Secrets of Highclere Castle

Highclere Castle.

world-famous as the location for hit drama series Downton Abbey.

Over centuries it's played host to royalty. nobility and celebrity.

It holds unexpected secrets.

This is a fairy tale castle

with a real-life Lord and Lady.

And even a real-life butler.

I think it's very important to maintain standards

because once they disappear they will never come back.

This is the behind-the-scenes story of England's best-known country home.

70 miles west of London lies one of the great estates of England...

Highclere.

A country house nestling in 5.000 acres.

That's five times the size of New York's Central Park.

Highclere is the location backdrop

for the successful television period drama Downton Abbey.

And walking through its doors is like walking onto the television set.

In reality. this is a 19th-Century trophy house

designed to show off inherited wealth.

And far more than just a fictional creation.

For Highclere is also a family home

for a real Lord and Lady.

The Carnarvon family have lived here for 300 years.

Their links with Highclere go back even further.

The family have owned the land here

since the time of Charles II's reign in the late 1600s.

George Herbert. the 8th Earl of Carnarvon.

inherited his title and the keys to the castle in 2001.

Just two years after marrying former accountant Fiona Aitken.

the present-day Lady Carnarvon.

Good afternoon, my Lord. Good afternoon, my Lady.

I met my husband at the end of '96.

I first came here in January '97.

You don't know when you turn up you're going to end up marrying...

You're just a guest.

And I came for a shooting party

and we then were together for a couple of years

before we got married.

Lady Carnarvon married into a classic English fairy tale life

complete with servants.

Because an estate like Highclere doesn't run itself.

Oh, how wonderful.

Thanks very much.

My favorite point of day.

I just need a biscuit to dunk and then I'd be really happy.

Back in the castle's heyday.

an army of 60 servants attended to the Lord and Lady's every whim.

Thank you very much indeed.

Today there's around 20 full-time staff

helping manage this historic estate.

Our role is really that we're long-term stewards of the estate

for the next generation of the castle and the estate,

leaving it for the future generations to enjoy, really.

Highclere costs a cool one million dollars a year to maintain.

So cashing in on Downton's television fame

is an invaluable boost to Lord and Lady Carnarvon's income.

We really have to do our best to make the whole place earn its living and pay its way.

And add a value where possible.

And you can't really get any greater value added

than finding Downton Abbey being shot at Highclere itself,

which adds value in fact to all the enterprises here in all honesty.

Because it's really put Highclere on the map.

That map attracts 60.000 visitors a year.

Most are Downton fanatics.

So enthusiastic and they turn up here

and get so excited there's a real earl and countess.

It's great.

It's fantastic, and they've chosen to come here.

It's been an extraordinary experience.

Millions of television viewers now know and love

every corner of Lord and Lady Carnarvon's home.

Downton's script-writer Julian Fellowes is a friend of the family.

He had Highclere in mind as he wrote the hit drama.

With a starring role for rooms such as the elegant library.

the setting for frequent meetings

between the fictional Earl of Grantham

and his equally fictitious butler.

They discuss the fictitious running of their fictitious house.

In reality. it was used in the late 19th Century

by the 4th Earl of Carnarvon

as his withdrawing room.

The ladies. however.

withdrew to the more feminine splendor of the drawing room.

Still. today. one of the family's favorite rooms.

We thoroughly enjoy using it today.

We use it for drinks before dinner.

It's my preferred choice. It's a girly room

when you're dressed up and relaxing at the beginning of an evening. Heaven.

And Julian and the Fellowes, when they stay,

they would also come down

and join us for drinks here

and obviously in Downton Abbey as well it's used by the supposed Grantham family.

And Maggie Smith and Cora, Elizabeth McGovern,

sit here for their tete-a-tetes.

Or, in the third series,

there seems to be a few tete-a-tetes between Shirley MacLaine and Maggie Smith.

Much of the furniture and many of the ornaments and paintings in the house

have been passed down the generations as family heirlooms.

The children of the 1st Earl of Carnarvon hang over the fireplace.

In pride of place is Lady Carnarvon's pride and joy.

a 19th-Century family heirloom.

