Inside Michelle Dockery’s London Townhouse

Hi AD, I'm Michelle Dockery.

Welcome to my home.

Come in.

[upbeat music]

So this is the boot room.

Feels like quite a luxury to have a dedicated space

just for throwing your coats and shoes on the floor.

It looks much tidier today, thanks to AD,

than it usually does.

The previous owners had actually put in this partition wall,

as this was part of the room next door,

and created this boot room.

This is where we walk in

when we've come in from muddy dog walks.

And actually Alfie, our five-year-old Lurcher,

has his own little dedicated hooks here from Rose Uniacke.

Very expensive dog hooks for his lead.

And I'll take you through to the hallway.

[lively music]

I always wanted a gallery hallway.

So over the years I've collected

lots of different pieces of artwork.

Some are from Etsy,

some are from antique markets.

You'll see lots of pictures of Sighthounds

around the house, just like our dog, Alfie.

Let's go down to the kitchen.

[bouncy music]

So this is our kitchen and living space.

This is where we spend most of our time.

We worked with an incredible interior designer,

called Emma Ainscough, on this house.

When we first bought the house,

there were two walls separating this area.

There was a very dark dining room

and the kitchen was much smaller.

So we added an extension

to make it one big space.

We wanted to keep as much of the kitchen as possible

because it was beautiful.

So this was all here when we bought the house.

We just extended the island and added a dining area

so that we could then have a more family room area.

I love this island for having a cooker in the middle

because it's just really lovely for when you're entertaining

and cooking and friends can sit here

and you don't turn your back to them while you're cooking.

The pistachio green doors were a feature

that I completely fell in love with

when we saw this house,

and so I really wanted to keep them.

So we added the extension and just put them on the end

and then added the other windows,

and it's just made the space

feel so much brighter and airier.

This space is really lovely.

This was also here when we bought the house.

It's like our pantry area.

We added this breakfast nook,

and this is where we make our coffee

and our tea in the mornings.

[upbeat music]

So this is the dining area,

which is the new extension.

Some really great meals in here.

Christmas, birthdays, Easter.

I love this dining table.

It's from a brand called Konk.

We wanted something that has leaves

so that you could make it a much bigger table

for bigger dinner parties.

We matched the Crittall windows.

We just kind of wanted to make the space

feel really cohesive.

This sideboard was designed by our interior designer,

Emma Ainscough, and it was made,

like a lot of the furniture in this house,

by two carpenters from Syria

who we've worked with a lot on this house.

They're brothers and they are so talented.

And as you can see, it's the most beautiful piece.

And Emma found this incredible piece of marble

to go on top.

So when we're having dinners,

this is where the food goes, the wine goes,

if you're doing more of, like, a buffet.

And then above it is this photograph by Slim Aarons,

one of my favorite photographers,

and we absolutely love this photograph.

It really kind of shows family and food and entertaining.

We thought it would be perfect for this room.

And then also when we're entertaining in the summer

when the weather's good,

we also like to entertain outside.

[lively music]

So this is more of like the family room.

We spend quite a lot of time in here.

I spend quite a lot of time in here.

This sofa, because it's really comfortable.

It's from Restoration Hardware

and this is where I watch a lot of TV.

That is a chessboard [laughs],

and I'm learning how to play chess.

I was inspired by The Queen's Gambit,

Scott Frank's show,

who I had the pleasure of working with many years ago,

but I'm not very good.

I need more practice.

And then this I really wanna show you,

which is a family heirloom.

This is my grandmother's

and it's been handed down to me and my sisters,

and I have it at the moment.

And it is probably the most Downton Abbey thing

that I own

as it is filled with beautiful silverware,

which we tend to use at Christmas and special occasions.

So I am known to occasionally polish my silverware [laughs].

There's lots of interior magazines here,

lots of Architectural Digest.

I'm a big fan.

One of my favorites was Dakota Johnson's house.

We've also got a record player down here.

This was a wedding present from a friend

and it actually has a little etching

that my friend actually did for us of our dog.

It's all about the dog, really.

So I got this from eBay.

I like collecting weird things like this

and it's a lady just sitting in a pool,

but when you turn it over,

[laughs] I don't know if we can actually show it.

It's so weird!

It's just her bum with a sort of cat there.

Look.

This is so bizarre, but I thought,

I've gotta have it.

This is one of my favorite things in the house,

the shelving unit.

It's from The Conran Shop.

I actually saw it in the store in the meeting room,

so it wasn't actually for sale,

and fell in love with it and loved the color.

I just love the red.

So Emma, our interior designer,

asked them to make one for us.

It's gorgeous.

It's one of my favorite things.

I love red.

As you can see, lots of pops of red everywhere.

This is the loo.

Just so people know what's behind here

and where to find the loo.

This is just one of my favorite little rooms in the house.

I love a downstairs loo.

And this wallpaper is by Antoinette Poisson

and it's really cute.

And that's such a tiny little sink.

[bouncy music]

So this is our den, TV room.

This is where we tend to watch a lot of movies

and chill out on these gorgeous sofas.

