This is Nancy writing now.  Today was my long-awaited visit to Highclere Castle.  If you haven’t seen Downton Abbey, then none of this will make any sense to you. We started out by meeting our tour guide at a train station and, along with 12 others, drove to Bampton.  This is the little village where many scenes from Downton Abbey were filmed, such as the town hospital scenes with Dr. Clarkson, the post office, the local pub, and the church where Lady Mary got married (and a lovely old church it was).  The real people that live in Bampton were extras in some of the scenes.

Then we drove on to Highclere.  It was pretty crowded inside but we took our time in each room.  It was cool to see the actual rooms where filming took place.  The library has 6,000+ books.  In the dining room, we could see exactly where everything was, such as the serving table and the very long dining table and could picture Carson himself standing guard.

The bedroom floor (first floor, second floor? who knows what they call it) was a big square, open in the middle, so you could see the whole floor and below.  The staircase that was in many scenes was grand.  It is a beautiful staircase for bridal pictures and I believe that they did film Lady Mary and Lady Edith coming down in their wedding gowns. The only bad thing about this visit was we weren’t allowed to take any inside pictures.

The house was filled with pictures of the Carnarvon family going back centuries and even had an old desk and chair that once belonged to Napoleon. The current Carnarvon family lives there during the months that the house is closed to visitors. I think I’m going to watch the show again to look for all these things we saw!