This is our final essay about our trip to England this summer and we wanted to take you through one of the loveliest days of the trip and share with you the lessons we learned. The plans for this day began during the pandemic when we were cloistered in our home fearing the worst but savoring every minute we had together as a family under one roof again. We started watching new shows to escape the craziness going on in the world.
For our entire adult lives we wanted to travel to England for the football, the museums, the history, and the people but after binging the 52 episodes of Downton Abbey, the first excursion we booked was a visit to Highclere Castle near the town of Newbury about 65 miles outside of London.
We loved the show. Lady Mary, Mr. Carson, Mrs. Patmore, Mr. Mosley, Lord Grantham, Tom, and of course, Granny, the Dowager Countess, became our extended television family during the pandemic. The only character and story we really didn’t like was that of Mr. Bates. Somehow he seemed to bother all of us.
Each night for 6 seasons, we got lost in time, traveling back to the World War 1 era and the Roaring 20s, escaping the present world’s predicaments by seeing how others dealt with their world’s epoch events. We could more easily relate to the communal and personal sacrifices going on in the show due to war, financial strains, and the Spanish flu because of what was happening in the world in 2019-2020. We could also dream for the return of good times and the celebratory years after these difficult seasons in life passed.
We learned a lot from the show and reflected on so many things together as a family as we watched the multiple generations of the servants and the aristocrats live out their lives together and apart from each other. Sometimes being separated only by a floor or a few feet of space, while at other times, being separated by centuries of customs and traditions.
Our lessons through Downton Abbey would continue as we ventured out to Newbury from London to find the castle.
Lesson #1: The place where the show was filmed is not called Downton Abbey. It is called Highclere Castle.
Lesson #2: You can easily take a train from London to get close to Highclere Castle but you will need to get a cab from the train station at Newbury to take you the additional 12 miles to the castle. The taxi cab ride to the castle will be easy to secure. The taxi cab ride from the castle back to the train station can be slightly more difficult.
Lesson #3: Due to the privacy of the actual family that lives in the castle, Lord and Lady Carnarvon, you may not take any photos inside the castle and you are only permitted to go into some of the rooms used in the filming of the show.
Lesson #4: The most underrated and under appreciated folks working on the movies and series we all love are the film editors and the crews behind the scenes. Nothing is really ever the same as it appears on the screen. They are the magic makers that allow our hearts and minds to be transformed and to travel to other times and places.
Lesson #5: Skip eating a big meal on the grounds of the castle and opt for traveling a little bit further to a beautiful and lovely place called Sonning-on-the-Thames. What a wonderful surprise we had dining at the Coppa Club for a late lunch after a lovely morning at the castle.
If you are a fan of the show, visiting Highclere Castle is a must. The grounds are magnificent and the surrounding countryside is lovely. To see “Downton Abbey” today and to learn of its real inhabitants is both exhilarating and disturbing.
As Americans, it is just not in our nature to respect titles and names or to support expected behaviors and protocols, simply for tradition’s sake. We naturally buck up against folks telling us what we can do, what we can see, and where we can go especially if we are paying to do it. You can definitely hear a slight sigh and you might catch a subtle eye roll when the hosts at the castle realize the next set of guests about to parade through the house are from Texas instead of France. The expectation is that the Americans will be less informed, a bit more pushy, and certainly more talkative. When we were there, those expectations would prove true not necessarily by us (we were only less informed!) but by our fellow countrymen visiting from Dallas.
Finally, our last lesson involved the extra tour and exhibit we paid to see. Learning of the family’s escapades in Egypt and seeing the treasures they returned with and that are on display was both remarkable and a bit unsettling. Losing millions trying to find the “lost” treasures of the Egyptian pharaohs was quite the tragic story revealed on the final trip through the bottom floors of the castle. Thrilling, risky, adventurous, arrogant, entitled, preposterous, outrageous, and filled with stories of well intentioned good and dastardly bad people. Just like in life and just like in the series.