Good lord! Downton’s almost wrapped up and Event was there to see – gulp – the last ever episode being filmed... and talk, between takes, to Edith, Rose, Mary, Tom AND the Carsons. So is that really it? Not if creator Julian Fellowes has his way...

Downton Abbey ends after six series and a dizzying dash through time, from the sinking of the Titanic in 1912 and the start of the First World War to the Roaring Twenties (pictured: Hugh Bonneville)

They are the glamorous young stars of Downton Abbey, famous throughout the world, but Michelle Dockery, Lily James and Laura Carmichael – who play Lady Mary, Lady Rose and Lady Edith – will still be texting each other from the sofa like teenagers as they watch the show come to an end with a feature-length special on Christmas Day.

‘I’ll be desperate to see it, but I always feel a bit shy, running around the house not knowing what to do with myself,’ says Carmichael, 29, who will watch with her real-life sisters and her mum and dad in Hampshire.

‘So I end up texting and WhatsApping with Michelle and Lily. “Are you sat down?” “Yeah.” “How are your family?” “Excited.” We become a bit anti-social and end up on our phones, virtually being with one another even though we are in different parts of the country.’

The three were unknowns when Downton Abbey began five years ago, but are now stars across the world, having featured in a show that has won three Golden Globes, three Baftas and a dozen Emmy awards.

‘We have a weird connection as a cast, but on Christmas Day that will be it. The feeling will be quite huge,’ says Carmichael, who is distracting herself with other work: she is about to make a gritty crime thriller for ITV.

The highest-rated British drama of the past decade has drawn more than 120 million viewers worldwide (pictured: Lily James)

James, 26, has just starred in a new Disney version of Cinderella and Dockery, 33, intends to follow her friend to Hollywood.

‘This is the end of something, but it is the beginning of something else,’ she says.

‘I feel as if there is a lot of opportunity out there. So as much as it is tinged with sadness at leaving something so huge, there is a freedom that I feel as well.’

This will be a difficult Christmas for Dockery, following the tragic death of her fiancé John Dineen from cancer earlier this month.

She flew back from Los Angeles to be by his bedside at a hospice in Cork, shortly before the financial PR man passed away at the age of just 34.

The pair had been introduced by his fellow Irishman and her Downton co-star Allen Leech, who plays chauffeur-turned-estate manager Tom Branson.

Downton ends after six series and a dizzying dash through time, from the sinking of the Titanic in 1912 and the start of the First World War to the Roaring Twenties, with this last festive edition ending on New Year’s Eve, 1925.

The Americans and the Chinese have fallen most in love with the old-fashioned English manners, cut-glass accents, gorgeous costumes, glorious vintage cars and spectacular buildings (pictured: Elizabeth McGovern)

The highest-rated British drama of the past decade has drawn more than 120 million viewers worldwide to watch war and peace, and love and hate played out among the aristocratic members of the Crawley family and their household servants.

The stately Earl of Grantham, played by Hugh Bonneville, rules over the great house, watched carefully by Maggie Smith as the Dowager Countess, known for her waspish one-liners: ‘Don’t be defeatist, dear. It is very middle class.’

Below stairs, the beetle-browed butler Carson is played magnificently by Jim Carter, alongside Phyllis Logan as the housekeeper Mrs Hughes, who has just become his wife after one of the slowest, gentlest, most moving courtships ever seen on television.

The Americans and the Chinese are among those who have fallen most in love with Downton’s old-fashioned English manners, cut-glass accents, gorgeous costumes, glorious vintage cars and spectacular buildings such as Highclere Castle near Newbury in Berkshire, better known now as the ‘real’ Downton Abbey.

Event has been given unprecedented access to the filming of the Christmas special – so come with us just a little way back in time to the height of summer and the castle lawn, where Dockery is sitting under a sun canopy between takes.

