Pile in and get the abbey habit

DOWNTON Abbey: The Grand Finale opens at cinemas across the country today, to complete the story of the Grantham family’s lavish lifestyle at their Yorkshire stately home.

- By Deborah Stone

Launched in 2010, the six series, Christmas specials and now three films have given us the chance to imagine living the high life among the Corinthian columns of a stately pile.

And while buying Highclere Castle where it was filmed is not an option — it hasn’t been for sale for centuries — there’s a surprisingly large choice of castles, stately homes and country mansions for sale in the UK.

Among them is Farfield Hall in the Yorkshire Dales, a 17th-century Georgian house that has possibly the world’s oldest Quaker meeting house in its grounds.

Grade I listed, it has 11 bedrooms in the main house and a Grade II listed coach house with more accommodation and a garage plus six-and-a-half acres of gardens, parkland and woods.