June 9, 2025
Filming

Nostalgia

Walking into the peaceful silent drawing room, sunlit with the promise of a new summer’s day, I cannot help but think back to the weeks and months of Downton filming. They occupied so much of our diary for so many years.

In contrast to this morning, the filming days were noisy and would already have been well under way by now. Cameramen and sound men, gaffers  and grips, the 1st AD bringing order, to costume and set designers, script supervisor, various technicians, the location manager, props, best boy and all dressed in similar dark colours. Everyone would be focused on setting for the first scene before the cast arrived from unit base in pin curlers, holding the little A5 booklets of words.

It was all relentlessly busy before it was punctuated by a sudden call for silence. It was however a different sort of industrious silence as everyone held their breath, hoping their phone was off and there was no need to sneeze or cough.

This very drawing was so often just full of stuff, from trollies to dollies cables, back packs and  monitors. The whole castle had a very different feeling to it, before at the end of the day still upside down and a bit dusty everyone was suddenly gone for the day. It seemed to me as if the Castle sighed deeply and settled down for the night.

Nostalgia can sometimes eddy forwards unbidden into our minds. However, dreaming about past times can be reassuring. Some might consider nostalgic thoughts as hopelessly unrealistic, as misplaced sentimentality which should not be entertained let alone admired. The original roots of the word, ‘nostalgia’  are Greek and the syllables are constructed from the concepts of homecoming and melancholy, a sense of loss.

In times of trouble, we all tend to long for the past, for our safe, rosy hued memories for the good old days, when times were more predictable, more courteous  and better framed. Such longings can be triggered by music or plays, books or people but in all cases, suddenly these emotions flood through into the present.  Of course Downton Abbey captures many of these emotions not just in transporting us via a film into the 1930’s but just the memories or watching the series in the times before Covid and before the current global anxieties.

My father-in-law with his mother

Far from just being weakly sentimental, nostalgia can be positive, improve our mood, make us feel a sense of community and feel better, in fact make us feel more meaningful. Equally allowing our mind to drift back to Sunday evenings sitting down together to watch Downton Abbey is positive, remembering a favourite scene gives busy whirling minds time out.  A complete change from daily life allows each of us to reappraise stressful times and helps us all cope better.

Heritage such as Highclere is of course imbued with nostalgia – it is an endeavour to conserve buildings, landscapes and other artifacts of historical significance for past times. We are trying to connect heritage from past generations to now and to prepare for the  future rather  thus bridge builders of time.  Downton Abbey is one version of  living history but so too are Highclere’s weekends and tours which welcome visitors and  focus on key previous events. The idea is to relate them to today with exhibitions, things to do, to explore and to entertain.

Catherine, Geordie’s grandmother on the right

Nostalgia is about exploring in time and place, you can explore with travel with reading with coming here and touching walls, walking down staircases and remembering.

The film trailer for the  next Downton Abbey film is set in 1930. Curiously, in real life that particular decade was marked by a strong sense of nostalgia for the 1890’s when Queen Victoria still provided a beacon for continuity. Without doubt, the Victorian sense of order and culture had been totally upended by 1930.

Whether we all feel nostalgia for the beginning of Downton or are looking forward to the next film, it is a cosy reassuring feeling of past Sunday evenings at home, sitting with family and friends  cast back in “a flood of remembrance for the past.”