English country-house names often include terms such as Castle, Hall, Manor, Park, or Abbey. An abbey is either a monastery ruled by an abbot or a convent ruled by an abbess. There were many abbeys in the English countryside dating from medieval times that were repossessed by King Henry VIII when he split with the Catholic church in the 1530s (the so-called Dissolution of the Monasteries), and these properties were often given to nobles who used the locations to build family mansions. Occasionally the new mansion would integrate part of the medieval abbey architecture into the design.
Highclere Castle, the real site of Downton Abbey, stands on the location of the ancient residence of the Bishops of Winchester. The house we see today was designed by Sir Charles Barry – who also designed the British Houses of Parliament – around 1840.
