At the time of the Norman invasion
of AD 1066, England was not so much one country as a collection of duchies and
earldoms fostered and defended by one monarch or another, often with shifting
loyalties, held together as much by common language, geography and religion as
by any national allegiance. Repeatedly subject to invasions by Vikings and
Norwegians, pre-Norman England was more closely connected to Denmark than to
the Europe which lay almost in sight across the Channel. English medieval
history is a complicated affair, an observation underlined by the fact that at
any particular moment in time, there could be three or four cousins speaking as
many different languages claiming to be “heirs” to the throne. In fact one
woman – Emma of Normandy – would become Queen of England twice, once as a
result of a marriage of diplomatic convenience to King Æthelred, and again as
wife of King Cnut.
To say that 1066 changed England is
sheer understatement. The Norman invasion and successful conquest
of that Island Kingdom was one of the world-changing events of history, and so
far as the English language and its voraciously-hungry vocabulary are
concerned, of earth-shaking consequence, right down to the present day. (More
about this in future columns.)
In a landscape on which architecture
had long followed a pattern of imposing church abbeys around which villages of
yeoman farmers who owed their patronage to a landed elite would gather
continued to mark the verdant countryside. Over centuries of politics and
internecine warfare, debts incurred by political winners to those who had
supported them led to a system of “royal paybacks” conveying property and
peerage to a rising upper class whose wealth found its way into residences
built in a grand style on large tracts of land whose income derived from the
thriving vassal farms and shops over which they presided.
The size and grandiosity of these
castle-like mansions, and the wealth which made them possible probably reached
a zenith in the Edwardian era, as did the rigid nature of England’s class
divisions; all of which would see a stark decline beginning with the arrival of
World War I.
For the purposes of this foray into
that opulent, and not so distant past, I have chosen a grand estate in
modern-day England’s Hampshire hills as a subject: a stately home known as
“Highclere Castle”. Built in its present form in the mid-1800s, it occupies a
piece of ground whose first building dates back to the 8th century,
on an estate which has been the family seat of the Herbert family since 1679.
Its
most famous resident was George Edward Stanhope Malyneux Herbert, the 5th
Earl of Carnarvon (1866-1923). He is remembered most for his love of
Egyptology, and for his patronage of a dig by Howard Carter which uncovered
King Tutankhamun’s tomb in 1923 (leading to the Earl’s mysterious death). Like
many of the landed rich of his era, Herbert was going broke, and solved his
problem by marrying Almina, the illegitimate daughter of banking magnate Alfred
de Rothschild for an annual dowry of
approximately 12,000 pounds sterling.
In its heyday “Highclere” might
house 20-30 guests on three floors, where a wait staff of 30 maids, valets,
cooks, drivers and footmen, supervised by a Butler, lived in a separate part of
the mansion (females, who reported to the housekeeper, in the attic). As late
as 1897, there was still no running water, and staff had to carry gallons of
water and waste up and down miles of stairways each day. Children lived in a
separate section of the house where they were visited by parents only on a
weekly (and reportedly very uncomfortable) basis. The Lord and Lady of the
house lived in their own kind of privacy, protected by a century of protocols
and social “fire walls”, but the distances between members of the wait staff
were no less rigid, and among them, the Butler reigned supreme.
If the accompanying photo looks
familiar, it should: “Highclere Castle” is the filming location for the popular
MASTERPIECE THEATER drama, DOWNTON ABBEY, and while the film story, written by
Julian Fellowes is not the real-life story of “Highclere”, there are some
notable parallels. My personal favorite actor in the series, now in its 3rd
season, is Jim Carter, as is the Butler “Carson”, whose character he plays. By
the way, the popular television series is having a worldwide impact: English
butlers are back in popularity, and there is a scramble to train thousands for
newly-advertised, high-paying positions in a dozen countries.
Familiar to television viewers everywhere,
Highclere Castle, venue for most of the filming of the popular MASTERPIECE THEATER
production Downton Abbey has a dramatic family history of it's own. As in the
film, it too was used as a hospital for wounded soldiers during both World War
A long list of the U.K.’s Stately Homes are open
to visitors. One of the most popular is Castle Howard built in North Yorkshire for the 3rd
Earl of Carlisle in 1699. With its thousands of groomed acres and 145 rooms, it
even once had its own R.R. station.
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