It’s the posh saga centred around a country pile that’s that’s a seen everything from affairs to murder, as well as tragic deaths and disasters. Now, after a hit TV series and two movies, a farewell flick called Downton Abbey: The Finale is set to open in cinemas this week.
Set in the 1930s it stars Hugh Bonneville as the Earl of Grantham and Michelle Dockery as Lady Mary, in a plot featuring a scandalous divorce and money troubles at the fictional Yorkshire estate.
But there are also some shocking real-life tales about Britain’s magnificent country houses which can match any of the drama from the famous franchise. Here we look at them in detail.
Tomb much
The backdrop for TV’s Downton Abbey is Hampshire’s 18th-Century Highclere Castle, the former home of the Earl of Carnarvon, who funded the 1922 discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb in Egypt. He died the following year from an infected mosquito bite, fuelling talk that he’d fallen victim to the “Pharaoh’s Curse”.
His wealth came from his wife Almina, the illegitimate daughter of wealthy banker Alfred de Rothschild. After Lord Carnarvon died, she got caught up in an explosive court case over money with her new husband’s ex-wife.
She racked up huge debts and was declared bankrupt before her death, aged 93, in 1969. The current 8th Earl of Carnarvon still lives at Highclere Castle.
Sex and spies
In July 1961 at a racy party at Cliveden House in Buckinghamshire, model Christine Keeler, 20, met Tory politician John Profumo, 46, at the mansion’s pool, where she was swimming nude. Keeler would go on to sleep with another guest, Soviet diplomat and spy Eugene Ivanov.
But Profumo, the married Secretary of State for War, later got in touch with Keeler. They were soon having an affair. With fears over national security, he would later deny being involved with Keeler, but was forced to admit lying and resign.
Even Cliveden’s owner Lord Astor was dragged into the scandal. When he denied an affair with model Mandy Rice-Davies, she joked in court: “Well he would, wouldn’t he?”
Murderous maniac
Wilton House in Wiltshire was the seat of the seventh Earl of Pembroke, Philip Herbert, who kept scores of dogs, a bear and a lion there during the 17th century.
The Earl was infamous for his violent temper and used his title to wriggle out of a conviction for kicking a man to death in a tavern in 1678. Later that year a jury member was found impaled on his own sword.
The Earl was suspected of involvement, but escaped justice. In 1680 he killed another man in a pub and fled abroad − and got away with it again when he managed to secure a royal pardon.
Peeping Tom
In 1775, 17-year-old Seymour Fleming married Sir Richard Worsley and they lived at the grand Appuldurcombe House on the Isle of Wight. But Lady Worsley, played by Natalie Dormer in The Scandalous Lady W, took a reported 27 lovers and had a child by her hubby’s pal Maurice George Bisset, before they eloped together.
Lord Worsley sued Bisset, but in court it emerged that he’d not only encouraged his wife’s extra-marital liaisons, but even spied on her trysts through a keyhole. After splitting with Bisset, Lady Worsley became a professional mistress and ended up in a Paris jail during the French Revolution.
Love triangle
Sprawling Chatsworth House in Derbyshire was once home to Georgiana Spencer, the Duchess of Devonshire. Played by Keira Knightley in 2008 movie The Duchess, she would cause a society sensation by living in a Georgian “throuple” with her husband the 5th Duke of Devonshire and her friend Lady “Bess” Foster.
The Duchess would go on to have an affair and a child with future Prime Minister Charles Grey, too. When she died in 1806, Bess and the Duke wed. But his new bride always kept a lock of the Duchess’s hair around her neck.
Naked dinner parties
Brocket Hall is an 18th-Century mansion in Hertfordshire, once owned by Victorian Prime Minister Lord Melbourne. His wife, Lady Caroline Lamb, once emerged naked from a huge soup tureen at his birthday party, then danced on the table before guests.
She later had a tempestuous affair with the poet Lord Byron, famously branding her lover: “Mad, bad, and dangerous to know.” It’s also said that another premier, Lord Palmerston, died at Brocket Hall in 1865 while romping with a maid on the billiard table. During World War Two the 2nd Baron Brocket was locked up for being a Nazi sympathiser.
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