Tomorrow evening, the Earl and Countess of Carnarvon will settle down in front of an unreliable television in the study at Highclere Castle in Berkshire and look forward to an hour of what the historian A N Wilson denounces as sanitised fantasy. Even if the fantasy in question, Downton Abbey, had not saved them from debt and made their home the most bankable country house in the world, they would still flop down in front of it, along with 12 million others, and thank their good friend Julian Fellowes, the show’s creator, for some harmless escapism.
“Everything we see on television is sanitised to some extent,” says Fiona Carnarvon, the Countess. “I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. In a television mini-series, you can’t necessarily engage with the darkness that is around us all the time. On a Sunday evening, I want to have something that’s pleasant and fun and engaging and a very nice way to start the week, not something grisly and depressing when you’ve got Monday approaching anyway.”
But the second series of Downton currently embraces a subject that is both grisly and depressing – the long shadow of the First World War – but Fellowes produces an essentially character-building version of its effects on the depleted but still lavish household of Lord and Lady Grantham. Their three daughters are stepping up to the plate admirably. Lady Sybil has gone into nursing, Lady Edith is driving tractors and Lady Mary finds some softening of her haughty heart now her spurned suitor is in the trenches.
War is where Lady Carnarvon, too, comes into her own. At top speed, to meet the moment in the series when Downton becomes a hospital for wounded soldiers, she has written a biography of her predecessor, Lady Almina, the 5th Countess of Carnarvon, a small dynamo of a woman who turned Highclere into a hospital and convalescent home at the outbreak of the Great War, with herself as all-powerful matron. Butlers served the patients meals and the nurses (hired for looks as well as skills) were kitted out in high-fashion strawberry-pink uniforms, with starched white aprons and caps, to boost morale.
“This detail set the tone,” says Lady Carnarvon. “She wanted Highclere to be a cutting-edge hospital but also a sensual retreat from the horror of combat. She was an amazing woman, full of joie de vivre and an instinctive master of what we’d nowadays call holistic medicine. I am in awe of her administrative skills because I find my own are stretched trying to run this place. There is perhaps something to be learnt from her approach when nursing today is ever more tangled in red tape.”
The rich and subtle confusions of costume drama and actual events have worked brilliantly for the owners of Highclere, for the television company and for Fellowes himself, who has become a lord and received six Emmys. Visitor numbers have doubled and Highclere is in better financial shape than at any time since 1895, when the cash-strapped 5th Earl landed £25 million in today’s money by marrying Almina, the 19-year-old illegitimate daughter of the banking tycoon, Baron Alfred de Rothschild.
“It’s been like a magic carpet for all of us,” says Lady Carnarvon. “The irony is that before this, we’d tried to present ourselves as a modern stately home rather than one settled in class. Now Downton Abbey has taken it back 100 years and the whole success of English tourism seems to depend on stately homes with this juxtaposition of upstairs, downstairs. So let’s celebrate it – which Downton does, the good characters and the bad. Julian cleverly does not caricature the upstairs people as baddies and the downstairs people as goodies.”
On the afternoon I arrive, Lady Carnarvon, dressed in jeans and a tunic, is in the middle of trying to secure the services of a vet and at the same time to get someone to plane a door at the top of the house because a carpet doesn’t fit. “That doesn’t make me very happy,” she says, sounding like a steelier version of Lady Grantham.
With no footmen to summon, a bell board that fell silent years ago and mobile phones that work only intermittently, she is sending her personal assistant to the top of the Victorian castle. “I could definitely do with some more men around,” she says. “There are never quite enough. You can spend a lot of time walking round in circles because you can’t find someone. You think: where’s the tin can and the bit of string?”
Just how fundamentally privilege has shifted for the present owners, compared with its fictional counterparts of a century ago, is summed up by Lady Carnarvon’s description of herself as Highclere’s daily firefighter, while her husband, Geordie, the 8th Earl, is more like its business manager. One day she is the still-room maid, making crab apple and quince jellies; the next, she’s climbing onto the roof to assess which sections need repair. “I sometimes wish I had not gone up there in high heels. I’ve never got the right shoes in the right place.”
