Daily Mail - Daily Mail Weekend Magazine
Your Chrıstmas countdown with the Countess
NOWHERE’S MORE CHRISTMASSY THAN HIGHCLERE–THE REAL DOWNTON ABBEY. NOW LADY CARNARVON TAKES YOU INSIDE WITH THIS MAGICAL 19-PAGE GUIDE...
As every lady-of-the-house knows, it’s sensible to keep your Christmas decorations in one place so they can be whipped out as the festive period approaches. For most of us, this means flinging a box into the garage or up in the loft. What if you’re a proper Lady though, with a castle to decorate? Well, you might want to set aside an entire wing for bauble storage. Fiona, the 8th Countess of Carnarvon, chatelaine of Highclere Castle – the real-life Downton Abbey as we have come to know it since the TV series was filmed here – has gone one better. She’s rather proud of the sheds she’s recently had built in the grounds of her estate, by the old saw-mill. She installed heating and lighting and hit on the genius idea of storing the estate’s deer in there. ‘Not real deer,’ she says. ‘Deer made from willow. We had one herd, then Sally, who is in charge of ordering our Christmas decorations, decided we needed another.’ Once two herds of willow deer had found homes, it was time to retrieve the rest of the Christmas decorations from around the castle. In her new book, which not only takes readers through how Christmas happens at Highclere these days but also takes a journey back through the ages, she mentions the inevitability of sending a ‘Christmas elf’ who doesn’t mind dark corridors to try to find the boxes of decorations, only to find a ‘non’ Christmas elf has moved them. She shrieks with laughter. ‘It was hysterical! There were boxes all over the castle, because there wasn’t a designated storage place. One year someone would put some in one room, the next a different person would put away the decorations. Having the sheds meant we could see what we had.’ Which was a considerable treasure trove. ‘We actually had to build two more sheds to fit everything in,’ she laughs. How many decorations do you need to bling up a castle? Well, Lady C (as her staff know her) works on the premise that more is more. This year Sally ordered a staggering 80 Christmas trees. While the big one stands in the Saloon at the heart of the castle, smaller trees are to be found around the
castle and in the grounds. Garlands festoon the grand staircases, and what seems like acres of the gargathering dens are brought inside.
On a tour of the castle, tips about how to do Christmas Downton-style, you get a real sense of the scale of the challenge. This place has 250 rooms. ‘If Lady C loses her phone, it can take five people to find it,’ one member of staff tells me as we troop up stairs and down corridors, past priceless oil paintings (is that a van Dyck? Of course it is) and framed photos that demand a double take.
While the grand reception rooms and some of the bedrooms, so familiar to Downton fans, are in use around the year, there are smaller rooms that are never used. Cluttermagnets, confides Lady C. ‘If you leave a room, it gets stuff put in it.’ Some ‘stuff’ is junk. Other ‘stuff’ is treasure, of the historical kind. The kind that was gold-dust when it came to writing her new book.
Her top tip about how to survive Christmas is to ‘write lists, lots of them’, and guess what? This is what those who ran this place were doing hundreds of years ago. In the castle’s archives there’s an old ledger where the pages are filled with looped writing. ‘It’s a Christmas present list from the end of the 19th century,’ explains Lady C. ‘Everything is neatly documented, what was given and to whom. There were lists for everything – menus, supplies. It’s extraordinary to realise that some things have not changed at all.’
Lady Carnarvon was born into a wealthy but not aristocratic family and while she moved in well-to-do circles (her first visit to Highclere was for a shooting weekend long before she and her husband Geordie were an item), she had no clue how to run a stately home. She fell in love with the man, and knew the castle would be a part of her life, but had no idea how quickly they would have to take on the estate. ‘We thought my father-in-law had another 15 or 20 years at least. His father had lived to 90. But he died two years after we were married.’ Her in-laws never lived at Highclere; it was a showpiece, used for formal occasions. ‘We knew we had to do it differently. I wanted it to have heart, soul, warmth – and that meant living in it.’
She famously turned Highclere into a very modern business – because that’s the only way for old estates like this to survive. ‘Opening it to the public meant you avoided death duties,’ she says. The throwing open of those huge walnut doors studded with black ironmongery started slowly, with a few events here and there. When the Countess, very cannily, agreed to let the production team for Downton Abbey film there (writer Julian Fellowes is a friend), interest in the castle boomed. Now there are guided tours and coachloads of American tourists (‘they love Downton’). There are also endless fund-raising events, which use the castle and its grounds as a backdrop. In Lady C’s capable hands then, Christmas – even a Downtonscale Christmas – must be a breeze. As we have tea and sandwichesmade-by-chef (‘Chef does the best sandwiches’) in the morning room, she talks me through how it happens.
The season begins with Stir-up
Sunday at the end of November, when the Christmas puddings are made. The kitchens are a-bustle with modern-day Mrs Patmores, but Lady C gets stuck in herself. ‘Making the Christmas cake and puddings is one of my favourite things,’ she says. ‘As a child, we had a wonderful cook called Queenie, and we used to help her make the cakes. At least we thought we were helping. In reality I think we were just licking out the bowls.’
While there are around 50 fulltime staff to instruct, there are things only Lady C can do. She writes her own Christmas cards, with a fountain pen. ‘We are getting fewer cards now, which is sad because I do think you can’t beat a handwritten note.’
