List of Upstairs, Downstairs (1971 TV series) characters
This is an alphabetical list of characters from the ITV drama series Upstairs, Downstairs, which aired from 1971 to 1975.Cast
; Key''Upstairs''
Bellamy family
Portrayed by Rachel Gurney, Lady Marjorie Helen Sybil Bellamy is the wife of Richard Bellamy and the mother of James and Elizabeth. In the summer of 1906, she has an affair with a much younger man, Charles Victor Hammond, a captain in the Khyber Rifles and a friend of her son James. Lady Marjorie continues to employ their under-parlour maid Sarah when she becomes pregnant and then miscarries the illegitimate child of James. Blackmail for Lady Marjorie's affair later helps her chauffeur and Sarah in leaving service and purchasing their own business, a garage. Lady Marjorie dies in 1912, a victim of the sinking of the, while her lady's maid, Miss Roberts, survives.Richard Bellamy
Portrayed by David Langton, Richard Pemberton Bellamy, Viscount Bellamy of Haversham, was the youngest son of the parson of Burnham Trenton in Norfolk, Charles Bellamy, and his wife Hannah. As a young man he won a scholarship to Oxford University, where he excelled. In 1880, he married the wealthy Lady Marjorie Talbot-Carey and became a Conservative MP. They had two children, James and Elizabeth. Richard has an older brother named Arthur, who bullied Richard as a child. In 1909 Arthur visits Richard, the two have a falling out and they never speak to each other again.
Early in the series he becomes a junior minister.
He has a brief, steamy affair with a Vienna-born French Countess de Ternay, which ends on wistfully friendly terms when they both realise neither has the wealth that their public appearances imply.
Widowed by Lady Marjorie's death in 1912, he marries Virginia Hamilton, a war widow, in 1919, having been created Viscount Bellamy of Haversham and a Knight Grand Cross of the Order of St Michael and St George in 1917.
In the 2010 revival of Upstairs, Downstairs, Rose Buck refers to her late master, Lord Richard Bellamy of Haversham, with the implication that Richard had died sometime between 1930 and 1936; Rose later claims that "The Bellamys", meaning Richard and Virginia, gave Rose a teapot for all of her hard work when she left their service sometime between 1930 and 1936.Elizabeth Bellamy
Portrayed by Nicola Pagett, Miss Elizabeth Bellamy, later Elizabeth Kirbridge and then The Honourable Elizabeth Wallace after her father's elevation to the peerage, is the daughter of Richard and Lady Marjorie Bellamy and the sister of James. Elizabeth is sent to finishing school in Germany and upon her return to London, finds the upper class life of the Bellamys claustrophobic. Experimenting with socialism and women's liberation without an understanding of the true costs of activism, she marries penniless and sexually ambiguous poet Lawrence Kirbridge. Elizabeth tries to have the marriage annulled, but becomes pregnant by Lawrence Kirbridge's publisher, through a cold-blooded arrangement between Lawrence and the publisher to seduce her. Elizabeth gives birth to a daughter, Lucy Elizabeth, and her father and mother make provision for Lawrence so that the couple can separate. Elizabeth takes up with Julius Karekin, an opportunistic, wealthy businessman who uses her to gain access to her father and his government connections and then gives Elizabeth a hat shop. Elizabeth fails to read her true situation, seeing the gift as loving support of her new-found equality: meanwhile, the businessman uses his new connections to court a Marchioness. Elizabeth moves to New York and marries Dana J. Wallace in about 1911, and never again appears in the series, remaining in America.Georgina Worsley
Portrayed by Lesley-Anne Down, Georgina, Marchioness of Stockbridge is the step-daughter of Lady Marjorie's brother Hugo, her natural father having died in a hunting accident when she was six years old. Her mother and step-father die along with Lady Marjorie in the sinking of the in 1912, after which she moves into 165 Eaton Place. She spends the war years serving in France as a VAD Nurse, where her patients include her step-cousin James. During the 1920s, she joins the ranks of young people known as the Bright Young Things – silly, giddy, empty-headed types – but changes her ways after she accidentally runs over and kills a farmworker. She is saved by the testimony of Robert, Marquess of Stockbridge, whom she later marries.James Bellamy
Portrayed by Simon Williams, Major The Honourable James Rupert Bellamy MC is the son of Richard and Lady Marjorie Bellamy and the brother of Elizabeth. He attended the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst and serves as an officer in the Life Guards of the British Household Cavalry until 1919. He has a series of relationships with women of inferior birth, and fails to launch himself as a responsible adult capable of managing a career, his money and relationships. He is sent off to a military post in India so that he would not be present when his illegitimate child with an underparlour maid is born; the child dies in childbirth. He returned to England with a middle class fiancé, putting pressure on the underparlour maid to find another situation. After losing his fiancé, he leaves the military for a position with an investment firm prior to meeting Hazel Forrest, whom he marries. He rejoins the Army in World War I. Hazel predeceases him in 1918. He commits suicide after losing his fortune in the Wall Street crash of 1929.Hazel Bellamy
