Downton Abbey: Journey to the Highlands

[OC Richard]

I'm way behind in Downton Abbey, just now saw the Series 3 Christmas special A Journey To The Highlands.

I looked at the old Downton Abbey threads, none seemed to go into much detail about the Highland Dress seen.

Our first encounter with Highland Dress is when the main characters are met by Hugh MacClare (Peter Egan) at Inveraray Castle.

It's set in 1921, just at the time our "traditional Highland Dress" had come into being. His outfit is accurate to the time and wouldn't look out of place at a current Highland Games.

I'm not quite sure what to make of his tartan, that is, to the specific weaver and colourway. It has tones more or less like House Of Edgar's "muted range".



The sporran is a lovely original piece, not unlike this one



I can't find any photos online of Hugh MacClare's lovely Evening outfit. He's wearing a Victorian-looking goathair long sporran, a traditional doublet, all in all the sort of outfit someone of his age would have worn since his youth in Victorian times.

I did find this "making of" video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJRac4kUQJc&t=319s

At 2:05 there's a doublet. Keep in mind that in 1921 the Prince Charlie Coatee was quite new, so it's appearance isn't really to be expected. Thank goodness they didn't stick all the men in Prince Charlies like most filmmakers do.

At 2:43 it looks like a plain tweed kilt.

From 5:11 to 5:18 you can see the dancing at The Ghillies' Ball.

There's a doublet which has a couple buttons in the wrong place. We can see Ancient Tartan kilts, which were fairly recent and quite popular in 1921.

However we also see a gent wearing a Weathered Tartan kilt, which didn't appear until after WWII. Filmmakers love their Weathered tartans!! And films set in any time-period whatsoever tend to have them (Rob Roy, Outlander, etc).

Now the piper. Obviously the sound we hear was recorded at a different time, and perhaps played by a different person. You can see his fingers not matching the playing, and besides a film set is an eerily silent place. Certainly he has his drones and chanter corked off, and is silently keeping the bag full and fingering the chanter. It's hard to tell if his finger positions are proper from this photo, though to me he seems like an actual piper due to his posture etc and not merely an extra who got handed a set of pipes.

His outfit would be perfectly acceptable for pretty much any time from the mid-19th century to today, due to this piper's kit resisting change. However his bag-cover is a style which only appeared within the last decade or so.

This blurry photo was the only one I could find showing most of his outfit.



Here's a clearer closeup, the only semi-focused photo I could find of him. The pipes look like nice silver-mounted pipes perhaps by Naill.