The Closest Thing to Downton Abbey in Middletown
As the new season begins tonight 9 pm on PBS, fans of the World War I era drama might be interested to know about a mansion in town called Hillandale, located in Chapel Hill.
There are so many gorgeous old mansions in Middletown, and with the new season of Downton Abbey starting tonight, we began inquiring if any of them would have been suitable for the Dowager Countess of Grantham, or Mr. Carson, the butler. We rung up Middletown Realtor Gloria Nilson, who lamented that Middletown's multi-million dollar mansions rarely come with the surrounding carpet of acreage you'd expect in England. (Last season on Downton Abbey, it was revealed that Mary Crawley wasn't even aware their century-long neighbors had "given up" and moved out of their enormous manor.) But if one house in Middletown could play the part, it would have to be Hillandale, she said. Located atop a wooded hill on the north side of Cooper Road in the…