Portrayed by Meg Wynn Owen, Hazel Bellamy first appears in the episode "Miss Forrest" as secretary to Richard Bellamy; she is a middle class young woman who has been earning a living as a secretary for ten years, against her parents' wishes. This conflict gives the viewer a rare view of the interior of her parents' middle-class home: one of the few domestic locations in the series other than the Bellamys' home. James is immediately attracted to her, and within two years they marry, after she initially declined his proposal, having been married before to a violent alcoholic named Patrick O'Connor. The class divide between James and Hazel causes early conflicts with Hazel's parents, the Bellamys' staff and in the marriage. In the early months of 1914 Hazel suffers a miscarriage which sends her into an extended depression. During the war she falls in love with a young airman named Jack Dyson, who dies in action. Hazel is particularly close to Richard, Georgina and Rose, but Hudson never truly accepts her, a middle-class woman, as mistress of the house. Hazel dies in the Spanish flu pandemic days before World War I ends in 1918.Virginia Bellamy
Portrayed by Hannah Gordon, Virginia, Viscountess Bellamy of Haversham is the widow of Naval Officer Charles Hamilton. She meets Richard when she asks for help to establish a fund for the children of naval officers killed in battle, and they initially dislike each other. Virginia returns about a year later, when her seventeen-year-old son Michael is court-martialled for cowardice. At Hazel's urging, Richard asks family solicitor Sir Geoffrey Dillon to help. Michael is subsequently killed in action. By this point, both Richard and Hazel have become extremely fond of Virginia and her two other children, Alice and William. She becomes a viscountess when she and Richard marry in 1919 and honeymoon in France following the signing of the Versailles Peace Treaty.Other Upstairs characters
Lady Southwold
Veteran actress Cathleen Nesbitt portrayed Mabel Talbot-Carey, Countess of Southwold. She was the mother of Lady Marjorie and grandmother of James and Elizabeth Bellamy. She married Walter Hugo Talbot-Carey, large landowner and influential Conservative politician, sometime in the early 1860s; by this marriage she had two children – Lady Marjorie and Hugo, Lord Ashby and later Earl of Southwold. Her husband also had a brother and at least one nephew, who succeeded Hugo as Earl of Southwold in 1912 when he and his sister Lady Marjorie died in the sinking of the. She was often accompanied by her useful but snobbish lady's companion Miss Hodges, a clergyman's daughter from Cromer. On a visit to 165 Eaton Place Lady Southwold allegedly loses a valuable brooch, leading to a suspicion of theft by the staff. A Cartier jeweller later arrives at the house stating that she left the item at the shop to have a loose stone reset. At Christmas 1913 she gives Georgina a diamond filigree necklace that has been in the family for four generations. Towards the end of World War I the old lady insists on a private ambulance being used to bring her wounded grandson James back from France. The possibility of Georgina going to 'her grandmother's house at Southwold' is mentioned at the time of Hazel's death, so Lady Southwold was still alive in November 1918. She is not, however, referred to again in any way.Lady Castleton
Portrayed by Margaretta Scott, Lady Southwold's sister, Lady Katherine "Kate" Castleton, was to have presented Elizabeth to King Edward VII at a Londonderry House ball in 1905. By 1912, she is known as 'stone deaf and not very good company' dying in 1921 and leaving James £1,000, some of which he used to buy an aeroplane."Bunny," Marquess of Newbury
Portrayed by John Quayle, Lord Newbury is James Bellamy's best friend, who attended the same schools and served as an officer in the Household Cavalry with him. He first appears in the fourth episode of series 1, but was then known as Lieutenant Billy Watson. A meek, quiet, and decent man known to his friends as Bunny, he marries Lady Diana Russell in 1912 having inherited his title and estates the previous year. He served gallantly in the Great War up to 1917 when he was promoted to be an aide-de-camp and taken out of the frontline. Dominated by his spouse, he is happiest playing his expected role of a traditional English country squire, a duty described by his wife as "scratching the backs of pigs with a glazed look in his eye." Faced with his wife's adultery, he refuses to cause a scandal believing that "no man should divorce a woman" and offers to give her grounds instead. When Diana returns to him, he takes her back without a qualm, but the couple remain childless.