A history enthusiast, she first eased herself into her new role by writing Highclere’s guidebook. The castle has a rich history; it was built on an ancient site by the architect Sir Charles Barry in 1842, although it has been home to the Carnarvon family since 1679; the original house was recorded in the Domesday Book. The castle’s greatest claim to fame before Downton was the 5th Earl’s discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb in the Valley of the Kings in 1922 with his archaeologist friend Howard Carter. Lady C was about to embark on a life of Lord Carnarvon, who died of blood poisoning in Cairo at the age of 56, when “suddenly Almina shot to the top of the pile” as the Downton effect took hold.
Within two months, she had written 70,000 words, supplementing her knowledge of First World War battles with family archives detailing Almina’s war work. “I was completely in floods of tears at some of the letters from grateful surgeons and patients,” she says. “Towards the end I was getting up at 7am and working till 2am. Writer’s block? I didn’t have time for it. Some days were completely crazy.”
While Lord Carnarvon poured funds into his Egyptian excavations, Almina’s millions kept the castle afloat. But her inability to distinguish between capital and income meant that she relied heavily on handouts from her father to establish and equip Highclere for the wounded and dying. Thirty nurses were recruited. The family’s personal physician was hired as medical director. Arundel, a bedroom on the first floor in the northwest corner of the house, became an operating theatre. All the castle’s 41 south-facing rooms had to be fitted with exterior blinds. And when the men started to arrive, “it was like moving a house party of 50 people into the castle on a permanent basis” – with the same number of staff.
“Oh, puss-cat,” Rothschild would remonstrate, “I gave you £10,000 only last week. Whatever have you done with it, my darling child?” But he never refused her, says Lady Carnarvon. “He simply took out his chequebook and unscrewed the lid of his pen and signed away another £25,000. It was a formidable amount to come up with on a Monday morning.”
Only a few days after the hospital was up and running, Almina again travelled to her father’s offices off Fleet Street. And again the Baron’s protests were as fond as they were feeble: “Darling, it was only last month I gave you £25,000. What on earth have you done with it? I know it’s all in a good cause, but please do be careful.”
Good nursing practice, says Lady C, was her watchword. “Severe bacterial infections may have been a major problem in the trenches, but they would not be tolerated at Highclere. When the nurses went into Newbury, they did not go in uniform, so that they didn’t pick up germs in the street. Those practical things are lost to us today.”
Almina’s care for the victims of war started Lady Carnarvon thinking about what Highclere could do for today’s soldiers while the goings-on in Downton’s war-darkened towers are exerting such unexpected fascination. Her answer is a Heroes at Highclere day of family entertainment on October 16, when visitors will be able to mingle with the cast and crew of Downton Abbey to raise money and awareness for the Army Benevolent Fund, the Royal British Legion and Help for Heroes.
Hundreds of “re-enactors” (many of them extras in the period drama) will be milling about in military and medical costume, some running field hospitals and kitchens. The Arundel bedroom will be returned to a First World War operating theatre.
The event will celebrate Almina’s contribution to nursing the war wounded, on a scale that matches her robust appetite for entertaining, but it will also recognise the military sacrifices exacted in Iraq and Afghanistan and the work of volunteers. “I thought: we’re on a magic carpet, let’s give something back to all the Army charities who are supporting soldiers physically, spiritually and financially. What started as a little bright idea has become a huge thing. I want to share it with soldiers and their families and to make sure those whose sons or husbands have died are included, too. But the crux of it is my pride in what Almina achieved here. On Heroes at Highclere day, I reckon every heartstring should be pulled.”
Lady Carnarvon sees Highclere Castle, like its alter ego, Downton Abbey, as an ensemble cast of characters, much as it was in Almina’s time, only there are far fewer of them and they don’t necessarily believe, as Carson the Downton butler does, that the world turns on the correct style of a dinner.