‘We have a weird connection as a cast, but on Christmas Day that will be it. The feeling will be quite huge,’ said Laura Carmichael

We are about to witness the filming of a scene that may give away a huge part of the plot for the show, but don’t worry, there will be fair warning of any spoilers.

‘None of us expected it to turn out like this,’ she says, fanning herself with a hand and gently perspiring in Lady Mary’s cream silk skirt and blouse.

‘You hope that what you’re doing will spark something in people in your own country, never mind 100 countries. It’s what you dream of.’

Her character has survived war and social upheaval, had a Turkish diplomat die in her bed, married a paralysed hero, given birth to an heir, lost her husband in a car crash and her youngest sister Sybil to childbirth, and now finally found happiness with a new husband, the dashing racing driver Henry Talbot.

‘This has been life-changing for us actors too,’ says Dockery, the daughter of a surveyor from Chadwell Heath, slipping between the ice-cool aristocratic voice of Lady Mary and her own, friendlier, Essex accent.

‘I’m anticipating how weird it will feel when they finally say, “That’s a wrap.” I can’t quite bear even thinking that, it’s so sad.

'I will see Laura and Allen [Leech, who plays her brother-in-law Tom Branson] because we socialise a lot out of work, but I get sad about not seeing people like Kev, who is one of the drivers. The facilities guys, the costume girls, we have all become so close.’

‘None of us expected it to turn out like this. You hope that what you’re doing will spark something in people in your own country, never mind 100 countries. It’s what you dream of,' said Michelle Dockery

As she speaks, other members of the cast are gathered under the shade of a spreading cedar tree, preparing for the next scene.

There’s Michael Fox, who plays the footman Andrew Parker, unable to sit down on the grass in case he creases his formal black tailcoat. He’s sharing a joke with a member of the production team, a lad with a beard and tattoos and a pair of baggy shorts.

That’s what you don’t see, normally. Just out of camera shot at all times is a small army of camera men and women, sound engineers, directors, producers, writers, fixers, props people, costume- makers, make-up artists and more, at least 30 or 40 of them today.

They’re all in modern clothes, mingling easily but oddly with the cast in period dress. Everyone is at Highclere from seven in the morning until seven at night, working out of a circle of white trailers and mobile offices in the car park, with a converted bus as a place to eat.

‘As an actor you get used to going from one job to the next and you learn to move on quickly, not get too attached, but we have been together for six years and this has become like a family,’ says Dockery.

Everybody has to leave home some time, though.

‘The show has been huge in the States. That is something I have not really explored, working there,’ she says, as realisation brings a wide smile.

‘We’re available. My agent said the other day, “It’s great, because I can tell them you are available to do other things.” ’

‘I think we have had enough time to tell the story. I don’t think we are doing the wrong thing,’ said the show's creator Julian Fellowes (pictured: Michelle and Matthew Goode)

As she speaks, Hugh Bonneville wanders past in a toffee-coloured towelling dressing gown, bare-legged in slippers, going off to get into costume.

He is checking a script, with a pair of sunglasses perched on the top of his head. The experienced 52-year-old star took younger members of the cast under his wing.

‘Do you remember what Hugh said to us?’ Dockery says to Carmichael, who plays her younger sister, and is wearing a light green summer dress, holding her hat in place against a sudden breeze.

‘We were at a Radio Times cover party just after Downton had started airing and Hugh took us aside and said to me and Laura, “This is so rare, I’m telling you. They don’t come very often, these jobs.” It really stayed with us.’

Dockery and Carmichael have become close friends, living within a short walk of each other in north London.

‘She is one of my best mates,’ says Dockery, and Carmichael giggles, completely unlike Lady Edith: ‘It’s been mega!’

They have fallen out badly on screen, though. Mary just ruined her sister’s life by blurting out to her fiancé, Bertie, that Edith has an illegitimate child.

This was in the final episode of the sixth series, which was broadcast in November. He rose from the table, excused himself like an English gentleman and ran for the hills.

