Visiting Downton Abbey

We went to Highclere Castle the other day!! It was amazing. We stayed in Newbury, about 2 hours by train from London. I am a big Downton Abbey fan, so I was super excited! If you haven't seen the show, you should. It's fantastic.

We passed lots of sheep pastures walking up to the castle.

The castle was just gorgeous!

We were afraid we wouldn't get tickets, because the online website said all the pre-bookable tickets were sold out. We were hoping that we could get there early enough to get a walk-up ticket. We didn't have any problems and were able to get tickets for the castle, grounds, and the Egyptian exhibit. The castle is open to the public only 2 months out of the year. This is the home of the Earl and Countess of Carnarvon and they live in the castle the rest of the year. They have 3 kids (12-21) and their family pictures are in each one of the rooms. It felt very much like someone's home. My favorite room was the library. It was so beautiful and houses over 5,000 books. It was really neat to read the names of the books. A lot of them were on Egyptian history and archeology, since the 5th Earl of Carnarvon was big into excavating and famously discovered the Tomb of Pharaoh Tutankhamun, in 1922. The basement of the castle has been converted to a museum and houses many Egyptian artifacts that were brought back from the discoveries.

The three windows over the front door are the windows of Sybil's room.

Here is a map of the grounds. Unfortunately we were not allowed to take pictures inside the castle, but you can view some of the rooms on their website.  We were able to sneak a couple pictures on Dan's phone when no one was looking.

 This is the heart of the castle and was just gorgeous, yet somehow cozy like a family home.

This is the switchboard in the basement for the staff to know which room is calling. The butler and maid quarters have fallen in disrepair, so the downstairs scenes are filmed on sets created for the show. This article from 2009 tells of how most of the top floor is old and decaying. The family uses most of the revenue from the show for repairs and restoration.

We had lunch and tea outside by the castle and then explored the grounds.

The gardens were beautiful!

The "Secret Garden."

The wildflower field was my favorite.

 

This is Jackdaw's Castle, "a folly built by Robert Herbert in 1743 to provide a charming view from the Castle."  I think this folly is the view out of Cora's window in Downton Abbey.

This is the side of the castle where the stables are located.

It was such a bright, beautiful day.

This is Diana's Temple. I really wanted to see it, but the walk was closed for the summer.

You can see Heaven's Gate folly to the upper-left of the castle.  

As we were walking to our bus stop, be came to this church. We were peering inside and saw pictures of the Earl and Countess pinned to a bulletin board, showing them as director and treasurer, so this is the church they must attend. It was built to replace the church that used to be next to the castle.