--- title: Downton Abbey Season 6 Episode 6: Take a Real House Tour description: The open-house plot is strikingly similar to real life—and here's what you'd see on just such a tour canonical: https://time.com/4203463/house-tour-downton/ author: Lily Rothman article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2016-02-08T13:00:00.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T07:56:22.506Z article:section: History og:title: Downton Abbey Season 6 Episode 6: Take a Real House Tour og:description: The open-house plot is strikingly similar to real life og:url: https://time.com/4203463/house-tour-downton/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltaa07f1f15d1fbbaf/69887bb7524fc0fbc2df68e8/highclere.jpeg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: Daily Life At Highclere Castle Home To Television Program Downton Abbey og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Downton Abbey Season 6 Episode 6: Take a Real House Tour twitter:description: The open-house plot is strikingly similar to real life twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltaa07f1f15d1fbbaf/69887bb7524fc0fbc2df68e8/highclere.jpeg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Take a Tour of the Real _Downton Abbey_ House > Sponsored content. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. ## Video: The Real Downton Abbey: Highclere Castle [Watch (HLS stream): The Real Downton Abbey: Highclere Castle](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/urM3euyX.m3u8) (4:01)  _Published 2012-01-05. The Countess Carnarvon gives a tour of the fabulous Highclere Castle, her family home and the set of the Masterpiece Classic series Downton Abbey_  by [Lily Rothman](https://time.com/author/lily-rothman/)  ## Lily Rothman Rothman is managing editor at TIME. Feb 8, 2016 1:00 PM UTC  The butler poses in the saloon at Highclere Castle on March 15, 2011 in Newbury, England. The butler poses in the saloon at Highclere Castle on March 15, 2011 in Newbury, England. Matthew Lloyd—Getty Images  by [Lily Rothman](https://time.com/author/lily-rothman/)  ## Lily Rothman Rothman is managing editor at TIME. Feb 8, 2016 1:00 PM UTC The prospect of opening up Downton Abbey to the public might shock the fictional Lord Grantham, even if ticket sales could help subsidize the house’s upkeep. In real life, however, the house at which the popular TV show is filmed does allow commoners to traipse through. As the house’s current resident, Lady Carnarvon, [recently told](http://time.com/4190411/highclere-castle-egypt/) LIFE Books, Highclere Castle has been open to the public since the 1980s, when an exhibition of Egyptian artifacts went on display. The home is currently open to visitors for a couple dozen days a year, and it’s even possible to book an overnight stay at the estate. In 2012, TIME visited the estate to [take a look](http://time.com/vault/issue/2012-01-16/page/54/) at what it’s like to live at the real Downton Abbey. And, as the article explained, the real reason for the tours is just the same as the one explained on the show: --- > “” --- Luckily for visitors, however, the real Lady Carnarvon proved a better tour guide than Cora Crawley: ## Transcript But welcome to Highclere Castle. I'm Lady Carnarvon and this is a family home. And you'll also know it as Downton Abbey. And the series is shown by PBS. And I'm delighted to show you some of the highlights and some of the ways round our wonderful state rooms. My husband's family have lived here since 1679 and the bishops of Winchester owned it for 800 years before that. But the current castle built on top of the previous buildings was done by Charles Barry, who did the Houses of Parliament in London. So it's a very important building. It's got two or 300 rooms, 50 to 80 bedrooms, some cellars, and it's a masterpiece of Victorian confidence and inspiring architecture and most people will recognize this room from Downton Abbey. It's much used by Julian Fellowes when he's writing the script, but for us as well, it's a much used family room. We normally have a bar set up here with coffees and drinks and champagne or whatever we're having before lunch or supper, and we collect around the fire in the winter evenings to play quiz games and charades. During the First World War, the castle was actually turned into a hospital, and the woman who ran it was the first Countess of Carnarvon. She made herself head matron, and she was called our Mina, our Mina Carnarvon. And I've written a book about this. The history at that time was almost as good as the fiction that you're all seeing on television. The State Dining was a marvelous room. Downton Abbey spent an awful lot of time in here. There's often 14 of them around this room. While the room is dominated by this wonderful van dike of Charles first on horseback. It was painted about 1633. And it's the most amazing feeling to sit in this room with such an extraordinary, huge painting above you. Now, I actually always sit in this chair and my husband always sits opposite me and interestingly enough, I think my mother in law sat here, her mother in law sat there and the staff dining room used to be underneath this dining room and the top ladies made the housekeeper would sit here and the butler where my husband sits, they would mirror the small downstairs we have upstairs. This is our indoor bedroom. It was actually turned into the operating theater in the First World War by America. Now, in the fifth contest, there was no National Health service or during the First World War. It was up to people like our Nina or the military hospitals to nurse men back to health. What is wonderful is having Downton Abbey here means we we have a lot of visitors when we're open, which means the pubs, the local hotels are full. We buy all our local produce from from local suppliers. We've got lots of part time employees and we're completely amazed. And we're all working jolly hard to kind of try to make hay while the sun shines, I think, and make sure visitors who come here enjoy it to make sure we've still got enough days for filming the third series and see where we go after that. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/4203463/house-tour-downton/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/4203463/house-tour-downton/"},"headline":"Take a Tour of the Real Downton Abbey House","datePublished":"2016-02-08T13:00:00.000Z","dateModified":"2026-08-04T07:56:22.506Z","description":"The open-house plot is strikingly similar to real life","url":"https://time.com/4203463/house-tour-downton/","keywords":["Television"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltaa07f1f15d1fbbaf/69887bb7524fc0fbc2df68e8/highclere.jpeg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Lily Rothman","jobTitle":"Rothman is managing editor at TIME.","url":"https://time.com/author/lily-rothman/"}],"articleSection":"History","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltaa07f1f15d1fbbaf/69887bb7524fc0fbc2df68e8/highclere.jpeg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"Daily Life At Highclere Castle Home To Television Program Downton Abbey","caption":"Daily Life At Highclere Castle Home To Television Program Downton Abbey","creditText":"Matthew Lloyd—Getty Images","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/history/","name":"History"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/4203463/house-tour-downton/","name":"Take a Tour of the Real Downton Abbey House"}}]},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"The Real Downton Abbey: Highclere Castle","description":"The Countess Carnarvon gives a tour of the fabulous Highclere Castle, her family home and the set of the Masterpiece Classic series Downton Abbey","thumbnailUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/urM3euyX/poster.jpg?width=720","uploadDate":"2012-01-05T20:00:49.000Z","contentUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/urM3euyX.m3u8","embedUrl":"https://time.com/4203463/house-tour-downton/","duration":"PT4M1S","potentialAction":{"@type":"SeekToAction","target":"https://time.com/4203463/house-tour-downton/?jw_start={seek_to_second_number}","startOffset-input":"required name=seek_to_second_number"}}] ```