Bampton, Oxfordshire: Inside the Real Downton Abbey Village

Bampton is a small town in west Oxfordshire with honey coloured stone, thatched roofs, a very good coffee shop and roughly one million visitors a year who have come to look at a library. Not to borrow anything from it. To look at it, because for six series and three films it was a cottage hospital in a fictional village called Downton.

I went in July, when every wall had roses or hollyhocks coming out of it, and spent an afternoon working out which bit of the Downton Abbey village was which. It takes about an hour to see the filming locations and about three to enjoy the place properly, which is the right ratio.

The Downton Abbey Village, Building by Building

Almost all the village scenes were shot within about three hundred metres of the church, which is why the walk is so short and so satisfying. Here is what is what.

Bampton Library, a handsome seventeenth century building near the church, played the Downton Cottage Hospital, where Doctor Clarkson worked, and Isobel Crawley volunteered, and a remarkable number of plot points happened. It is a real working library, and it also has a small visitor centre with behind-the-scenes material and a Downton Abbey Mile map you can buy for a pound, which is the single most useful thing in the village if you want to find everything without wandering.

St Mary's, the parish church, is Downton's church. Weddings, christenings and funerals were all filmed here, including Lady Mary's and Lady Edith's. It is a genuinely fine building in its own right with a tall spire and Norman bones, and it is open to visitors, so go in rather than just photographing the porch.

Church Green in front of it is the village square you have seen in the fair scenes. The war memorial on it was built by the production and then, in a nice turn, kept.

Churchgate House, a big stone house on the corner, is Crawley House, where Isobel lived. Only the outside was used; the interiors were filmed elsewhere. It is somebody's home, so admire it from the pavement and do not go up the path.

Church View gave two more: Corner Cottage became the village post office, and a neighbouring house became the Dog and Duck. A property on Church Close was dressed as the Grantham Arms with temporary signage. None of the pubs are real pubs, which disappoints people every single day.

What Bampton Is When It Is Not Being Downton

Here is my actual argument for coming: the filming is the excuse, and the village is the reason.

Bampton is built out of the same warm oolitic limestone as the Cotswolds proper, which is just up the road, and it has been a market town since the Middle Ages, so the buildings are grander and more varied than a straightforward village. You get eighteenth-century townhouses with fanlights and iron railings standing next to seventeenth-century thatched cottages, and the whole thing is laid out around three greens rather than one high street.

The doors alone are worth the trip. I photographed about fifteen of them and had to stop myself. There is a grey panelled front door under a carved shell hood with curling iron railings on either side. There is a green one with a hanging basket of pink and yellow begonias the size of a sheep. There is a sage green plank door with a climbing rose grown right over the frame so you have to duck through the flowers to knock. There is a blue one under a little slate canopy, half swallowed by a cottage garden. Every one of them has a name rather than a number: Leat House, in cut slate on the stone.

The thatch is the other thing. There is a run of cottages along one lane with the thatch pulled down low over the upstairs windows like a fringe, and cottage gardens in front spilling dahlias and crocosmia over the pavement. In July it is almost too much.

A Thousand Years Before the Film Crew

Bampton is old in a way the television version never bothers to mention. The oldest parts of St Mary's are tenth or eleventh century, when it was built as a late Saxon minster, which means there was a church of real regional importance on this spot before the Normans arrived. It was rebuilt in Norman style in the twelfth century, added to all the way through the Middle Ages, and given a Victorian going-over by Ewan Christian between 1868 and 1870. It is Grade I listed.

By the time of Domesday in 1086, the place was already a market town, and it went on holding markets until the 1890s, which explains why the buildings around the greens are so much grander than a farming village would justify. There was even a castle: in 1315 Edward II gave Aymer de Valence, Earl of Pembroke, a licence to crenellate here, and the remains of what he built were later worked into a house called Ham Court, west of the brook. It is private, so you see it from the lane or not at all.

The village was once known as Bampton in the Bush, a nickname earned by sitting out in the flat, wet country between the Thames and the Windrush with poor roads in every direction. The isolation is gone. The layout it produced is exactly what makes it photograph so well.

Coffee, Cake and Somewhere to Sit

Bampton Coffee House is the hub, and you will find it easily because the entire front of the building is covered in ivy with hanging baskets on either side of the door. It does coffee and cake in the day and turns into a food hub in the evening, and on a Sunday it is where half the village ends up.

Beyond that, expect a village rather than a resort: a couple of pubs, a shop, and not a great deal open late. Bampton has resisted being turned into a theme park about itself, which is exactly why it still looks like the place the location scouts wanted.

Morris Dancing, and the Other Thing Bampton Is Famous For

Long before television arrived, Bampton was known for morris dancing. The tradition here is documented back at least to the 1790s and is claimed as one of the longest-running in the country. It used to happen on Whit Monday and now takes place over the late May bank holiday, when sides dance through the streets and gardens all day.

If you can time a visit for that, do. It is the one day a year when the village is full for a reason that has nothing to do with a costume drama, and the atmosphere is completely different: less photography, more beer.

Making a Day of It

Bampton on its own is an hour or two. What makes it a proper day out is what is around it. Burford is eight miles north, and its high street running down to the river is one of the best in England; I have written about a day trip to Burford and Witney if you want that route planned. Witney itself is closer, with the Cogges Manor Farm that played Yew Tree Farm in the series.

Swinbrook, a couple of miles east of Burford, has the Swan Inn where Sybil and Branson's elopement was filmed and where the Mitford sisters grew up nearby, and it makes a very good lunch stop. Highclere Castle, which is the actual Downton Abbey, is about forty miles south in Hampshire and needs to be a separate day; do not try to do both.

If you would rather build a countryside weekend around villages than around filming locations, there is my pick of nine of the prettiest villages in the Cotswolds, the autumn version of the same list, and a slower weekend of cows, ice cream and stone villages.

Visiting Bampton: Practical Notes

Where it is: Bampton, West Oxfordshire OX18, about five miles southwest of Witney and twenty miles west of Oxford, on the edge of the Cotswolds rather than in the middle of them.

Driving from London: about two hours via the M40 and the A40. This is by far the easiest way to do it, and it lets you add Burford or Witney on the same trip.

By public transport: train to Oxford from Paddington or Marylebone, then a bus west towards Witney and on to Bampton. It is doable but slow, and the bus service is not frequent, so check the timetable both ways before you commit to it.

Parking: free and limited. There is a small amount in Market Square with a four-hour maximum, plus street parking near the church. On a summer weekend, arrive before eleven or expect to circle.

Cost: nothing. The village is a village, the church is free to enter, and the library visitor centre asks only for the price of the map. This is one of the cheapest good days out in Oxfordshire.

Best time to go: June and July for the gardens and the roses, late May for the Morris dancing, and any weekday for a version of the Downton Abbey village with nobody else standing in your photograph.

One request, because it needs saying: most of these buildings are people's houses. The library is public, the church is public, the greens are public. Churchgate House, Corner Cottage and the rest are not. Stay on the pavement, do not photograph through windows, and the village will keep letting people come.

Bampton earns the attention. Turn up for the Downton Abbey village, stay for the doors, the thatch and a slice of cake under the ivy.

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All photos were taken by Ina/WithinLondon, unless stated otherwise.