In a yellowing manila file in the archives are some of the earliest Christmas cards ever sent. ‘Nowadays we like to send cards with views of the castle on them, or one year we had funny pictures of Geordie with some of my girlfriends gathered around him made into a card, but the old ones are just divine.’ The ones received by Elizabeth, the 4th Countess, in 1882 have snowy scenes with coaches and horses. There are still horses in the stables at Highclere, but no coaches. ‘I suspect they were rather uncomfortable and cold,’ she says.
The big event in the Christmas planning, of course, is the erection of the tree, which is detailed in this magazine on pages 16-17. Then they move onto the other trees. How many baubles do they use? ‘Thousands!’
The guest list varies each year, but the first invitations go out to ‘one of my sisters with children. I have five sisters, and I don’t have them all at once because that would be too many sisters and too many children and Geordie would feel unbalanced.’
It’s comforting to see that issues with the in-laws are still issues, even in castles. Who else comes for Christmas? Well, there aren’t wounded soldiers as there were during the First World War, but the idea of Highclere being a refuge is still at the forefront. ‘I tend to ask friends if they’ve perhaps been ill, or been through a difficult time. I feel very strongly that it’s the time of year where you shouldn’t be on your own. The dining table can seat around 30. At a squish 32, although with small children you can get more in,’ she says.
Some traditions are set in stone. There’s always tea at 4pm on Christmas Eve, set up between the fire and the tree, and as in homes up and down the land, the children leave a mince pie out for Father Christmas and carrots for the reindeer. At Highclere, Luis the butler will ask Nanny – Lady C’s childhood nanny, and a revered guest – which tipple she thinks Santa might enjoy. Who knew
‘I don’t think you can beat handwritten Christmas cards’
he was a fan of Baileys Irish Cream. ‘She’s been with our family since my sister Sarah and I were four and five and she was just 19. We adore her. She looks after Sarah’s children now, but at Christmas Nanny decides where she wants to go. Nanny does what Nanny wants! She’s hilarious. She’ll arrive and say, “I’m not drinking, I’ll just have a gin and tonic.”’
When the lights go out on Christmas Eve, the place can be eerie. There are copious tales of ghosts here. When she was a new mother, Lady C met one herself – a figure in dark clothes who terrified her. She investigated and learned that in the 19th century a footman had a romance with a nursery nurse, and while she was absent from the nursery the Countess’s baby died. ‘It was probably a cot death, and nothing to do with the couple, but in the pain and grief, the footman committed suicide not far from where I’d seen the figure,’ she says.
Highclere has its own church, and walking there on Christmas morning is a key part of the day. Then come drinks. Then the big event – lunch. Silly hats are de rigueur. ‘I love the silliness,’ says Lady C. ‘In my family we had a tradition of table presents, where my mother would make us unwrap boring things – underwear mostly – in front of everyone. I do that too, much to our son Eddie’s embarrassment. But it does get everybody laughing.’
After lunch, it’s into Lady C’s study to watch the Queen’s Christmas message (bizarrely, it’s the only TV in the castle) – an occasion that must be surreal when you know the Queen personally. Even more surreal was watching the festive special of Downton Abbey for many years, featuring the very sofas the guests were sitting in. Weird or what? ‘But absolutely lovely. I tended to rememfilming ber how hot it was in July when they were the Christmas scenes.’
She’s a very modern Lady. She trained as an accountant and says that the organisational skills needed are essential to her current role. Sometimes she tries not to be a Lady. At grand dinner parties she’s been known to hide the place card that tells the world she is Lady Carnarvon, and introduce herself to those on either side of her. ‘When they ask what I do I say I’m Fiona, an accountant. That way they don’t ask me about Downton, and I get to find out about them. You learn more when you are Fiona the boring accountant.’
She has two more books brewing, and interestingly her books and the profits from them will be Edward’s inheritance. He won’t be Lord of this manor – the castle will go to George, Geordie’s first-born son from his first marriage. Doesn’t that rankle, given the fact Lady C has devoted herself to keeping this place alive? ‘Edward is chilled about it. He’s just not fussed. It’s such a different world now. In Victorian times, the estate and the size of the house defined you, but that’s also where the revenue was. The farming brought in the money. By 1937 or so this huge house had no income. So now we are like any other business. There is no entitlement there. If there is anything left over from my books Edward will get that, but he needs to find his own path. My stepson George will inherit, yes, but it’s not like getting 500,000 shares in Sainsbury’s. There is no yacht here. There is a whole set of liabilities. Obviously we hope that it will survive into the future.’
For now though, her own job is steering this astonishing place through Christmas and beyond. Lady C says an oft-neglected part of Christmas is the aftermath, the period after New Year moving into Epiphany and onwards. Her book takes us right up to Candlemas on 2 February. ‘It was on this day that all the church’s candles were blessed for the coming year.’
The blessing of the candles, of course, hailed from an era before we took electric lighting for granted. One of the most memorable scenes in Downton was when electric lights arrived. ‘Such a glare,’ said Dame Maggie Smith, playing the Dowager Countess. She’d need the smelling salts if she saw the Christmas tree ablaze today.
‘Watching Downton at Christmas was surreal – but lovely’