Edith has a lot of bad luck with men. She was jilted at the altar by one of them. Another, Michael, happened to be married. He went off to Germany to get a divorce but never came back.

Fans are desperate for Edith to get a little happiness, so will it happen at long last?

Maggie Smith plays the Dowager Countess, known for her waspish one-liners: ‘Don’t be defeatist, dear. It is very middle class’

‘Yeah. Ha! Yeah, I mean, all to come. Potentially,’ says Carmichael, realising she might have just given too much away. ‘We’ll have to see at Christmas.’

But we might not have to wait that long at all. If you don’t want a spoiler, skip a paragraph or two, because at Highclere Castle right now we have a privileged ringside seat at the filming of a scene that might just give the game away. ‘Quiet please. Action!’

Lady Mary is waiting at the door of Downton Abbey with Tom Branson, the estate manager, who is also her brother-in-law. Lord and Lady Grantham arrive in a grey Bentley.

Lady Edith follows on in a burgundy Sunbeam. Servants move around them, unloading baggage, and Tom says to Lady Edith: ‘When’s the wedding?’ (So there’s going to be a wedding. Hurrah! The fans will be delighted.)

‘We were thinking Christmas would be fun,’ she says.

Her father – Hugh Bonneville, now thankfully dressed in a magnificent three-piece suit – has a thought: ‘Maybe New Year, when the decorations are still up. That’s a good idea. Then you can wake in the New Year with your new life.’ (She’s going to have a new life! Hopefully it will be a happier one…)

There’s a problem with the sound and the scene is halted, but Bonneville improvises cheekily, moving in close to Allen Leech (Branson) as if to kiss him and growling: ‘Have you missed me?’

‘Hugely,’ says Leech, grinning.

Matthew , Matt Barber, Michelle Dockery and Michael Fox take a break during filming

‘After this helicopter,’ calls out a producer and everyone looks up to the sky. It’s the third or fourth light aircraft overheard in the last half an hour and they have to stop every time.

‘It’s an absolute nightmare,’ says Julian Fellowes, 66, the creator of Downton, standing on the edge of the shot in a blue double-breasted blazer and a Panama hat he has borrowed from the props department.

‘They’re probably all up there saying, “Ooh, look, it’s the next Downton Abbey.” ’

They play the scene again and this time Lord Grantham turns to his eldest daughter and says: ‘Mary, I heard you made it all happen.’

That’s intriguing. Have the sisters made up? Has Mary made amends for her cruelty by persuading Bertie to come back? Or could she even have found Michael in Germany?

That would be a surprise. In any case, it looks as if wedding bells are going to ring for Lady Edith and Downton will end with smiles, if not a few tears.

There is talk of a movie after that, but several of the actors are not convinced.

‘We have discussed this as a cast,’ says Allen Leech, sweltering under a thick green tweed suit.

They’ve finished the outdoor scenes, so there is a break while the crew set up in the drawing room.

‘Is it the right thing to do?’

The public are not allowed into Highclere while the filming is taking place

He lowers his voice, so that his rich Irish accent will not carry across the lawn, and says: ‘They don’t tend to work, TV shows to movies. Unless you get a completely new cast, like Star Trek.’

Leech was hired for just three episodes at first, to play Branson the socialist chauffeur, but he stayed when his character fell in love with Lady Sybil.

She died shortly after giving him a daughter, but he remains in the great house as the estate manager. He’s also a source of strength to his in-laws and their daughters.

Asked for his favourite moment, Leech says it happened just yesterday.

‘We were shooting a wedding scene. Twenty members of the cast, including Maggie Smith, all sitting in the back garden of the people who own the house.

'We opened a couple of bottles of rosé and it was great just sitting there, chatting away about anything and everything. A really lovely thing.’

‘Sorry to interrupt, but we need you indoors now,’ says a producer, and he has to go.

His place under the canopy where we are talking is taken by Brendan Coyle, who plays Bates the valet. Tugging at a stiff white collar in the heat, he says Downton has brought unexpected levels of fame to all the cast.

