As award-winning creator of Downton Abbey, Julian Fellowes, ominously writes to preface the current third season of our favorite show on television: “The sun is rising behind Downton Abbey, a great and splendid house in a great and splendid park. So secure does it appear, that it seems as if the way of life it represents will last for another thousand years. It won’t.”
From grand bedrooms and lustworthy libraries suspended in time to a gorgeous great house complete with a walled garden and roaming peacocks, click through to imagine life in the time of the Matthews and the Marys in sumptuous turn-of-the-century England. Before things changed forever.
Kedleston Hall — Derbyshire, England
Image credit: Everything Derbyshire; VIEW; NTPL via Treasure Hunt
Hardwick Hall — Derbyshire, England
Image credit: Victoria Phipps
Holkham Hall — North Norfolk, England
Image credit: Life Takes Lemons; Hans A. Rosbach
Stourhead — Wiltshire, England
Image credit: Josep Renalias; Brodyaga; NTPL via Treasure Hunt
Flintham Hall — Nottinghamshire, England
Image credit: Antique European Houses & Interiors; Clay Perry
Felbrigg Hall — Norfolk, England
Image credit: astoft; John Hammond via Treasure Hunt; Tour Norfolk; Nick Manassei
Calke Abbey — Derbyshire, England
Image credit: Amanda Whewell; NTPL via Treasure Hunt; Nancy Blackett
Chatsworth House — Derbyshire, England
Image credit: Paul Collins; Chatsworth
Badminton House — South Gloucestershire, England
Image credit: The Badminton Estate; beautiful-libraries
Uppark House — West Sussex, England
Image credit: Mangus Manske; Geoffrey Frosh via Treasure Hunt