And I moved it here into the drawing room.

It was jolly heavy and quite a kerfuffle.

I got professional piano movers in to do it, obviously,

but it is wonderful.

It's an original Steinway from 1895.

It has beautiful tone.

Quite fun to put photographs on it.

And some of the music here is my modern very simple music.

And some of it is much more complicated pieces,

which were obviously played by my predecessors here.

The drawing room has changed little through the years.

It and other rooms are perhaps the real stars of the Downton drama.

It is a very beautiful house

and seems to never... It never fluffs its lines, does it, in Downton.

It always looks great.

And the camera will find different shots of the library or the dining room.

Or the views maybe from the tower

or maybe up to the towers.

It's amazing that your house somehow is being so much part of a story.

I sometimes see views of the rooms from an angle I don't normally appreciate.

And I think, hold on, where exactly is that? Where are they?

Possessions the family have accumulated over centuries

make this a television set like no other.

Some books here slightly predate the television era.

There are volumes from the 16th Century.

The grand staircase dates back 150 years.

Solid oak. taking a year to carve into shape.

Much is irreplaceable.

not least the leather wall coverings

brought back from Spain by the 3rd Earl in 1631.

And coats of arms from the 1st Earl to his modern-day descendent.

The treasure trove list goes on and on and on.

To the accompanying tick-tock of 37 historic clocks.

Napoleon's 1795 desk

vies for attention with the baroque ceiling from the same era.

And one of the world's greatest family picture albums.

One particular portrait even carries a somber family legend.

Moving this dining room painting will spell disaster for the Carnarvons.

So Countess Margaret Sawyer remains a perpetual house guest.

And Highclere survives.

Watched over by King Charles I on horseback.

a priceless Van Dyck.

But there's one secret room you'll never see in Downton Abbey.

The smoking room is strictly for family eyes only.

An English manor house tradition from the late 18th-Century onwards.

this room was a male preserve

for smoking. gaming and important men's talk

away from the ladies.

It also saved the women from instant asphyxiation.

It was a smoking room for two reasons.

The chimney didn't work well.

So there was a lot of smoke in the room.

But in fact nowadays we don't use this fire any more.

And some of this room has been restored in some ways.

It's one of my favorites

because it has these absolutely beautiful paintings in it.

The glorious colors of this still life of different types of birds

and the paradise landscape

by a Dutch painter called Jan Weenix.

In pride of place is a photo of the current Earl's grandfather.

A colorful character with a party reputation.

This is one of his wives.

The famous dancer Tilly Losch.

My grandfather, he loved this room.

And he loved being in these leather chairs here.

In fact, he spent much of his life around this part of the castle.

Highclere may be a castle today

but once it looked like this.

In 1839. architect Charles Barry is brought in.

fresh from designing London's Houses of Parliament.

He remodels Highclere in a matching Gothic revival style.

A clear homage to the British seat of government.

It turns what had been an unremarkable home into a far grander status symbol.

And Highclere House transforms into the freshly minted Highclere Castle.

Even earlier. the parklands too had their own makeover.

The most fashionable landscape gardener of his age.

Lancelot Capability Brown.

swept away the earlier formal gardens.

Instead. he opened up Highclere to the beauty of the English countryside.

And a peculiarly English tradition

of creating the oddest of ornamental buildings.

These fanciful structures known as follies

were designed by family member Robert Herbert.

inspired by classical ruins during the grand tour of Europe.

de rigueur for young bucks of his day.

I really am so much in debt from Robert Herbert's vision

in the 18th Century.

Without that kind of vision, we wouldn't be enjoying so much today.

To the south of the castle. Heaven's Gate built in 1737.

a pillared temple called Jackdaw's Castle built in 1743.

And to the northeast.

overlooking Dunsmere Lake.

the romantic but utterly pointless Temple of Diana.

Everything about the sprawling 5.000 acres of the Highclere Estate

is designed to impress.

The mile-long drive to the house winds its way past 56 cedars of Lebanon

planted by the first Earl of Carnarvon over three centuries ago.

Such planning takes time.

Well, we're just coming into the main part of Lime Avenue,