The atmosphere is altogether more egalitarian. Lady C says she has learnt to love the bones and stones of Highclere through its history and its people, taking her cue from Almina, who had the sense to remember that “she was only one part of a machine that would long survive her”.
Like the trustees, stewards and owners of Britain’s other stately homes, the Carnarvons had got used to the idea of soft-pedalling their class and privilege in favour of a workmanlike attitude to custodianship that blurred the distinctions. Then Julian Fellowes came along with his quaint notion of a period drama and they woke up to find there was no need to be defensive any more. It has been liberating.
When the Downton theme tune weaves through the credits and the gothic splendour of Highclere comes into view, Lady Carnarvon feels a swell of pride and revenue. “I feel the house has made it.”
The rich and subtle confusions of costume drama and actual events have worked brilliantly for the owners of Highclere, for the television company and for Fellowes himself, who has become a lord and received six Emmys. Visitor numbers have doubled and Highclere is in better financial shape than at any time since 1895, when the cash-strapped 5th Earl landed £25 million in today’s money by marrying Almina, the 19-year-old illegitimate daughter of the banking tycoon, Baron Alfred de Rothschild.
“It’s been like a magic carpet for all of us,” says Lady Carnarvon. “The irony is that before this, we’d tried to present ourselves as a modern stately home rather than one settled in class. Now Downton Abbey has taken it back 100 years and the whole success of English tourism seems to depend on stately homes with this juxtaposition of upstairs, downstairs. So let’s celebrate it – which Downton does, the good characters and the bad. Julian cleverly does not caricature the upstairs people as baddies and the downstairs people as goodies.”
On the afternoon I arrive, Lady Carnarvon, dressed in jeans and a tunic, is in the middle of trying to secure the services of a vet and at the same time to get someone to plane a door at the top of the house because a carpet doesn’t fit. “That doesn’t make me very happy,” she says, sounding like a steelier version of Lady Grantham.
With no footmen to summon, a bell board that fell silent years ago and mobile phones that work only intermittently, she is sending her personal assistant to the top of the Victorian castle. “I could definitely do with some more men around,” she says. “There are never quite enough. You can spend a lot of time walking round in circles because you can’t find someone. You think: where’s the tin can and the bit of string?”
Just how fundamentally privilege has shifted for the present owners, compared with its fictional counterparts of a century ago, is summed up by Lady Carnarvon’s description of herself as Highclere’s daily firefighter, while her husband, Geordie, the 8th Earl, is more like its business manager. One day she is the still-room maid, making crab apple and quince jellies; the next, she’s climbing onto the roof to assess which sections need repair. “I sometimes wish I had not gone up there in high heels. I’ve never got the right shoes in the right place.”
A history enthusiast, she first eased herself into her new role by writing Highclere’s guidebook. The castle has a rich history; it was built on an ancient site by the architect Sir Charles Barry in 1842, although it has been home to the Carnarvon family since 1679; the original house was recorded in the Domesday Book. The castle’s greatest claim to fame before Downton was the 5th Earl’s discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb in the Valley of the Kings in 1922 with his archaeologist friend Howard Carter. Lady C was about to embark on a life of Lord Carnarvon, who died of blood poisoning in Cairo at the age of 56, when “suddenly Almina shot to the top of the pile” as the Downton effect took hold.
Within two months, she had written 70,000 words, supplementing her knowledge of First World War battles with family archives detailing Almina’s war work. “I was completely in floods of tears at some of the letters from grateful surgeons and patients,” she says. “Towards the end I was getting up at 7am and working till 2am. Writer’s block? I didn’t have time for it. Some days were completely crazy.”
