As a professional historian I am impressed by the obvious attention to historical detail that characterizes the smash PBS series “Downtown Abbey.”  Nevertheless, one question that perplexes me is this: where does Lord Grantham (Hugh Bonneville) get the money to support Downton Abbey?  Obviously, it takes a considerable income to provide not only for heavy costs of maintaining an expensive great house and its gardens and grounds but, also, for the expenses of the considerable number of people who occupy the Abbey– both upstairs and downstairs. Just keeping his wife, Cora, Countess Grantham (Elizabeth McGovern) and his three daughters, Ladies Mary (Michelle Dockery), Edith (Laura Carmichael) and Sybil (Jessica Brown), in the fashionable clothes appropriate to marriageable young women of the aristocracy, would alone be backbreaking. Add to that the costs of feeding, clothing, housing, etc., a retinue of 20 or more household servants–even providing for them in sickness and, perhaps, old-age.

Lord Grantham and his aristocratic compatriots could no longer rely on the traditional income from agricultural enterprise on their vast estates. The lucrative rent rolls from prosperous tenants that had provided the wealth upon which the fortunes of the great landowners had been built had largely disappeared by the time of Lord Grantham’s tenure at Downtown Abbey. Significantly, so far in the series, we have seen no tenants from the Downton estate dropping by the Abbey to pay their rents and chat with his lordship about prospects for the next harvest and, inevitably, the weather.

The pertinent historical fact is that by the 1880s British agriculture had been largely displaced by the importation, under free trade policy, of extraordinarily cheap agricultural products from the United States and Canada. Beginning in the late 19^th century, wheat, corn and oats from the large and relatively productive farms of the North American Great Plains, as well as large quantities of cheap beef coming from the huge ranches of the southwestern United States, could be swiftly transported, by the newly completed railways, the vast distances to the seaports of the East, then carried by fast steamships (some refrigerated for carrying meat products) to the ports of Great Britain, where they were decisively cheaper than local products. Large-scale commercial English agriculture was doomed.  The agricultural income of the great landowners plummeted and then disappeared; tenants were impoverished and often evicted; farm workers were unemployed.

Lord Grantham, like so many similarly placed aristocrats, attempted to save the day by marrying a wealthy heiress– in his case, an American, Cora, Lady Grantham. However, the capital sum thus acquired would have to be carefully invested to sustain the aristocratic lifestyle of Downton. A sizable income from such investments became even more essential after Liberal Governments in the early 20^th century placed ever-increasing tax burdens upon the “unearned income” of the aristocracy. The PBS series so far has given no hint what Lord Grantham did to cope with such relentless demands upon his wealth.  Indeed, the series portrays him as rather disdainful of those who acquired their wealth by “business.”

Thus the question: where does Lord Grantham get the money to support Downton Abbey?

Join Dr. Bellot this May 7th -19th on the East West International GREAT HOUSES AND GARDENS OF ENGLAND TOUR, which includes an extensive visit to Highclere Castle, where the fictional Downton Abbey is filmed.