‘I was in Toronto filming something and a group of people came up to me who were on an exchange trip from various rural villages in China. They just went insane.

'It’s still series three in China and the figures are phenomenal. No matter where you go in the world, Downton is being watched.’

The public are not allowed into Highclere while the filming is taking place, so it is a quiet stroll across the lawn and down the gravel drive to the car park, where the executive producer Liz Trubridge is drinking a bottle of water in a trailer that is effectively a posh caravan, with beige upholstery.

She first realised how astonishingly popular the show had become in Los Angeles, during a trip to promote series three.

‘As an actor you get used to going from one job to the next and you learn to move on quickly, not get too attached, but we have been together for six years and this has become like a family,’ said Michelle

‘We were going to a tea party laid on by Bafta. The car turned the corner and there were hordes of people screaming. I thought, “Who is that?” You couldn’t see the person at the centre of it. If it had been The Rolling Stones in there I would have understood.

'It wasn’t until the car pulled up alongside that I saw it was Jim Carter and Phyllis Logan and I thought, “Oh God, that’s all for us.” I found it quite freaky.’

Fellowes sits in a darkened tent watching the monitors as the next scene is filmed indoors. It’s impossible to hear the dialogue, not least because he starts talking over it.

‘Why did Downton work?’ Fellowes asks himself, sounding very much like Toad of Toad Hall (he’s adapting The Wind In The Willows as a musical).

‘People always say, “Oh the Americans always love period shows.” No they don’t. There are plenty of excellent period shows that get made and pick up an audience of four or five million, but nothing like this.’

Strangely, he says, characters like Branson had a better chance of climbing the social ladder than most of us these days.

‘One of the great problems of our society at the moment is that social mobility has plunged,’ says Fellowes, although his own life rather contradicts that: the son of a diplomat, he became an actor and writer, married the daughter of an earl and was made Lord Fellowes of West Stafford in 2011.

Along the way he won an Oscar for the screenplay to the movie Gosford Park, which led directly on to the creation of Downton.

From left: Brendan Coyle, Hugh, Allen Leech and Kevin Doyle

His show is unusual in showing sympathy for those upstairs and downstairs, in equal measures.

‘As far as I am concerned, whether it is the kitchen maid or the daughter of the Earl, they are just people trying to get through life as best they can.’

His wife, Lady Emma – a former lady-in-waiting to Princess Michael of Kent – is immaculate beside him in white jeans, white headscarf and matching white sunglasses. She is hosting a group of starstruck visitors who paid £150,000 in a charity auction to be here.

Perhaps the biggest star of the show is the house, towering home to the real-life Carnarvons.

Home to the family since 1679, the castle was remodelled and redesigned by Sir Charles Barry from 1839 to 1842 into the house we know today.

'I don’t know exactly how many rooms there are,’ says Fiona, Lady Carnarvon.

‘About 300, I think. We did start to count one day, but the children got bored.’

The huge stone plant urns on the drive are actually fibre-glass and cover modern spotlights; but the rugs, the china, the magnificently deep, plush sofas, the antique dining chairs, the Old Masters hanging on the walls and the chandeliers hanging from the ceilings are here all year round.

The sun is fading, the filming is done for the day.

‘The clock in the drawing room is their clock. It is still their house, full of their stuff,’ says Fellowes, who was a family friend before he wrote Downton with this house in mind.

‘We borrow what is here so that their history becomes our history, the portraits become the Crawley portraits, the flag becomes the Crawley flag.’

Allen Leech was hired for just three episodes at first, to play Tom Branson the socialist chauffeur, but he stayed when his character fell in love with Lady Sybil

Highclere Castle might have been sold to an oligarch or converted into a country club without the location fees that Downton has brought in over the past six years, not to mention the huge boost in the number of visitors.

‘It is probably the most famous English country house in the world now. That wasn’t true before we started.

