As I’ve been watching Downton Abbey, I keep wondering what sort of economics kept that household running. How did the family build up the wealth to acquire that land and build that mansion as well as all the other buildings on the property, in the first place? What kind of cash flow was needed to maintain the place, pay the servants, buy the food, and generally support the family’s lifestyle? Where did that money come from?
I think the show gives the impression that the Earldom of Grantham is one of the older peerages and one of the few remaining capable of self-sustenance based on land value. May well have been through successful and wise business investments too.
But that’s just a naive assumption on my part!
The English feudal system that the Granthams benefit frim essentially starts with William of Normandy. The crown claimed ultimate ownership of all land and granted rights in that land to peers of the realm. The original source of income for those holding land granted from the crown was rents from farmers who worked that land. So the Grantham family was basically very big landlords.
No, he married Cora for her money to keep the place going.
By the 20th century, with the industrial revolution and mass trade, rents paid by farmers no longer was worth as much as manufacturing, publishing, shipping, etc. So a lot of people like the Granthams found themselves with little cash flow.
I’m guessing that the OP is not asking a Cafe Society-style post about the TV show, but instead a General Question about the costs of running a ‘stately home’ in Edwardian England, and where the money came from.
I assume the way it worked was that someone got a title and land from the King, and that the title and land is passed down through the generations. The land would probably have people on it, who are tenants. A certain percentage of their harvest/stock/goods would be given to the lord/earl/whatever as rent. So much or most of the lord’s income would be from that, and he would have the task of managing his properties instead of working on them. Perhaps he would have his own working farm on the estate that provides income directly, and he has employees to do the work. Over time he could use his income to buy more property or to invest.
Just guessing though.
EDIT: Since I spent too much time typing… What the others said.
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Exactly. Thanks for clarifying.
Also, was there anything comparable to English great houses in other European countries? Spain, France, Germany, or Russia, say?
Regarding the great house itself, rembember it’s called Downton Abbey. It was originally built as a monastery; then it was seized by Henry VIII and then given to one of his supporters named Crawley who was also raised to the peerage.
As Zsofia says, the fact that the Earl of Grantham had had to marry for money rather implies that his rental income was no longer sufficient to keep the whole show running. Which is plausible enough. Landowners in England who were dependant only on rents from agricultural land found their incomes falling from the mid-nineteenth century onwards.
As to how the Crawleys got their land in the first place, I don’t think we can make any assumptons. We don’t even know what number of earl his lordship is and so we can’t even guess how old the earldom is. Even well-established aristocratic families might have risen to prominence only a couple of centuries earlier. That the house is Downton Abbey does suggest that it was originally a monastic estate and so would have been sold or given away by the Crown in the sixteenth century. But it need not follow that that was when the Crawleys acquired it.
There are two further possibility which should be considered. The big exceptions to the trend for the great landed families of England to be losing income from their estates during the nineteenth century were those who were able to develop coal mines on their lands. And as the implication is that Downton Abbey was somewhere in the North Riding of Yorkshire, it would not be inconceivable that this was true of the Crawleys. Other landowners were also able to benefit from the expansion of towns and cities by becoming urban property developers. But neither of these possibilities fit with the Earl’s apparent need for his wife’s American money.
By the early twentieth centuries and indeed for centuries beforehand almost all agricultural rents were paid in cash.
I happened to see this book about the phenomenon of cash-poor Lords marrying American heiresses in the bookstore yesterday, originally published in 1989 and back in print with the Downton Abbey craze (and “an inspiration for the series”).
You can tour a large number of stately homes, formerly or still owned by rich British families. Some were rich from land, many got rich in the colonial expansion or the european wars. (Churchill was born in Blenheim Palace, not clear how his ancestor struck it rich). The “newer” homes were built by those who made a fortune during industrialization; also a lot of those nouveau riche would have bought their estate from impoverished landlords on hard times. (England also has a grand tradition of nobility frittering and gambling away the estate).
As for other places - much of Europe went through greater turmoil, and their empire was smaller and industrialization came later. So the mind-boggling global fortunes were fewer, less and later.
The great estates of the French feudal lords were first destroyed and broken up by the revolution. Their industrial gentrification was probably a generation or more behind the British. Spain and Germany were overrun by Napoleon (I) and industrialization came very late to Spain, which was then embroiled in a nasty civil war. Austro-Hungary, again, was late to industrialize then broken up by the collapse after WWI.
