A Year in the Life of Downton Abbey: Seasonal Celebrations, Traditions, and Recipes (24 page)

Molesley serves Master George and Miss Sybbie strawberries and cream.

The whole village pulls behind the bazaar, with cakes made by the local women for the cake stall, a flower stand of locally grown flowers and a Downton Abbey table with produce from the home farm. The footmen are roped in to serve punch and tea; Mrs Patmore makes sandwiches and provides beer for the estate workers setting up the tables. Even Lady Mary pulls her weight.

What could be more welcome on a warm English summer’s day than a cold glass of Pimm’s? Invented in 1840, it is still the refreshment of choice at garden parties, and while watching a cricket Test match or the tennis at Wimbledon.

MAKES 1 LARGE JUG

Hull and slice the strawberries and cut the orange into thin slices. Cut the cucumber in half lengthways and then into thin slices. Chop the mint.

Pour the Pimm’s into a large jug or bowl, followed by the lemonade and ginger ale. Add the strawberries, orange, cucumber and mint to the jug. Top up with ice and stir with a long spoon.

Pour into glasses to serve.

These little scones are best eaten while still slightly warm, split and spread with lashings of clotted or whipped cream and homemade strawberry jam. A large pot of tea is the requisite accompaniment.

MAKES ABOUT 18 SMALL SCONES

Preheat the oven to 450°F. Lightly dust a large baking sheet with flour.

Sift the flour, baking powder and salt into a large bowl and stir well. Crumble in the butter and rub it into the flour with your fingertips to make fine crumbs. Stir in the sugar. Using a fork, stir in the milk gradually – just enough to bring it into a soft, slightly sticky dough, which you should handle as little as possible. Add a drop more milk or a little more flour if necessary.

Sprinkle some flour over your worktop and turn the dough out on to it. Flour your hands and bring the dough into a ball. Using a lightly floured rolling pin, roll the dough out to a thickness of 1 inch. Using a 2 inch cutter, stamp out a round and place it on the baking sheet. Cut out as many more scones as you can. Bring the remaining scraps of dough into a ball and roll out again to make the last few scones.

Dust the scones with flour and bake in the oven for about 10 minutes or until well risen and golden. Cool on a wire rack.

Events such as these were designed to bring together the house, its servants and estate workers, as well as the villagers. In many ways, it was a reminder of the feudal system, when the local big house and its lord and lady were the king and queen of the miniature realm. By 1924, that social structure was, thankfully, no longer in place, but there’s still no question that such events were a highlight of the year in a time before television and budget airlines provided entertainment and holidays.

Carson, of course, is still minded to treat the event as a feudal one, keen that the great house must be seen as being as grand and well run as any royal palace.

Then again, Carson finds the notion that a servant might have any kind of life or interest beyond Downton hard to understand. Fortunately, Mrs Hughes is rather more sympathetic to the younger ones and will nudge him to allow the others to enjoy some time away now and then. By the mid-1920s, the servants are able to catch a late-night screening at the local cinema (there were showings especially for servants, at 10 p.m., when their duties would be over). Jimmy goes to see
The Sheik,
starring the Hollywood idol of the day, Rudolph Valentino.

Badminton at Downton Abbey.

In summer 1923, after a few hard weeks in London for the season, the Downton servants are given the chance to indulge in a special outing. Rejecting Carson’s initial idea to visit the museums of London, they take the train to the seaside – the beautiful Pullman from Victoria would have taken them straight to Brighton. All the traditional seaside fun would be had, with ice-cream stalls selling penny licks, mechanical dolls that moved when you put in sixpence, Pierrots miming and fortune-tellers waving their hands over crystal balls.

Lavinia Smiley recollected one terrifying daily event: ‘A stout lady who twice a day dived off the highest place at the very end of the pier. Her most spectacular turn was to get into a sack that had been dipped in petrol with just her head sticking out. Somebody set a match to her, and wreathed in flames she jumped – about sixty feet – into the sea below.’

Sitting on the beach or on one of the deckchairs that could be hired for the day, dipping into a wicker basket with sandwiches and drinking from a flask of lemonade, some might even brave the sea itself. Bathing costumes – as swimsuits were called then – would be put on just before going into the water; they were designed to preserve a lady or gentleman’s modesty and certainly did not allow them to cut a very aquiline figure. Children often wore rubber garments called ‘paddlers’ to stop them getting too wet, though the sand would invariably get in and cause a nasty itch. For those who didn’t want to get completely wet and bother with the awkward business of changing behind a windbreak or in a tiny seaside hut, they could always just take their shoes off, roll up their trousers and go for a paddle. As we rather touchingly saw Carson and Mrs Hughes do in the final scene of series four: the stately pair wade out carefully into the briny froth, watched, with great amusement, by the others.