'They are very hard-working and they mean to make the best of that. If we have helped the house then that is a big plus.’

However, the last scene ever shot of the series was actually at The Ritz in Piccadilly, in the early hours of a morning in mid-August. Lady Edith was the star, dressed to the nines.

‘There was a feeling of sadness, right up to the wire,’ says Carmichael, who managed to secure a memento.

‘I took a bag, a small purse, from the last ever scene. It’s a very sweet little purse that you will see in the Christmas special, very beautiful, very vintage and perfect.

'We hire a lot of things but this was bought by our costume designer and she very generously said, on the last day: “Yeah, you can keep it.” ’

Carmichael is due to star in a contemporary crime thriller for ITV called Marcella, written by Hans Rosenfeldt, creator of the Swedish drama The Bridge.

‘It’s an excellent script. And it is great to be doing something where you get to wear jeans.

'It’s a really lovely thing to arrive at work half an hour before you start filming and they let you brush your hair and that’s it, rather than sit in rollers for two hours.’

Laura, Michelle, Allen, Elizabeth and Lily at the Downton Abbey ‘wrap party’ in August this year

She may be back in rollers soon, though, if the Downton movie happens. Fellowes is certainly keen.

‘We have always had to be – as Queen Victoria would say – “a little clever with our laces”.

'We wouldn’t have to do that in a film, because the budget would be about ten times what we spend here.

'Suddenly we could have riots, we could have battles, we could have a really full ballroom. I would rather like to do that.’

So will the Christmas special leave viewers hanging, wondering what happens to the characters?

‘We are not waiting for the film to conclude the story. This will be the conclusion. The film will be another adventure with the Downton people.’

Is he having any second thoughts about stopping the series now, while it is still so popular?

‘I think we have had enough time to tell the story. I don’t think we are doing the wrong thing,’ says Fellowes, who has become rather like an eccentric uncle to Dockery, Carmichael and the others over the past six years.

‘I think it’s the right time for the kids. They are told they are world stars, but it is time for them to go out and see if they really are. They’re all ready to find out.’

The final episode of ‘Downton Abbey’ is on Christmas Day, ITV1 at 8.45pm. Series Six of ‘Downton Abbey’ is out now on Blu-ray and DVD

ARE YOU SURE THAT'S HOW TO EAT ASPARAGUS?

Downton Abbey is almost obsessive in its desire to appear authentic and nail its historical details, right down to the correct pronunciation for room (it’s ‘rum’ since you ask… see below). This is thanks to a largely unsung hero: historical, military and etiquette expert Alastair Bruce. Royal equerry and Territorial Army colonel Bruce is an integral part of the ITV1 period drama, advising on everything from warfare to how the aristocratic Crawley family would eat asparagus. Since the first series, he’s been permanently on set at Highclere Castle, which doubles for Downton Abbey, and his role is so important to the show that he sits watching everything on a monitor so he can flag up any mistakes to the director. The cameras are not allowed to roll until Bruce is happy with the way a scene looks. Here he reveals the secrets of his five years on the show...

Etiquette adviser Alastair Bruce with Downton creator Julian Fellowes

Hold your chest in, man!

There is one problem that even Bruce can’t fix: the actors and actresses are simply the wrong body shape. Bruce reveals the costume department have to hide the fact that many of the cast are too muscly to belong in the Twenties. He says: ‘Nowadays, young men spend an enormous amount of time in the gymnasium and they have these incredible buff bodies, and I’m afraid footmen just simply did not. So very often our actors find it quite difficult to wear stiff-fronted shirts because they’ve got these huge pectoral muscles. The costume department have to keep an eye on that. You don’t want it all busting out, “Look at my chest.” And women now are, if I may say, much more round-shouldered. The clothes of that time were designed to demonstrate what a gorgeous neck these beautiful women had.’

