Lady Carnarvon admits tears were shed at Highclere Castle

What with baubles and bubbles and getting them to co-ordinate, we’ve each had the mother of all Christmas dilemmas this year. 

Do we get the tinsel out early and hope that extra fairy lights will penetrate the gloom? Or do we cancel Christmas altogether, reasoning that no Christmas is better than a Covid-compliant one?

It was certainly a conundrum for Lady Carnarvon, chatelaine of Highclere Castle, one of our finest stately homes and most famously the setting for Downton Abbey. Traditionally, Highclere does Christmas with bells on. 

It is one of the busiest times of the year. There’s usually a Christmas fayre and a series of charity bashes that show off exactly how capacious-yet-cosy a British castle can be.

Choirs gather around the grand piano, and outhouses are converted into elaborate nativity scenes. There is dancing, music – and all manner of meticulously planned magic. 

The smell of cinnamon and orange wafts from the kitchens, competing with the heady scents of the floral arrangements from the gardens.

Highclere does Christmas so spectacularly that all the estate’s decorations are kept, colour-coded, in specially converted outhouses. One barn contains the estate’s two herds of reindeer – wicker, of course! 

There is even a Chief Elf, aka Sally, a member of the housekeeping team who’s responsible for the bows and ribbons.

These festivities were detailed in last year’s sumptuous Christmas At Highclere book, which we serialised, with Lady C’s tips on table-decorating, present-wrapping and wreath-making, plus her festive recipes. But this year, those precious traditions have unravelled somewhat. 

In the first lockdown Highclere – like every stately home around the country – was closed. In the summer things reopened, but with restrictions meaning that visitor numbers were halved. Then came a second lockdown.

Staff have been furloughed. The normally bustling castle (very much a business, dependent on paying guests) found itself without a team of housekeepers for the first time in its history, limping along with a couple of part-time members of staff. 

Lady C took to Hoovering herself and made, as she admits, a not-entirely-professional job of it.

For longer than anyone was comfortable with, the castle was empty, save for the ghosts. Today it’s the Countess herself who’s looking a little pale. 

She’s had her pinny on, baking scones, but she seems a little less Mrs Santa, shall we say, than she did when we met last year.

Mostly, she’s spent the year being an accountant, it seems. As Fiona Aitken (her maiden name) she was exactly that. When she married her husband Geordie, the 8th Earl of Carnarvon, in 1999, she knew little about country piles. 

But when her father-in-law died suddenly, she found herself chatelaine of Highclere and, in many ways, had to be its saviour.

While it had been open to the public on a small scale, she upped the ante. When the author Julian Fellowes suggested filming his new project Downton Abbey there, she readily agreed.

It was the making of the place and secured its future. She’s also written books about the castle and its history.

This year, though, the visitors have been largely absent. The books (the accounting ones) are looking grim. There are nights where she’s been up at 3am looking at them. 

She reveals that Highclere – which had a full time staff of about 50 – has had to make staff redundant. ‘That was probably my lowest point of the year. Tears were shed,’ she says. ‘It’s one of the most difficult things I’ve had to do.’

She declines to say how many staff were let go, but suffice to say they are at the bone. ‘There is nothing more to cut,’ she says, looking as if she might cry.

‘People look at a place like this and think there are vast resources. Recently, one man looked at the castle and he was very taken with all the windows. He said, “You’ll be all right,” and I said to him, “But not a single window has offered me as much as £20.”

‘I asked our apprentice chef to do some work with Sheila, our housekeeper. She’s loved it. 

‘She’s learned a lot about house management. Everyone has had to adapt. We’re still standing, but we have undoubtedly gone over the cliff and a lot of this year has been spent trying to survive the fall. 

‘So many businesses have been the same. Unless you’re a tech company like Amazon or Facebook, you’ve been wondering when to pull the cord on the parachute. 

‘It’s been incredibly stressful. Even trying to understand the guidelines, the practical stuff like getting hand sanitiser in place.’

This is a working farm as well. The next cliff, she says, is Brexit. ‘We export sheep. We import a lot of foodstuffs. The supply chain has already been affected by Covid, and now there’s Brexit…’

Highclere isn’t the only grand house looking suddenly vulnerable. A whole swathe of stately homes are facing the prospect of the roof caving in – in some cases literally. 

Historic Houses, which represents more than 1,600 such privately owned properties across the UK, estimates 50 per cent of them will have to make redundancies due to Covid. The National Trust estimates it will lose out on £200 million.

Lady C isn’t looking for sympathy, just recognition that things are catastrophic. ‘There are no funds. We don’t get royalties from Downton. 

We don’t have any other money. I write a book not out of vanity. It’s quite hard to actually make money.

‘And it’s not just our family, or even our estate. We are a community. The events at the castle support local traders and suppliers. 

‘Weddings were hugely important for us. I’m not looking at welcoming any weddings now, larger than for 50 people, for six or seven months or so.’ 

The cancelled wedding phone calls have rattled her. ‘They’re hard to deal with, you’ve got the emotional tears of the family.’

She could have taken to her four-poster and wept, presumably. 

Yet against this backdrop, the decision had to be made: would Highclere cancel Christmas? The fact that the grounds are a-twinkle with fairy lights today, and there is a 22ft tree in the saloon, tells its own story about what path they chose, as we’ll see in Channel 4’s Christmas At Highclere this week.

‘A lot of houses aren’t doing Christmas,’ she says. ‘My gut feeling said, “We need Christmas this year.” We need to show Christmas and share it. 

‘We need the reassurance that it offers. So I’ve decided to do the best Christmas we possibly can.

‘Most years we gather and reflect on the year that has been – this year let’s reflect on how next year will be better. We are all bloomin’ tired.’

The very modern incumbents don’t live in the castle, of course. Lady C, her husband and their son Edward (who will be home from Newcastle University) live in their own detached home in the grounds. 

Key members of staff, including the gardeners, also live on the estate, as does Geordie’s brother Harry (with his fiancée, the Irish TV chef Clodagh McKenna). 

Geordie’s children from his first marriage also have use of a cottage in the grounds, although they are not full-time residents.

Every second year the Carnarvon clan hosts Christmas in the castle, with guests moving in for the duration. Lady C has six sisters, and copious nieces and nephews. 

She is also fond of inviting friends who ‘have had a tough year’. The dining table at Highclere can seat 30-ish and since there are ‘around 61’ bedrooms, space is not an issue.

This year though, the Covid rules make it impossible. ‘I’ve decided to close the castle on the day. It’s just not the right thing to do to invite people, so it will just be the three of us, I think. 

‘It will be odd. I don’t think I’ve ever cooked a turkey for fewer than eight or ten people. The dogs will be pleased with the leftovers.’

Odd, but still special, she says. And next year? ‘Then we will have the biggest party we can muster.’  

Christmas At Highclere, Wednesday, 9pm, Channel 4. Christmas At Highclere: Recipes And Traditions From The Real Downton Abbey by the Countess of Carnarvon (Century, hardback, £30).