Tuesday, May 12, 2015

For Sale: One Of the Downton Abbey Mansions

From Curbed:

Mansion from Downton Abbey Goes on Sale for $6.16M
 
Location: Surrey, England
Price: £3,950,000 (~$6,160,000)
For the last five years, the historic Byfleet Manor in Surrey, England has been home to Downton Abbey's Lady Violet Crawley (played by Dame Maggie Smith). Now that the hit period drama is officially wrapping up (Season 6, currently in production, will be the last), this home has fittingly been put on sale to begin a new chapter. Built around 1686, the property was, according to the listing agent, "owned by the Crown for over 300 years during which time several royal figures lived at, gifted, destroyed and rebuilt the house." More recently, the home's brick exterior also served as Cinderella's house in the recent Oscar-nominated film Into the Woods.

Inside, there are eight bedrooms and four reception rooms spread over 6,000 square feet. Sitting at the end of a country lane, the property includes 19 landscaped acres. Four additional lots, three of which have residential dwellings, can be purchased along with the main house, an opportunity broker-babble calls "the perfect forever home for a growing family."...MORE
Related:

Downton Abbey Economics
First up, Architectural Digest: 

Historic Houses: The Splendors of Highclere Castle 

AD revisits the Earl of Carnarvon’s estate in Hampshire—now the setting of PBS’s hit show Downton Abbey
Highclere Castle: A Look at the Real Downton Abbey
Downton Abbey, PBS’s hit period drama that has become essential Sunday-night viewing, has turned its setting, Britain’s Highclere Castle, into a television icon. Here AD revisits the historic Victorian estate as it appeared in the January/February 1979 issue, long before it was chosen as the home of the fictional Crawley family.

“I am the last link of the feudal system. I’ve done everything I possibly can to keep the ancestral home.” The present earl of Carnarvon, who is the sixth of that title, lives at Highclere Castle in Hampshire, one of the great country houses of England. He succeeded to the estate in 1923, on the death of his father, who financed Howard Carter and discovered the tomb of Tutankhamun, in Egypt....MORE