Mind your language, dash it

One of Bruce’s bugbears is when actors say ‘room’ as we would these days, with emphasis on the ‘oo’; rather than the Twenties style, which sounds more like ‘rum’. Bruce, who also advised on the Oscar-winning The King’s Speech, says: ‘We actually chose not to get actors to speak exactly as people did in those days, because they all spoke without moving their lips much and you wouldn’t hear anything and it would drive everyone nuts. But we did decide it would be sensible to try to echo the slightly more old-fashioned, aristocratic sound of words. So they must say, “I’m going to the drawing rum,” not, “I’m going to the drawing room.”’

Michelle Dockery has won legions of fans with her graceful manner and plummy accent. Yet none of Lady Mary’s mannerisms came easily to Essex-born Dockery, Bruce reveals. ‘Michelle would be the first to say that she is certainly not a duke’s daughter,’ he says. ‘Yet I would say there would be an enormous amount of people who were born the daughter of a duke who would think Michelle was too. It took a lot of hard work from her.’

Keep God out of it

Religion plays an almost non-existent part in Downton Abbey, despite the fact the Granthams would have been regular church-goers. Bruce says it was a decision taken in the beginning so as not to slow up the storytelling. ‘It was decided there would be no observance of the Christian processes of the house, because it was felt that would get in the way,’ he reveals. ‘So you have never seen the beginning of a dinner or a lunch, because they’d have to say grace, and I made it absolutely certain they would never just sit down and eat. No, not acceptable.’ However, keen observers of the last series will have noticed a small deviation from that rule; as Lady Mary married Henry Talbot. ‘I gave them an action which the director really liked,’ Bruce explains, ‘in which the priest wraps his stole around their hands and says, “Those who God has joined together.”’

No air-kissing, please...

Bruce received letters of complaint when Carson broke with tradition to hug Lady Mary as she mourned the death of her husband, Matthew Crawley, in series four. But he retorts: ‘People have said Carson would never have hugged Lady Mary. But he has known her since she was born and it was a very emotional moment. Human beings do hug. I hardly even let anyone shake hands; they just say hello. Life was chillier then. Nowadays you go to a party and you are introduced to a woman who you have never met before, and she launches up to say goodbye to you and gives you a kiss! The only reason we do that now is because we have got antibiotics.’

... and don’t even mention sex

Bruce says the storyline involving gay under-butler Thomas Barrow, played by Rob James-Collier, was more accurate than viewers may have realised. ‘These houses were full of homosexuals,’ says Bruce. ‘If you imagine, Downton is in a great area of land and all the people who live on that land are doing different jobs at different levels. If you’re a horny-handed lad, you would be a ploughman, or if you’re really brave you could go to Manchester and work in the cotton mills. But if you’re a slightly sensitive young lad, your parents would probably decide you would be best off working in the big house. Everyone knew what was going on but it never spoke its name because if anybody had chosen to take Thomas to court, he would have been breaking stones for the rest of his life. It’s difficult for people to believe it is only recently, in the Sixties, that legality fell upon that particular persuasion.’

It really was women’s work

Viewers may have noticed a key difference between the work that Carson does compared with housekeeper Mrs Hughes. ‘Mrs Hughes actually had much more power but society demanded that she defer that power to him because it was a patriarchal society. He never lifts a finger and she is always carrying stuff. Whenever I could manage it, I would always give Mrs Hughes something to carry. There is no doubt that Mrs Hughes carries much more real responsibility on her shoulders in terms of running that whole house. Carson only deals with the wine cellar and the front of house.’

Leggings, know how to use ’em

Bruce says he can only remember one example of an incorrect detail making it on to screen: a scene in the Christmas special of the second series in which the Grantham family goes shooting. He says with a wince: ‘I still regret the fact we did not put the right leggings on the family. I gave the instructions, and we tried, but the cloth ones that had been made looked awful and so they wore leather spats, which were really for beaters. We got a letter in the Shooting Times. And they were right. We got it wrong.’