Downton Abbey | Churchgate House, Bampton — Isobel Crawley's Front Door

Isobel Crawley opened this door and let the twentieth century in. Crawley House on screen — where a doctor's widow and her son lived after inheriting a title neither of them expected — is Churchgate House, standing just south of Bampton's church behind a low stone wall. The interiors were built at Ealing Studios. Everything you see from the lane is the real thing: coursed rubble limestone, a bow projection with curved sashes, a six-panelled front door under a radiating fanlight. Daniel Harris rebuilt the front block in 1799. The rear wing is older, sixteenth or seventeenth century, with a doorway to prove it and a datestone reading 1546. It served as vicarage for the Lew portion of Bampton parish until the mid-nineteenth century, which is why older guidebooks still call it the Old Rectory. It is Grade II listed, and it is a private home. That last fact matters more here than at Highclere. There is no ticket, no path, nothing to do but stand on the pavement and look. What registers is scale. Isobel's house was written to read as modest beside the abbey, and it does — until you realise that modest, in this story, means a Georgian rebuild with a fanlight and a listed rear range. The gap between Crawley House and Downton was never as wide as the Dowager liked to pretend. Photo via Wikimedia Commons.