A Year in the Life of Downton Abbey: Seasonal Celebrations, Traditions, and Recipes (4 page)

With fewer guests arriving with their own valet or lady’s maid these days, Carson and Mrs Hughes have to allocate a member of their own staff to do the job instead. Usually, this would fall to Mr Barrow and Anna. But there’s been more reference to ‘Madge’ lately, the housemaid that dresses Edith, so she may be put to use for a low-ranking guest. After that, there are wine cellars to be managed, larder stocks to be assessed, household budgets to be monitored, spare bedrooms to be made up. Carson will liaise with the estate managers to make sure there are enough logs for the fireplaces; Mrs Hughes will talk to the gardener if a vase of flowers is beginning to lose its bloom. And at any time, anyone from the family may call upon them with a sharp ring on the bell, summoning a servant from whatever it is they may be doing, in order to attend to their needs – however trivial they may be.

One of the most compelling aspects of these large houses, with so many servants hurrying about, is the lack of privacy. For example, servants did not always knock on the door before entering a room, either because they knew they were expected or because they were in and out so often it would have slowed things down too much to do so. Married couples conducted their relationships almost entirely in a public space and some would argue that this kept them going for longer than they might have done had they only had each other to look at and talk to.

Jimmy

One of Mrs Patmore’s great standbys, this breakfast or supper dish dates back to the days of the British Raj and has stood the test of time. An excellent way to start the day – and the New Year.

SERVES 4–6

Place the haddock in a medium saucepan, pour boiling water over to cover it and poach for up to 10 minutes or until the fish is barely cooked. Do not allow the water to re-boil. Remove the fish from the water with a slotted spoon and set aside on a plate to cool. Keep the cooking water in the pan.

Heat the sunflower oil and half the butter in a large saucepan. Add the onion and cook over a low heat until softened – about 10 minutes. Stir in the curry powder and cook for another couple of minutes. Add the rice to the pan and stir well. When the rice is slightly translucent, pour in 2 ½ cups of the haddock cooking water and bring to a boil. Simmer gently for about 15 minutes, stirring occasionally, until all the liquid has been absorbed and the rice is tender. Add a little more water if necessary. Take the pan off the heat.

Flake the haddock and add to the rice, along with the parsley, raisins (if using), the remaining butter and good grinding of salt and pepper. Stir the mixture gently to combine and transfer to a serving dish. Cut the hard-boiled eggs into quarters, scatter over the top and serve immediately with lemon wedges on the side.

Seville oranges are in season for a short time in the weeks after Christmas and have been prized in England since the seventeenth century — particularly to make this delicious, bitter-tasting marmalade.

MAKES ABOUT
10 MEDIUM-SIZED JARS

Wash, rinse and dry the jars. Place a couple of saucers in the fridge.

Wash the oranges and lemons and cut in half. Squeeze out the juice and pips from the fruit. As you work, pour the juice into a jug and place the pips and any pith and membranes that cling to the squeezer into a bowl. Scoop out any pith that remains in the squeezed halves and add this to the bowl also.

Slice the fruit peel thinly (or thickly, depending on preference), and place in a large preserving pan. Add the reserved fruit juice and the water.

Place the collected pith and pips on a square of cheese cloth and tie into a little bag using a length of string. Tie the string on to the handle of the pan so that the bag is submerged in the liquid. Bring to a boil and then simmer gently for about 2 hours, until the peel is really soft and the liquid reduced by about half.

At this point, pull out the cheese cloth bag and squeeze it with two small plates to extract as much pectin as possible into the pan, then discard the bag. Add the sugar and stir until it has dissolved. Clip a sugar thermometer to the side of the pan and boil rapidly until setting point (221°F) is reached – about 15–20 minutes.

To test for a set, place a teaspoon of the mixture on to a cold saucer and put back in the fridge. Remove the pan from the heat while you do this. After a few minutes, push the mixture with your little finger – if it wrinkles, it is set. If not, continue to boil the marmalade and test again at 5–10 minute intervals. Once a set has been achieved, turn off the heat and leave to stand for about 15 minutes before potting. While it’s cooling, scrape off any scum that has formed on the surface with a metal spoon and discard.

