231027 Collection Digital Cover 1 - Flipbook - Page 135
“The towers were inspired by those of Lucca, but the
central tower was built against the advice of our land
agent, who warned it was ‘pregnant with the most
alarming danger to [his] Lordship’s pocket.’ ”
This being England, and Summer, it is raining. Coachloads of people
arrive and tramp through the mud of the car park, nicely churned up
by an outdoor event held here the previous evening and splash their way
along the drive to the castle entrance. Thanks to television, it is probably
one of the most familiar stately homes in the country, with visitors
arriving as much to inhale the aura of greasepaint, as to admire the
history and treasures contained within this grand abode.
I am at Highclere Castle in Hampshire, otherwise known as Downton
Abbey. Downton has done for Highclere what Brideshead Revisited did
for Castle Howard, 240 miles up the M1, some 40 years ago: turned it into
common land for the imaginary rambler. So familiar is the façade that
there is little need to explain this is not a castle in the traditional sense:
there is no moat, no battlements, no embrasures, no Rapunzel tower,
no grimacing gargoyles. Instead, we see an elegant hybrid of Elizabethan,
Jacobean, Renaissance and Gothic styles, with a central tower bearing
more than a passing resemblance to the Palace of Westminster. “The 3rd
Earl commissioned Sir Charles Barry to remodel the [Georgian] mansion
in the 1840s,” explains Lord Carnarvon. “The towers were inspired by
those of Lucca, but the central tower was built against the advice of our
land agent, who warned it was ‘pregnant with the most alarming danger
to [his] Lordship’s pocket.’” It was built anyway, the land agent was
proved right, and the newly embellished Highclere Place House,
as it was called, was renamed Highclere Castle.
George Herbert, 8th Earl of Carnarvon and the present incumbent,
exudes diffident, blue-eyed, old-world charm. His ancestors have lived
here since the late 17th century and, in 1769, Henry Herbert – created
the 1st Earl of Carnarvon by George III in 1793 – inherited the property.
From this time, the family has been prominent in areas spanning politics
to horse-racing (the 7th Earl was, famously, Queen Elizabeth II’s racing
manager and confidant; his son, the current Earl, the late Queen’s
godson), while a passion for travel and archaeology runs in the blood.
If the 1st Earl presided over both the British Archaeological Society
and of the Society of Antiquaries, it would be George Edward Stanhope
Molyneux Herbert, 5th Earl of Carnarvon, whose name would be forever
linked to one of the most thrilling archaeological discoveries ever made:
that of Tutankhamun’s tomb, by Howard Carter, in November 1922.
Lady Carnarvon arrives, a little late, a little flustered, apologetic:
a frail lady has taken the notion of day-tripping all too literally and
fallen down some stone steps. And, this being England, there is no
sign of an ambulance. With 1,200 visitors a day milling through rooms
that once hosted Prime Ministers and Royalty, gliding past Van Dycks
and Reynoldses, and wandering through bedrooms where Robert
Browning and Henry James once laid their head, the mind boggles
at the thought of insurance premiums. Not to mention the maintenance
of all that masonry, staff salaries, and the running costs of a 300-room
house set in 5,000 acres of Capability Brown landscaping. But Fiona
Carnarvon, neé Aitken, a former accountant and the Earl’s second
wife, appears to have everything firmly under control, with a slew of
fund-raising events ranging from Country Fairs and Christmas Months
to Battle Proms and a History Festival. And, of course, location filming:
six series and two Downton Abbey feature films were made here,
and there are rumours of a third in the pipeline. The Countess is
discreet about the figures involved, but has been quoted as saying that
revenue from filming Downton “just about kept me in cappuccinos.”
Given that £1 million has, rightly or wrongly, been mooted as the fee,
caffeine poisoning is a credible risk – but one gets the drift. Keeping
Highclere afloat in the 21st century is as challenging as it was for
Downton’s Earl of Grantham, 100 years ago, when taxes rose from
6% to 60% in the wake of the First World War.
133