While Lord Carnarvon poured funds into his Egyptian excavations, Almina’s millions kept the castle afloat. But her inability to distinguish between capital and income meant that she relied heavily on handouts from her father to establish and equip Highclere for the wounded and dying. Thirty nurses were recruited. The family’s personal physician was hired as medical director. Arundel, a bedroom on the first floor in the northwest corner of the house, became an operating theatre. All the castle’s 41 south-facing rooms had to be fitted with exterior blinds. And when the men started to arrive, “it was like moving a house party of 50 people into the castle on a permanent basis” – with the same number of staff.
“Oh, puss-cat,” Rothschild would remonstrate, “I gave you £10,000 only last week. Whatever have you done with it, my darling child?” But he never refused her, says Lady Carnarvon. “He simply took out his chequebook and unscrewed the lid of his pen and signed away another £25,000. It was a formidable amount to come up with on a Monday morning.”
Only a few days after the hospital was up and running, Almina again travelled to her father’s offices off Fleet Street. And again the Baron’s protests were as fond as they were feeble: “Darling, it was only last month I gave you £25,000. What on earth have you done with it? I know it’s all in a good cause, but please do be careful.”
Good nursing practice, says Lady C, was her watchword. “Severe bacterial infections may have been a major problem in the trenches, but they would not be tolerated at Highclere. When the nurses went into Newbury, they did not go in uniform, so that they didn’t pick up germs in the street. Those practical things are lost to us today.”
Almina’s care for the victims of war started Lady Carnarvon thinking about what Highclere could do for today’s soldiers while the goings-on in Downton’s war-darkened towers are exerting such unexpected fascination. Her answer is a Heroes at Highclere day of family entertainment on October 16, when visitors will be able to mingle with the cast and crew of Downton Abbey to raise money and awareness for the Army Benevolent Fund, the Royal British Legion and Help for Heroes.
Hundreds of “re-enactors” (many of them extras in the period drama) will be milling about in military and medical costume, some running field hospitals and kitchens. The Arundel bedroom will be returned to a First World War operating theatre.
The event will celebrate Almina’s contribution to nursing the war wounded, on a scale that matches her robust appetite for entertaining, but it will also recognise the military sacrifices exacted in Iraq and Afghanistan and the work of volunteers. “I thought: we’re on a magic carpet, let’s give something back to all the Army charities who are supporting soldiers physically, spiritually and financially. What started as a little bright idea has become a huge thing. I want to share it with soldiers and their families and to make sure those whose sons or husbands have died are included, too. But the crux of it is my pride in what Almina achieved here. On Heroes at Highclere day, I reckon every heartstring should be pulled.”
Lady Carnarvon sees Highclere Castle, like its alter ego, Downton Abbey, as an ensemble cast of characters, much as it was in Almina’s time, only there are far fewer of them and they don’t necessarily believe, as Carson the Downton butler does, that the world turns on the correct style of a dinner.
The atmosphere is altogether more egalitarian. Lady C says she has learnt to love the bones and stones of Highclere through its history and its people, taking her cue from Almina, who had the sense to remember that “she was only one part of a machine that would long survive her”.
Like the trustees, stewards and owners of Britain’s other stately homes, the Carnarvons had got used to the idea of soft-pedalling their class and privilege in favour of a workmanlike attitude to custodianship that blurred the distinctions. Then Julian Fellowes came along with his quaint notion of a period drama and they woke up to find there was no need to be defensive any more. It has been liberating.
When the Downton theme tune weaves through the credits and the gothic splendour of Highclere comes into view, Lady Carnarvon feels a swell of pride and revenue. “I feel the house has made it.”
- Downton Abbey is on ITV at 9pm on Sundays
- Lady Almina & the Real Downton Abbey (Hodder; £19.99) is available from Telegraph Books for £17.99 plus £1.24 p & p, 0844 871 1515, or books.telegraph.co.uk
- Heroes at Highclere day of family entertainment is on Sunday Oct 16, tickets from www.cornexchangenew.com or call 01635 522 733. From £15 each, with castle entry from £30. Includes First World War exhibitions, special guests from the Downton Abbey series, vintage cars and the King’s Troop, Royal Horse Artillery
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