Downton Abbey… in Lego?

Hey, if it’s good enough for the Winchester Pub and 221b Baker Street, it has to be good enough for Downton Abbey, right? After all, with last Sunday’s series 4 premiere topping 10 million viewers, making it the biggest drama series premiere in the history of PBS, it was only a matter of time.

Here’s how things got to where we are. Apparently, a weekly visit to Downton isn’t enough for one fan who is so fixated with the upstairs/downstairs lives of the Crawleys and their downstairs support staff. Enter, one Eric Stevens of Rochester, New York. Stevens has painstakingly recreated the British Edwardian drama out of thousands of Lego bricks. You see, Stevens loves Downton Abbey. So much so that when he found there was no existing Downton Abbey Lego set, he built one for his girlfriend as a Christmas present. You know what they say, nothing says Christmas like a custom-made Lego replica of Downton.
 

Besides Downton, everyone who is anyone is there…well, almost. There’s the Earl and Countess of Grantham, Bates, Branson, Mr. Carson, Lady Mary and, of course, the imposing Dowager Countess are all brought to life in brick form in his truly one-of-a-kind Lego set. Surprisingly, no Anna. What’s Downton without Anna? Heck, even Matthew and Lady Sybil are included so there should be an Anna, don’t you think?
 

“The design took about 15 hours, altogether, and about four hours to actually put it together,” Stevens told the UK’s Daily Mail. “All of the characters are Lego-designed parts, rather than custom printed pieces,” he continued.
 

According to Stevens, he built the set using a digital designer, basing it on ground and aerial photos of the real Highclere Castle, where Downton Abbey is filmed, as well as floor plans of the building he found online. The detail is pretty amazing right down to the barely-perceptible sneer on Lego Thomas’s face. If only Nanny West could have hung around for a few more episodes….