Highclere Castle: A family seat known to millions of Downton Abbey viewers globally

Highclere Castle has now become a hit on the tourist trail, taking typically 600 coach party bookings over the summer.

Highclere Castle, home of the Highclere Thoroughbred Racing syndicate. Hugh Routledge via Bloomberg News.

Highclere Castle, the family seat of the eighth Earl of Carnarvon, has become known to TV viewers around the world in recent years as the location for Downton Abbey.

The period drama, which is British TV's most expensive piece of television, is sold around the world and its creator, Lord Julian Fellowes, was frequently a guest at Highclere.

Highclere Castle is run by Harry Herbert's older brother George, the eighth earl of Carnarvon, and his wife, Fiona, the countess.

The Berkshire castle has now become a hit on the tourist trail, taking typically 600 coach party bookings over the summer.

The success of the visitor attraction - where tickets are £15 (Dh83.98) per person - has been invaluable in helping to pay for the stately home's upkeep and is arguably the biggest financial boost to the estate since 1895 when the fifth early married into the de Rothschilds.

A new Egyptian exhibition was opened this year, in the castle's cellars, in a celebration of the fifth earl's achievements in discovering, with the archaeologist Howard Carter, the tomb of Tutankhamun, in 1922. It includes more than 60 replicas of treasures from Tutankhamun's tomb and a photographic archive.

There are recreations of the Earl's study, models of Lord Carnarvon and Howard Carter and replicas of Tutankhamun's treasure chamber, the boy-king's mask and his gilded sarcophagi. Much of the fifth Earl's collection was sold off to pay his death duties, but a range of items was discovered tucked away in cupboards at Highclere in 1987.

The fourth series of Downton is now being filmed at Highclere, for broadcast in the autumn. But long after the much-loved drama series has disappeared, the Carnarvons hope the Egyptian Exhibition will be pulling in visitors.

All the seventh Earl's children run their own businesses and there are no cross-holdings between Highclere Castle, Highclere Thoroughbred Racing and Highclere Stud.

However, familial connections and support run deep. The actor Hugh Bonneville, best known for playing Lord Grantham in Downton, was introduced to Harry Herbert at the big house and has now joined the syndicate ownership company. He had his first runner as a racehorse owner last week, at Ascot. The horse finished second.