tincture of steel.”
Countess Violet: “Why, is she making a suit of armor?”

Lord Grantham: “We better go in soon or it isn’t fair to Mrs. Patmore.”
Countess Violet: “Oh, is her cooking so precisely timed? You couldn’t tell.”

Countess Violet: “You are quite wonderful the way you see room for improvement wherever you look. I never knew such reforming zeal.”
Mrs. Crawley: “I take that as a compliment.”
Countess Violet: “I must’ve said it wrong.”

“I used to think Mary’s beau was a mésalliance but compared to this he’s positively a Hapsburg.”

“She’s so slight a real necklace would flatten her.”

“Sir Richard, life is a game, where the player must appear ridiculous.”

“You see, sometimes we must let the blow fall by degrees. Give him time to find the strength to face it.”

Sir Richard: “I’m leaving in the morning Lady Grantham. I doubt we’ll meet again.”
Countess Violet: “Do you promise?”

“It’s the job of grandmothers to interfere.”

Isobel and Violet's banter is a highlight of Downton Abbey

“Just because you’re an old widow, I see no necessity to eat off a tray.”

“There can be too much truth in any relationship.

“If I were to search for logic, I would not look for it among the English upper class.”

“She is a good woman. And while the phrase is enough to set my teeth on edge, there are moments when her virtue demands admiration.”

“I wonder your halo doesn’t grow heavy. It must be like wearing a tiara around the clock.”

“The only poet peer I am familiar with is Lord Byron and I presume we all know how that ended.”

“Wars have been waged with less fervour.”

Isobel: How you hate to be wrong.
Countess Violet: I wouldn’t know, I’m not familiar with the sensation.

“It is her fuel. I mean some people run on greed, lust, even love. She runs on indignation.”

Lady Edith gets some advice from Countess Violet

“My dear, we country dwellers must beware of being provincial. Try and let your time in London rub off on you a little more.”

“Try not to let those Yankees drive you mad.”

Isobel: It’s only me.
Violet: I always feel that greeting betrays such a lack of self worth.

“No life appears rewarding if you think about it too much.”

“Rosamind has no interest in French. If she wishes to be understood by a foreigner, she shouts.”

“Switzerland has everything to offer, except perhaps conversation. And one can learn to live without that.”

“He’s the most unconvincing fiance I’ve ever come across.”

Countess Violet (to Isobel): Can’t you even offer help without sounding like a trumpet on the peak of the moral high ground.

“Violet: British peerage is a fountain of variety.”

“The combination of open air picnics and after dinner poker make me feel as though I’ve fallen through a looking glass into the Dejeuner sur l’Herbe.”

Martha Levinson: I have no wish to be a great lady.
Countess Violet: A decision that must be reenforced whenever you look in the glass.

“There’s nothing simpler than avoiding people you don’t like. Avoiding one’s friends, that’s the real test.”

Countess Violet (to Lord Grantham): Your father always told the village what they wanted.

“Principles are like prayers. Noble of course. But awkward at a party.”