I wanted to make it feel really cozy.

So we put in these gorgeous curtains

just to kind of make it really cozy at night.

And these little Soho Home lamps

just make it kind of feel like a cinema

when you're watching a film.

There's a piece of art by David Austen, Smoketown.

I've had that for many years.

Something I wanna show you here,

which is a collection of books

that were gifted to me from Maggie Smith,

and Laura Carmichael has the other half.

They're these amazing vintage Play Pictorial books

which show costumes from many different periods.

So that's something I really cherish.

This poster is my favorite poster

from the movie The Gentleman.

That little gun in the glass of whiskey

is the one that I use in the film

to shoot the two heavies.

This picture is from the first series of Downton Abbey

by Nick Briggs.

It's probably about the only image I have in the house

of me as Lady Mary in Downton.

So it's sort of slightly hidden,

sort of modest up there above the door.

And then I really wanna show you this,

which is a SAG award for best ensemble for Downton.

We got a few,

and this one has a miniature pair of pants on its head.

I did a play a few years ago,

and it was a sort of an in-joke,

but my dresser gave me a little tiny pair of Barbie pants

and that's now where they live.

There's another homage to Alfie up there,

another Sighthound.

That one's from TK Maxx.

[chill music]

So this is the office.

This is actually one of my favorite rooms in the house.

It's one of the brightest rooms

and we chose a really bright white color

to kind of make it as bright as possible.

It's where we work, it's where we read,

it's where we listen to music.

I tend to read scripts in this chair

'cause it's a really gorgeous recliner chair.

I've also got memorabilia

I like to keep in this room.

And one thing, in fact, the only thing I got

from Downton Abbey was this little dog,

which some people will recognize

from the train station scene

when Mary gives this to Matthew before he goes off to war.

And what's mad about this is this was a very long time ago,

and little did I know that in the future

I would get a dog that looks just like this dog.

So this is another homage to my dog.

There seems to be loads of them around the house.

This is also a gift that was given to us all

at the end of the series of Downton.

It's the season one, first episode script

and they bound it into this beautiful book.

Something else I'm also really proud of

that I want to show you is this photograph

of myself, Laura Carmichael, and Kyle Richards.

This was probably the most starstruck moment of my life.

I'm a Real Housewives of Beverly Hills fan

and we met her at this event

and we insisted on going back onto the red carpet

to have a photo with Kyle Richards.

So I am very proud of that.

The artwork is kind of like the central piece

in this room.

We had this piece commissioned by Anna Co Masters,

a really talented young South African artist.

And my brief to her was I wanted something

that feels really calm

and it's gonna be in a room where we listen to music,

where we read.

And that's all I told her.

And this is what she did.

And it's so beautiful and I just think

really makes the room sing.

This fireplace, when we moved into the house,

it was really dark.

We decided to kind of lighten the whole thing.

And our interior designer, Emma Ainscough,

told me about this amazing tile designer

called Pietro Palumbo

who does these gorgeous little paintings on tiles.

And then they also do custom ones.

And so we of course had to get a custom one made

of our dog, Alfie.

This artwork, you'll see there's a few pieces

around the house.

This is another piece by David Austen,

who is actually a very close friend of mine's dad.

And he is an incredible artist

who I've known for a really long time

and it's really lovely having his artwork around the house.

[lively music]

So this is the main bedroom.

Emma, our designer, has made this

into a really calming, beautiful space.

I love the colors in here.

And actually it kind of all started

with this Egon Schiele print.

I love the colors in it.

So she kind of brought out the colors from the picture

so you can see the green on the bed

and this lovely color of these wardrobes,

which were also custom-made

by our really talented carpenters.

And it also has really beautiful ironmongery

that Emma found.

The bedside tables I really love.

These are from Susie Atkinson

and also the lamps are from Susie Atkinson, too.

And this lamp is actually from Sezane,

a clothing brand that I really love.

And now they're doing homeware,

which is really exciting.

I love a four-poster bed.

It was always a bit of a dream to have one.

And we had these lovely sheers made

just to kind of elevate it a bit.

The artwork, a selection of antiques

from Battersea Arts Fair,

somewhere that I love going every year.

And then also the painting over there

is also from Battersea Arts Fair,

which is a really gorgeous, calming painting for this room.

I'll take you through to the en suite.

[upbeat music]

So the colors blend really beautifully in here

from the bedroom into the bathroom.

I love the marble in here, Verde Luana,

which is just felt really kind of unusual.

This vanity again was made by our carpenters.

This print is by a photographer called Tom Allport

that I've just discovered.

We wanted something

that had real kind of like holiday vibes.

[upbeat music]

And through here is the dressing room.

The colors are really beautiful in there.

The walls are a Farrow & Ball color called Inchyra Blue,

which is one of my favorites.

The dressing table is from Trove.

My mom always had a dressing table growing up.

It's always nice to be able to kind of sit somewhere

and, you know, do your hair and makeup.

[bouncy music]

It has been lovely having you, AD.

Thanks so much for coming.

Bye.

[bouncy music continues]