From Lady Sybil Crawley’s scandalous-for-the-era harem pants in season one, to Lady Mary’s chic wedding dress in season three, we pay almost as much attention to the fashion and accessories in Downton Abbey as we do the architecture and interiors.
The good news is that a third film is on the way in September to satisfy lovers of both period style and intrigue. Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale is the dramatic conclusion to the story of the Crawleys and the people who live and work in their storied stately home.
This will see the Crawleys navigate the changing landscape of the 1930s as they embark on a journey to take the family, and their stately pile, into the future.
The film will close out the saga and will also be our last chance to experience Highclere Castle as the fictional Downton Abbey. Home to the Earl of Carnarvon, filming on the series began at Highclere in 2010 and has brought this iconic Jacobethan-style mansion to a global audience of more than 400 million.
RM Block
If you can’t wait for the film, then you can get a fix of real-world elegance and heritage right here at home. Happily, Ireland’s typical public stately home (often known colloquially as “the big house”), also delivers a living glimpse into grandeur, incredible architecture and storytelling.
Access to the past
Locations such as Castletown House in Co Kildare and Bantry House in Co Cork offer us unparalleled access to the past.
At Castletown, the country’s first winged Palladian mansion, and one of its finest, you can experience the result of endeavours put in place in the 18th century by Lady Louisa Conolly.
Descended from English royalty, Lady Louisa, née Lennox, married Irishman Thomas Conolly in 1758. The couple lived at Castletown, with Louisa dedicating her time to redecorating the interior, which features a famous print room, now the only intact 18th-century print room left in the country.
She also commissioned the house’s grand staircase and its long gallery, which features brightly coloured Venetian glass chandeliers.
The outside got just as much attention: the famed English gardener and landscape architect Capability Brown was brought on board to create fashionable, naturalistic parklands. Those parklands still exist today and offer a bucolic setting from which to look back at the house.
At the other end of the country, west Cork’s Bantry House is a blend of Queen Anne-style architecture with Georgian and Victorian additions. Classical elements such as porticos, columns and pilasters abound.
Its setting is spectacular, with panoramic views overlooking Bantry Bay and the Caha Mountains. Sitting on the third of seven terraces of a formal Italian-style garden, visitors can enjoy the parterre, a wisteria circle, and the famous Hundred Steps – a great spot for a picture or two.
Bantry House is remarkable for a few other reasons: it has a private collection of furniture and art objects, and its interior has exquisite features including Roman tiles from Pompeii, French chimneypieces and a set of Gobelin tapestries, which were allegedly made for Queen Marie-Antoinette.
The house has also remained in the ownership of the White family since 1739 and was opened to the public in 1946; these days, you can book in for the night to really get a sense of how the other half lived.
Further north in the county is the splendid Doneraile Court estate, located near Mallow. Prior to its sale to the State in 1969, 13 generations of the St Leger family lived here.
Not only associated with the famous St Leger Stakes, in about 1710 or 1712, Elizabeth St Leger was made a Freemason in secret during a lodge meeting at the house – a very big deal then, and one which made her the only female Freemason of the time.
The estate and surrounding village have a strong literary tradition. The Elizabethan poet Edmund Spenser lived close by in the 1590s and immortalised the nearby river Awbeg in his poem The Faerie Queene, referring to it as the “gentle Mulla”.
The house itself was built over several phases, with its distinctive bow-ended facade added in 1725. Closed for about 25 years, Doneraile Court underwent a significant refurbishment and reopened to the public in 2019.
Now, you can enjoy its restored interiors as well as 400 acres of landscaped grounds, which include a “ha-ha” ditch designed to enclose deer without visible fences.
In Co Wicklow, the grand Russborough House is as known for its Palladian architectural style as it is for its art – and also its famous art thefts. The house has been the target of multiple significant heists, notably in 1974, when an IRA gang led by Rose Dugdale stole 19 paintings.
In 1986, Martin Cahill, aka The General, masterminded a robbery here, stealing 18 paintings.
Don’t fret - most of the stolen works have been recovered, but even despite this, the house has a vast art repository, the Beit Collection. Visitors can enjoy oil paintings from the 17th to 20th centuries by artists such as Gainsborough, Oudry and Vernet.
There is plenty more to see outside, with numerous walking trails around the parkland surrounding the house, and even a beech hedge maze which contains about 2km of winding paths.
Or head west for one of Co Mayo’s best-loved attractions: Westport House. A Georgian gem, it dates back more than 300 years, but its roots are far more ancient. In fact, the castle of the Pirate Queen of Connacht, Grace O’Malley herself, forms the foundations of Westport House.
While you can take a guided tour of the house and see all its stately splendour, it’s what’s outside that will really impress, particularly for those with kids. The grounds feature an adventure park with climbing, ziplines and aerial trekking. There is also a campsite and a glamping village, and coming next year, a 129-room hotel, aptly named The Grace.
Enjoy even more period splendour on the big screen with the release of Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale on September 12th, 2025.
