Downton Abbey | Alnwick Castle — Brancaster, Where Edith Finally Arrives

Edith ends the series as mistress of this place. Brancaster Castle — the shooting party in the 2014 Christmas special, then, in the very last episode, the house she takes on as Marchioness of Hexham — is Alnwick Castle in Northumberland. The Percy family has held it since 1309 and still lives in it. The production used the Library for the drawing-room scenes when the Crawleys go north as Lord Sinderby's guests, and the State Rooms for the finale. The shooting itself was filmed across Hulne Park and around the ruined walls of Hulne Priory, a few miles up the estate. Ramparts and Bow Alley appear too, along with St Michael's Church Hall in the town. Alnwick has done this before. It was the flying-lesson ground in the first two Harry Potter films, and it carries the double life lightly, running location tours and broomstick training in the same outer bailey. Walk the ramparts and what registers is not grandeur but weather. Northumbrian light is thin and moves fast, the Aln runs below in a wooded cut, and the moorland the Crawleys came north to shoot over begins almost at once. Edith's happy ending was written as an escape from Yorkshire. Standing up here, you read it as an escape much further north, into bigger and colder country than the one she left. Photo: Richard Sutcliffe, Geograph Britain and Ireland, CC BY-SA 2.0.