The Real Inspiration for Downton Abbey

Well before Downton Abbey was a well-formed story idea I feel that Julian Fellows, its creator, must have met my father while we were working in London for British Telecom.  Julian’s original screenplay was actually called Hom-a-gen Abbey based at my ancestral farm in Providence, NC.

Lord Grantham is clearly based on my father, who chose “Your Grace” as his grandfather name.  Gracie, as my father is called by his granddaughter, has three daughters just as Lord Grantham does.  Mary would be loosely based on me, since I am the oldest and only married daughter.  Edith would be my middle sister Margaret, looking for her place in the world.  And the much loved and hardest working youngest daughter Sybil is based on my sister Janet.

Fellows surely had heard my father talk about his mother, known as Granettes because Dame Maggie Smith portrays my Grandmother to a tee.  One example of their parallel personalities is towards the end of Granettes life she was in the infirmary and she rang and rang the nurse call button.  When the nurse came scurrying in my grandmother screamed at her, “Get a pain pill, quick.”  The nurse ran out of the room and returned with the medication and asked her what was hurting.  “It’s not for me, it’s for that fool over there,” my grandmother said pointing to another patient in the room.  Granettes was famous for saying something terribly biting which took a person a moment to figure out.  I’m sure I heard her say to more than one pitiful person she met, “You are all you’ll ever be.”

My mother would love to be the wealthy wife who saved the family home with her inheritance.  She lives a charmed life similar to Lady Cora.

Mr. Fellow certainly must have spent time in my father’s London office and overheard him talking to the people on the speakerphone who work at Home-a-gen.  The relationship of all the farm workers and my father is exactly like the downstairs characters on Downton Abbey to Lord Grantham.

My father depended on his staff to keep the farm going while he was away. One important character was Alvin who was chief builder and as important to the running of Hom-a-gen as chief butler Mr. Carson, but in a much more redneck way. Gracie would call Alvin and check in on the progress of building projects and the weather, always an important topic to land owners and farmers.  Once when my father heard bad weather was going on in the Americas he called Alvin to get the local report.  Since he always used a speakerphone everyone in the office heard this conversation.

Gracie:  Alvin, what is happening with the weather?

Alvin:  Well, there’s a tycoon and it’s off the coast of Costa Rica.

Gracie:  Really?

Alvin:  No, no I’m wrong, It’s off the coast of Puerto Rico.

Gracie, like Lord Grantham, did not correct Alvin that it was not a tycoon, but a typhoon.

When Julian Fellows wrote the first screenplay for Hom-a-gen Abbey and went to sell it to the BBC they certainly said it would be way too cost prohibitive to film a show in America and could he please rewrite the show for a British location.  And thus Downton Abbey came to be.