WHAT do Downton Abbey and Brideshead Revisited have in common? At the top of a long list would be television titles that refer to estates in the country, rather than the two families' more valuable London homes. Grantham House or Marchmain House Revisited would have less allure for a nation that is still rooted to the land. By coincidence, both programmes used the same London property for exterior filming. It was also a stand-in for Clarence House in The Crown.
The real location, Bridgewater House, SW1, remains unknown to most viewers, as do the Dukes of Bridgewater. There were only three of them, although the 19th-century 'father of inland navigation' was among the richest men in England. All the publicity has gone to Highclere Castle, Hampshire, and Castle Howard in North Yorkshire. The interiors used for both fictional houses were in rural locations, far from Bridgewater House and St James's.
The television producers couldn't use an authentic, palatial, lived-in London family home of the aristocracy-because there are barely any left. The names are all that remain, in central London, anyway. If we head west to Brentford, there is Syon House, TW8, which appears in the costume romp Bridgerton. The Duke of Northumberland promotes this property as the ducal home in London for four centuries. In reality, it was more of a halfway house-albeit positioned in the wrong direction for the North-and a prison for Henry VIII's wife Catherine Howard before her execution in 1542. The M25 was truly a travel gift for the Percy family.
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