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Enjoy this curated selection of theme-related dances for celebrations and holidays, or find a dance associated with a special calendar day, or EVEN your own birthday!
Downton Abbey cast in front of Highclere Castle, Hampshire
Sep 26
Downton Abbey Day
Hamilton House
Other Scottish Country Dances for this Day
Today's Musings, History & Folklore
“I’m very good. Hamilton House is my favourite, but I know most of them.”
~ Lady Mary Crawley, Downton Abbey, A Journey to the Highlands
Were you a fan of the Downton Abbey television serial? Did you have a favourite character or storyline!
Downton Abbey first arrived on British television on September 26, 2010, introducing viewers to the Crawley family, their servants, and a rapidly changing world of grand houses, elaborate dinners, impeccable manners—and the occasional scandal below stairs.
Scottish country dancers, however, have another reason to remember Downton Abbey. When the Crawleys travel to Scotland in the Season 3 special “A Journey to the Highlands,” they visit their cousins at the fictional Duneagle Castle, where the house party naturally includes a ball—and some Scottish country dancing. The episode also brings out two other familiar Scottish favorites, The Eightsome Reel and The Dashing White Sergeant.
Hamilton House is a 32-bar jig for three couples in a four-couple set, published by William Campbell in 1789—and there may be a little Georgian gossip tucked into its figures!
A longstanding tradition, recorded by Eugenia Callander Sharp in Scotland Dances, holds that the dance was devised by staff, and perhaps tenants, on the Hamilton estates as a humorous depiction of Douglas, 8th Duke of Hamilton, and his duchess, Elizabeth Anne Burrell. Their marriage ended in divorce in 1794, and she later married Henry Cecil, Earl of Exeter, whose own marital history included a divorce and remarriage. In the less strait-laced world of Georgian high society, such matrimonial complications were hardly unknown.
Intriguingly, the choreography itself may have helped inspire—or preserve—the story. The 1st woman sets to one gentleman and then turns another (!), while the 1st man performs corresponding figures with the ladies before the couple eventually reunites. These figures are genuinely part of the old dance, but there is no surviving evidence from Campbell establishing that they were intended to portray the Duke and Duchess or their marriage. That interpretation belongs to the later tradition surrounding Hamilton House, rather than to the documented instructions themselves.
And the “House” probably refers to the House, or family, of Hamilton, rather than to a particular building.
So, for Downton Abbey Day, polish the silver, ring for Carson, put on the evening clothes—and take Lady Mary’s advice by adding Hamilton House to the programme. After all, if it's good enough for the Crawleys… 🕺 💃 ❤️ ❤️ ❤️ 🏴 🎩 🏰
Hamilton House
Few television series have brought the vanished world of the British country house to life quite like Downton Abbey. Created by Julian Fellowes, the series can be seen as the spiritual successor to the landmark British drama Upstairs, Downstairs, which first explored the parallel lives of an aristocratic household and its servants in the 1970s. Downton Abbey returned to that irresistible upstairs-and-downstairs formula for a new generation, following the Crawley family and the servants who keep their great Yorkshire estate running.
Beginning with the sinking of the Titanic in 1912, the story continues through the enormous social changes of the 1910s and 1920s. The First World War, the Spanish influenza epidemic, changing roles for women, new technology and the gradual decline of the traditional landed aristocracy all intrude upon the seemingly timeless rituals of life at Downton.
Much of the fascination comes from watching two interconnected worlds beneath the same roof. Upstairs are formal dinners, inheritance problems, marriages, scandals and an astonishing amount of concern about who is sitting where. Downstairs is another carefully ordered society of butlers, housekeepers, valets, ladies' maids, footmen and cooks, with its own hierarchy, ambitions and intrigues. As Britain changes around them, characters on both sides of the green baize door must adapt.
The fictional Downton Abbey is famously represented by Highclere Castle in Hampshire, the real home of the Earls of Carnarvon. Its grand staircase, saloon, dining room and exterior became almost characters in their own right. With its combination of period detail, romance, dry humor and the occasional spectacular family catastrophe, Downton Abbey proved that the old Upstairs, Downstairs formula still had plenty of life in it.
To see a bit of dancing at the Ghillies Ball for the episode "A Journey to the Highlands", click the cartoon!
Click the dance cribs or description below to link to a printable version of the dance!
