BIRTH OF THE REAL BELGRAVIA

Originally a marshy area known as Five Fields, Belgravia in central London centres on an elegant enclave of squares and terraces close to Buckingham Palace comprised of white stucco-fronted townhouses fronted by black iron railings.

It was built as an entire design concept by master builder Thomas Cubitt, who knew aristocrats would happily pay a small fortune to live on the doorstep of royalty.

‘It’s rather interesting to me that the Duchess of Cornwall is Cubitt’s great-great-greatgranddaughter, so it sort of ties it into the modern day,’ says Julian Fellowes. ‘Belgravia itself is unusual in London because it doesn’t overlay any buildings from a more ancient time. Mayfair had reached its limits and here was the potential for a new, rich area.

‘So they just mapped out and built Belgravia more or less as a single entity in the space of a few years. That gives it a uniformity that few other places in London can match. It was an instant city of the rich that was just plonked down in some marshy fields. And that is, in a sense, at the centre of the story. You had the palaces of Belgrave Square, but then you had the houses in Chapel Street leading into it that were basically for upper servants and managers who also had to be housed. So must the horses, so must the carriages, so must the staff who run the horses and the carriages.’ However, because Belgravia today is largely occupied by embassies, the production crew had to film in other areas to accurately replicate it, such as Edinburgh’s Georgian New Town.