During this resting time, sterilise the jars and the lids according to the manufacturer’s instructions. Fill the jars, leaving a ½ inch at top. Press down on marmalade with a teaspoon to remove air pockets and screw sterilised lids on tightly. Store in a cool dry place for up to two years.

Back in real life, Donal Woods, production designer, is perhaps the show’s equivalent to Carson – kind and fair, but quietly authoritative. Despite the fact that Donal is responsible for numerous sets and locations, which must be designed from scratch, built, maintained, used, packed and stored, he makes it all seem as easy as putting up a Wendy house in the garden. There’s something rather reassuring in the way that much of Downton’s production proceeds in this enviably Downtonian manner. All of the most senior production crew exude calm on set. Perhaps it’s because they know they have a very skilled crew to do the work, but perhaps the stately airs have rubbed off on them, in the best possible way. Doubtless, they would tell you that it isn’t like that at all – much as Downton Abbey likes to appear calm, just below the surface the action is as frantic as a swan’s paddling feet.

Filming a series takes around six months, beginning mid to late February and finishing in the middle of August, with one week off in May. About two or three weeks before shooting starts, cast and crew gather for the read-through of the first five episodes. Held in an anonymous, large, slightly chilly room somewhere in Ealing, there is always palpable excitement as everyone reunites, several months after they have wrapped the last series, but with the good news of climbing ratings, awards won, foreign territories achieved and critical acclaim garnered since it went on air still ringing in their ears. At the first ever reading, hardly anybody aside from the actors and a skeleton crew came along. At the fifth read-through, anyone, it seems, who can lay claim to being there, is there – the room is crowded with actors, crew, PRs and ITV staff. Scripts are guarded and carefully registered with anyone who borrows a copy, even if only for the day – if you take one home, your name will be watermarked across every page (that way, if a script is found, they’ll know who left it lying about). The actors arrange themselves around a square of trestle tables, polystyrene cups of coffee in hand and rarely looking anything like their characters, with the benefit of modern-day make-up and skinny jeans.

Having received their scripts only a few days before, the actors may not even have read through all their lines. As Allen Leech joked, particularly during the years set in the First World War, they may simply want to know their character is still alive: ‘I’d quickly flick to the back pages and if I saw “Branson opens car door”, there would be a sigh of relief!’ The main purpose of the read-through is for the producers and directors to see how the script is working – ‘It is a great opportunity to hear the script for the first time,’ says Liz Trubridge – and for key crew to anticipate anything that may be needed by way of lighting, special effects, props and so on. The actors need only ‘read through’ the lines, but of course no professional can do anything other than say the lines in character, and so to listen to it is rather like hearing a version of
Downton Abbey
on the radio (and wouldn’t
that
be lovely?). Indeed, when Allen Leech and Jessica Brown Findlay first read the scene of Sybil’s death, there wasn’t a dry eye in the house.

Elizabeth McGovern and Richard E. Grant on location at the National Gallery.

After the read-through, the actors and crew are soon caught up in the whirling dervish that is pre-production. Donal Woods’ team will have been building the sets at Ealing Studios since mid-January; they take about a month to put up, having been stored since August in a huge warehouse in Oxford. Few adjustments are made year on year, because Downton is a place that changes at a snail’s pace. Personal knick-knacks may alter a little and there are some new sets to be designed and built – Donal will have had sight of the first plots for the forthcoming series since December, in order to think about what will be needed, from guest sets and new locations to select or even build, to adjustments to Mary’s bedroom. Other factors need to be taken into consideration too, as the shooting of scenes is not done strictly in order of their appearance in the scripts. ‘When it comes to new sets, it’s about getting the balance right between logistics and creativity,’ says Donal. ‘We can spend up to four days on creating a single scene – as when we saw Edith go to the newspaper office in London. But that was important because we saw women typing and smoking in an office, something we don’t normally see at Downton. It was a good way of showing what working women were like at that time. Occasionally, we may go back to Julian and request that something is set somewhere slightly different in order to make the logistics easier but if it’s not good for the show, we won’t do it.’ Donal says he most enjoys creating those sets that are unexpected on
Downton,
such as the London nightclubs or the workhouse: ‘They’re a little bit out of the obvious and change the pace. The sets can be very elaborate and are great fun to do.’