Running a house that size, or even just building one, was an expense of massive proportions. When British business changed dramatically in the WWII era, many fell on hard times, especially with inheritance taxes, which is why so many are run by the National Trust as museums now.
But unlike modern CEO’s who are “employees” with an arbitrary and unreliable income of millions, these were sole proprietors or majority shareholders; unlike today, a business took decades to decline, so income was pretty reliable for decades or generations, and someone with millions to spend every year could afford to run essentially a small village in support of their lifesyle. In the days before Blackberries, faxes, and conference calls, few could afford the luxury or time of constant vacation if they had a real business to run; a villa or yatch in Italy or St. tropez was rarer - money, status, and luxury consisted of outdoing the ffolkes-Joneses on the size of your manor and the artwork and other luxuries in it.
the only thing comparable would be the rich villas built by the rich Americans who tried to emulate this behaviour. These mansions dot the industrial north-east, with a few elswhere (think Hearst Mansion in California).
The old fashioned way - beating the crap out of the French. The first Duke of Marlborough was granted the title for his actions in the War of the Spanish Succession. That’s why Blenheim Palace looks like a little mini Versailles.
For a case study of the finances of one of the great English aristrocratic families see this paper on the Dukes of Devonshire[warning pdf]. Relative to those living on salary/wages their income from land and investments was so enormous that the cost of an extra housemaid or gardener was nothing. The Devonshires had an income of over £100k each year in the second half of the 19th century while in 1860 the top servants - Valet, Butler, Housekeeper - would not earn more than £50 pa.
The problem was that a large proportion of the income was going straight out to fund various mortgages built up by the Duke and his ancestors - mortgages to fund building projects on the Ducal estates, collecting, and in some cases unwise investments. Also, towards the end of the 19th century death duties were beginning to bite and required large chunks of cash - this either meant selling off land, taking out yet more debt, or marrying a rich American 
Well, remember that labor used to be cheap and goods expensive. Now goods are dirt cheap and labor is expensive, which is why Americans don’t tend to have servants. It wasn’t that long ago that just about everybody could afford to at least have somebody come in to clean. Now when Americans go abroad they’re shocked at how cheap it is to have live in help in less affluent places. Meanwhile we pay less for food than we ever have.
Be fair - it also required a lot of making nice to the Queen :dubious:. Sarah Churchill, the first Duchess, worked very hard at being Queen Anne’s closest confidant. The relationship broke down in the end but it certainly helped in establishing the family fortunes.
a major factor was the low level of taxation in Britain up to WWI. Income taxes and land taxes were both very low by modern standards, so wealthy people could afford to have huge estates. That changed after WWI, as the need for money to pay war debts was high, and also changed with Labour governments who brought in high taxes on the rich as a form of social policy, precisely to reduce the great imbalances in wealth.
True enough. One thing to remember about the cost of food in the running expenses of a great house was that a lot of it was home grown. All those gardeners weren’t just cutting the grass and tending the roses. One of their principal responsibilities was the kitchen garden where most of the fruit an veg would have been grown.
Agatha Christie is reported to have said, “when I was young I never expected to be so poor that I couldn’t afford a servant, or so rich that I could afford a motor car."
Unfortunately I can’t find a reliable cite, so can’t verify it. It pings my ‘apocryphal’ meter, but could well be true.
[And of course “everybody could afford to have somebody come in to clean” can only be true for certain meanings of ‘everybody’. “Labor was cheap” is another way of saying “most people were poor”]
One must distinguish between his title and his estates. He got his dukedom (plus a substantial pension for life) in 1702 for his first campaign as captain-general, an appointment he had obtained in a large part because of the Queen’s friendship with his wife. But he hit the really big financial jackpot only two years later when, in the wake of Blenheim, Queen Anne granted him the manor of Woodstock and Parliament agreed to pay for the construction of a palace on the site (although, in the end, they paid only part of the costs). But that is also precisely the moment when relations between Anne and Sarah break down completely, as the immediate effect of the victory on British domestic politics was to exacerbate the factional disputes that were already causing bitter arguments between them. Anne already thought that Sarah was going out of her way to be nasty towards her. Which, to a large extent, she was.