Elizabeth Fellow - Christmas at Downton

Christmas at Downtown

Holiday Foods and Tradition from the Unofficial Guide to Downtown Abbey

Elizabeth Fellow

2014

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L ook across the Yorkshire Moors to the Abbey on Christmas day. Surrounded by trees, the branches glisten in the crisp, freezing frost. From the windows, the golden glow of warmth dances across the snow. Inside, the Crawleys and their household prepare to unveil their most spectacular Christmas yet.

For the first time this year, you are invited to join the feast. Enjoy a privileged insight into the Downton Abbey Christmas and the preparations that made it so fine.

Experiment with some of their glorious food of the period, from the glamorous Charlotte Russe and Consomm with quails eggs to the ancient traditional mince pie containing real chunks of beef.

Hold the perfect Christmas party, with instructions from how the table should be laid right through to which drinks should be served.

So without further ado, don your most beautiful frock and pearls, style your hair, and put on your gloves. Because, we ladies....

Were off to Downton Abbey to enjoy Christmas in quite the most elegant style.

Elizabeth Fellow

T he Downton Abbey Christmas Special always marks the pinnacle of the festive seasons TV. Larger than life, the Specials always sparkle with brilliant story lines and elegant visual delights. The 2012 episode was reputed to have cost a mouth-watering 12 million to create. While that seems to be an inordinate production bill, it is in line with the mountainous cost of a Christmas celebration in English stately home in the 1920s.

The Christmas meal was the very largest of all statements of wealth. It was an opportunity for the Lord and Lady to showcase their achievements not only in financial terms of the harvest of their lands, but in their personal success as a marriage and family unit too.

As the 2014 season opens, we see the attitudes of the British towards their beloved aristocracy beginning to falter. The clever introduction of Tom Branson, the emergent ambassador for the proletariat just as a labour government comes into power, means we shall likely see changes in the dynamic of the household over the coming seasons. Already we can feel Carsons discomfort of the class divide starting to dissolve.

Downton is set in the breath-taking scenery of Yorkshire, one of the most northerly counties of England. Summers are clement, bright, and airy. Winters are bitterly cold and extremely harsh. Christmas days glisten with biting frosts.

A hundred years prior, Emily Bronte had described Yorkshires stark landscape far better than I ever could in her immortal book Wuthering Heights . Having witnessed Yorkshires changing seasons every day of her life, she is magically able to transport us there with her words.

She vividly paints pictures of the "golden rocks" of Penistone Crags, black hollows, bleak hilltops, bilberry bushes, moonlit scenery, miles of heath, and winding roads. The Yorkshire moors are a stark and frankly, unnerving place. It is cold, blustery, and wet. In the dark days of winter, it is easy to get lost, especially when the snow does come down.

On this dark landscape stood the strong fortress of Downton Abbey. Inside, fires crackled, candles burned, chandeliers glinted. The soft devor fabrics of Lady Granthams dresses shimmered in the softened light. Her sequinned evening wear, beaded to within an inch of its life, sparkled and glistened in its warmth. Beds were warmed with copper bedpans fuelled by burning embers. As dusk stole the last moments of light, a golden glow of wealth radiates into the gloom, extinguished only by heavy curtains drawn to keep out the cold.

These great draughty houses were massive sources of employment. Of course, like any business, as the house flourished, it grew, and so (very slightly) did the fortunes of those living on the estates. When we look at records contemporaneous to the period, we can see just how much commerce passed through their doors.

At Welbeck Abbey, in Nottinghamshire, the Duke of Portland employed more than 60 staff inside of his house. A further 200 were employed in the stables, gardens, and home farm. In fact, records show that the Welbeck Abbey Annual Servants Ball was so grand an affair that a massive 50 waiters had to be seconded in from London to serve the crowd of workers.

A wonderful old record from Longleat (now the home of a Safari Park) gives us some insights into some of the jobs our modern day minds might struggle to imagine. The Marquis of Bath of the day, similar in spirit to our own Dowager Duchess, refused to install electricity purely on grounds of taste. Therefore, her household employed a young man whose job title was that of lamp boy. His endless task was to clean, trim, and refill Longleats 400 oil lamps (plus the 140 candles in the private chapel). Because this role seemed not to entirely fill his day, each evening, 60 pairs of shoes were also laid out for him to polish.

Today, a workforce of more than 250 staff would be considered an impressively large business. Yet this was simply the workings of one stately home. Employment in the great houses was deemed to be an honour and a very good job. A regular wage coming in to a servants home was very welcome. Also, servants ate pretty well.

Later we will explore some of the dishes which would have been served on Christmas day. The upstairs menu was lavish and indulgent, starting with a breakfast of kedgeree or perhaps of brawn, a light lunch of Game Pie, and then afternoon tea. Christmas dinner would be a belt-busting six courses, which included a starter, a fish dish, the turkey dinner (because turkeys were the most expensive birds you could buy), and dessert, cheese, and fruit courses.

When you consider the price of the food, that bill is expensive. Then you can factor in the wages of the staff. There would likely be more seconded in to manage the needs of visitors, and of course, simple tasks like lighting and tending fires. Those tending the fires had to then clean out the grates, so that they would be ready for the next fire, an inordinate amount of labour. Not to mention of course...the washing up?

So the question is, where on earth did the money come from?

There was a strange symbiosis between Englands great houses and their tenants. The bills of the house were met by the rent paid by the tenants of the estate, most of whom worked for the great house anyway. So there was this circle of money going in and out in an endless spiral. By the 1870s though, a depression in agricultural prices meant that houses like Downton Abbey were beginning to struggle. The bills to run the houses, let alone heat them, were vast, and most houses had a shortfall in their coffers.