Owning a Downton Abbey costs big bucks

How pricey can it be to maintain a vast English estate? Plenty.

CNBC calculated the cost of buying and keeping up a grand property similar to what the Grantham family owns on "Downton Abbey." Maintaining that level of splendor doesn't come cheap.

You can buy some U.K. estates for a pretty sweet deal. Check out the beautiful Apethorpe Hall, which was selling last year for just $4 million, according to The Daily Mail. But the place has a few problems, starting with the fact that not one of its 48 rooms has a bathroom. The estate has fallen into disrepair and needs an estimated $6.5 million to return to its previous glory.

For a more manageable mansion, there's Bletchingdon Park in Oxfordshire (photos here), which CNBC says has 24,000 square feet and is selling for $52 million.

Buying the estate is the easy part. Paying to maintain it will give anyone heartburn. No wonder Lord Grantham was freaking out about money in the third-season premiere of "Downton Abbey."
Maintaining, say, a 1,500-acre property will require a butler, cook, secretary, groundspeople and cleaning staff, CNBC reports. You may need some gamekeepers if you enjoy hunting. In all, it would cost as much as $1 million a year to employ the necessary staff.

Keeping up with all the regular repairs to the place could easily cost another $100,000 a year. And major renovations after you buy could come to $6 million to $8 million.

In total, you'll need at least $1.5 million a year just to keep the place going.

Might as well buy one of the less stately U.S. castles, which lacks the historical grandeur but at least has a more tolerable price tag. Check out this list on Zillow of 10 castles for sale in the U.S., at prices ranging from $1.1 million to $11.4 million.

The real "Downton Abbey" is Highclere Castle, which has hundreds of rooms with walls covered in leather and green silk, reports The Boston Globe. It sits on 1,000 acres and has become a major tourist destination.

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