Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale | 2025
- Locations |
- Hampshire;
- North Yorkshire;
- London;
- Berkshire;
- Buckinghamshire;
- Oxfordshire
- DIRECTOR |
- Simon Curtis
The filming locations for Downtown Abbey: The Grand Finale are not so obvious as they appear. Did you spot the two National Trust grand houses (no, not Highclere) and the London landmarks?
Period film, so long entry – here we go: The third big screen outing brings the long-running TV series to a conclusion. A New Era saw the arrival of the movies, The Grand Finale takes us to 1930 and an era of social change.
We’re pitched directly straight into London's West End, with a recreation of the old illuminated adverts of Piccadilly Circus, the camera closing in on Shaftesbury Avenue, the heart of the capital’s Theatreland to the frontage of 'The Princes Theatre' where Noel Coward's Bittersweet is playing.
The crafty use of locations begins here as the camera homes in on an unfamiliar Shaftesbury Avenue theatre.
A long way from the West End, this is the facade of the Richmond Theatre, Little Green, in Richmond, a leafy down about eight miles to the southwest at the end of the District Line.
And that's the Richmond's interior too, where Lord and Lady Grantham (Hugh Bonneville and Elizabeth McGovern) are enjoying the show's big number.
The Richmond Theatre’s screen history dates back to at least 1957 and comedy The Naked Truth. Since then it’s appeared in The Krays, Finding Neverland, 2010's The Wolfman, Bugsy Malone and Evita. Oddly, it’s twice been used as ‘Ford’s Theatre, Washington DC’, site of the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, once in the 2000 remake of Bedazzled, with Brendan Fraser and Elizabeth Hurley, and again in 2007’s National Treasure: Book of Secrets, with Nicolas Cage.
The Crawleys venture into the raffish backstage world to congratulate the star's show Guy Dexter (Dominic West), the actor who made a movie at Downton in the previous film before swanning off and taking with him their butler Thomas Barrow (Robert James-Collier) in both a professional and personal relationship.
The family, and their senior staff naturally, are staying at their London place, 'Grantham House' which is, as in the TV series, Bridgewater House, 14 Cleveland Row, St James’s, London SW1. It's a mid-19th century Grade I-listed house built on the site of a 17th century original. Damaged in World War II, Bridgewater House was adapted as office space but has since been restored. It has a bit of a history with ‘heritage’ television, having been used as 'Marchmain House' in the classic 1981 adaptation of Brideshead Revisited, with Jeremy Irons and Anthony Andrews.
Although the film uses two of the National Trust’s grand properties, you might not notice since we see them used only as the interiors of London locations.
So the interior of 'Grantham House' is actually that of Basildon Park, Lower Basildon northwest of Reading, in Berkshire. If you’ve visited, you might recognise its famous Octagon Room with those deep red walls.
Basildon previously featured as 'Netherfield Park' in the 2005 adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, 2008's The Duchess, the 2009 film of Dorian Gray, Sofia Coppola's Marie Antoinette and the home of Lord Pressfield in Guy Ritchie's 2019 The Gentlemen.
It’s open to the public year-round (except Christmas), but remember always to check ahead before travelling. There’s an entrance fee, though entry is free to NT members.
Lady Mary (Michelle Dockery) and Lady Edith (Laura Carmichael) take the opportunity to shop at London institutions Fortnum and Mason, 181 Piccadilly and in Piccadilly Arcade (on the south side of Piccadilly and not to be confused with the more-frequently-seen nearby Burlington Arcade).
With the rest of the family, they're off to a upper-class ball at 'Petersfield House'. Their cab takes them via the austere 18th century stone buildings of, um, Stone Buildings, a part of the Lincoln's Inn legal complex off Holborn, WC2.
'Petersfield House' itself, where they're surprised by the horde of what we'd now call paparazzi, is 2 Carlton Gardens, just off The Mall, SW1.
Once home to Lord Kitchener (now largely remembered from the World War I recruiting poster "Your country needs YOU", with that sternly pointing finger), you can see it in Stanley Donen’s 60s romp Arabesque, with Gregory Peck and Sophia Loren, as well as 1979 Sherlock Holmes vs Jack the Ripper drama, Murder By Decree.
It was most recently seen on screen as the home of the Baroness (Emma Thompson) in Disney's 2021 origin story Cruella, with Emma Stone. Then, as now, it was used as the site of a ball which was filmed elsewhere.
The interior this time is the other National Trust property, Claydon, Middle Claydon, about 13 miles from Aylesbury in Buckinghamshire. In Claydon’s Saloon a crisis is narrowly averted when the news of Lady Mary’s divorce means that, as a divorcee, she cannot now be seen beneath the same roof as the expected royal guests.
Hustled out of sight, the Crawleys are reduced to huddling momentarily beneath Claydon's staircase as the royals arrive. This remarkable staircase is known as the 'singing staircase' for that intricate metalwork you can see, designed as sheaves of wheat, which are supposed to 'rustle' as visitors pass by.
Too fragile for regular use, the staircase could only be used by the cast while they were wearing very soft-soled shoes and under the supervision of conservators.
Previously seen as the mansion of Mr Boldwood in Thomas Vinterberg 2015 film of Thomas Hardy’s Far From The Madding Crowd, Claydon also became 'Donwell Abbey' for the 1996 version of Jane Austen's Emma, with Gwyneth Paltrow.
The house is generally open except for Tuesdays and Wednesdays (sadly, when I visited I wasn’t allowed to take photos of the interior).
After the stresses of London, it's back to the safety of 'Downton Abbey', now well known as Highclere Castle in Hampshire.
And again, the village of 'Downton' is Bampton, also called Bampton-in-the-Bush, in the Cotswolds, Oxfordshire, about 12 miles west of Oxford itself.
Mary's American brother Harold (Paul Giamatti) arrives at Downton with his smooth-talking business partner Gus Sambrook (Alessandro Nivola) bringing news of financial problems back in the USA.
During the day out at Ascot races, it's revealed that Sambrook is a notorious conman (no spoiler – I think we all saw that coming).
Ascot Racecourse has been radically modernised (so much so, it was used as 'Shanghai Airport' in Skyfall) so Ripon Racecourse, Ripon, in North Yorkshire, which has a similar layout, was used. A ‘royal enclosure’ was built and a little digital tweaking added details – and that vast crowd.
The whole film deals with changes, the most important to the family being Lord Grantham deciding whether it's time to hand over Downton to Lady Mary. Downsizing also means having to sell 'Grantham House’, with the retiring couple even considering moving into (gasp!) a flat.
They're not exactly intending to slum it. The place they look at is Albert Court, alongside the Albert Hall, Kensington, SW7, where Lord Grantham is mortified to contemplate the extraordinary notion of having complete strangers living on the floor above. This block was good enough for Richard Hannay (Robert Powell) who lived here in the 1978 version of The Thirty-Nine Steps.
Finally, the ‘1930 Yorkshire County Show' is staged in a real county fairground, the Great Yorkshire Events Centre at Harrogate. Only about 12 miles south of Ripon, its period cowsheds and out-buildings provided a solid background for the marquees and funfair.
