Free Behind the Scenes at Downton Abbey by Emma Rowley Page A

Kempton Park, Petworth, Dorking and Lincoln, are a useful resource from which they can build up stock.
    Online auctions are another source, which are used more and more, albeit with a health warning attached, says Cromwell. ‘Personally, I like to see things before I commit to buying them, just because you get a better sense of their size and quality. I have bought things on eBay, but there’s a slight risk involved in buying unseen.’
    The prop department can also hire items, if necessary. ‘We’re very lucky in England because we have prophouses, terrific resources that have been built up over years,’ says Cromwell. ‘They’re big warehouses in London largely, and we can hire from them for a short period.’
    Many items are created in-house by the art department and the specialist prop makers. Such items can include anything from period product labels, menus and newspapers to everything the Crawleys sit down to eat.

    THE REAL-LIFE MRS PATMORE
    Lisa Heathcote (on set at Ealing, above) could feed a small army with the amount of food she produces. To ensure continuity through the many takes needed for each scene, she must cook dishes in bulk. For just one dinner in series three, 90 mini-jellies were required, she remembers. ‘I made so many because I knew they would melt and not look good after a while.’
    COOKING AGAINST THE ELEMENTS
    This poultry dish, presented with a Twenties flourish, emerged from Heathcote’s kitchen housed inside a truck. She originally used a tent, but the weather was a problem, particularly at Highclere, she says. ‘It was a bit like working in a wind tunnel at NASA! One winter, there was actually ice on the gravy. I said, “I think we need to sort this out,” so they found me a truck.’

FOOD
Edible Art
    The Crawleys dine in fine style, thanks to food economist Lisa Heathcote, who is responsible for what they eat on screen. ‘It’s about food and art; I am the hair and make-up person for food,’ she laughs.
    As delicious as they look, you might not want to eat some of her creations, given her necessary tweaks to them to ensure they last through long hours of filming. A beautiful cake might have a polystyrene base; what looks like whipped cream is likely a sturdier pudding mix, while some dishes are so heavily glazed they are ‘solid as a rock!’ Here, Twenties food trends come in handy, notes Heathcote. ‘They used lots of gelatine and aspic, but I don’t make it soft, I make it like concrete. You could technically eat it, but it wouldn’t be very nice.’
    Heathcote avoids any particularly sugary dishes because they don’t last under the hot lights, which was partly why Mary and Edith’s ornate wedding cakes were made by specialist modelmakers. Heathcote explains: ‘Wedding cakes are fragile things and don’t like changes of temperature and being moved a lot, all of which can happen on a film set.’
    Vast quantities of food are required to refresh plates for repeated takes. If the Crawleys have lamb chops, says Heathcote, ‘I’ll probably cook 80, because they’ll have to eat them and push them around the plate, and then they start to look a bit sad.’ Slicing into huge hunks of meat is avoided, she adds: ‘Once you start carving joints, you create problems, because you’ve got to think about how many times you’re going to be doing something.’

PROPS
Dressing for Dinner
    Downton’s dinner parties would make the most practised host fret. ‘If you are doing a dinner party scene,’ Jim Carter (Mr Carson) explains, ‘you have to reset the levels of the glasses, the food on the plates, the candles, in every shot for continuity. It’s relentless.’
    Lisa Heathcote, meanwhile, makes sure the seated actors do not struggle during butler service. ‘They’re helping themselves, so I have to cut up the food into little, manageable portions,’ she says.
    These Abbey dinners are usually served on a traditional Spode dinner service, bought by the prop department, and