Eagle-eyed viewers of Downton Abbey – ITV’s major new period drama, billed as the jewel in the crown of its autumn season – may have spotted a pre-First World War copy of a Yorkshire newspaper in the servants’ quarters.

The household chauffeur can be spotted reading the 1913 copy of the Yorkshire Observer, part of the Bradford-based stable of newspapers from which the Telegraph & Argus grew.

Production company Carnival Films was granted permission to use the historic newspaper, adding authenticity to a period drama set above and below stairs on a country estate in Edwardian Yorkshire. Dame Maggie Smith heads an all-star cast that includes Hugh Bonneville, Penelope Wilton, Jim Carter and Phyllis Logan.

Set in a fictional Yorkshire village, Downton Abbey is centred on the Crawley family, the Earls of Grantham since 1772, and their servants. While the family resides in sumptuous drawing rooms, library and bedrooms, with tall windows looking across the park, below stairs are the servants, all fiercely possessive of their ranks.

The series is written and created by Julian Fellowes, Oscar-winning screenwriter of the movie Gosford Park, also set in a country house. His other work was The Young Victoria, about Queen Victoria’s relationship with Prince Albert.

Julian and the production team spent months visiting houses around the country, eventually settling on Highclere Castle in Berkshire which, with its 1,000-acre Capability Brown landscape, doubled up as a Yorkshire country house. He chose Yorkshire for a setting because he has family ties here, is fond of the county and felt that in Edwardian times there was a mutual warmth between staff and families that was lacking elsewhere around the country.

“It is no secret that I am fascinated by the extraordinary variety of people that occupied the great country houses, where men and women worked alongside each other and lived in close proximity but were separated in their dreams and aspirations by a distance that makes the moon seem close,” says Julian.

“In 1912, England was teetering on the brink. Apparently placid, still rooted in the traditions of many centuries, it would be less than ten years before the First World War and the Jazz Age ripped every certainty to shreds. This is the moment when we enter the world of Downton Abbey, the great house of a great family, where the Granthams and their daughters preside over a household in the charge of Carson, the butler, and Mrs Hughes, the housekeeper. All these people must, deal with the changes that are coming.”

When executive producer Gareth Neame began talking to Julian about developing a new drama series, it was an adaptation of Julian’s novel Snobs that he had in mind. Discussions soon turned to a subject that both Gareth and Julian had been mulling over.

“It was while working on an adaptation of Snobs that I thought we should really work on an episodic series set in an Edwardian country house,” says Gareth. “Firstly, because it is a setting that is uniquely English and we haven’t had an original programme like this in many years and secondly, Julian and I both thought it a good territory to revisit.

“When I read Julian’s initial treatment it had such a confident command of this period and grasp of this world – the family, the servants and the entire setting – that it was clear this was something he had wanted to write for a long time.”

Julian says Gosford Park struck a chord with audiences and it was a period he was keen to return to.

“I had never written a television series before and I found you have such tremendous freedom to develop the characters,” he says. “The way of life of these fully-staffed houses had always interested me, long before I wrote Gosford Park.

“My father was born in 1912, it’s a period that many people alive today have heard about from parents or grandparents,” he says. “By the late 19th century electricity came in and gradually motor-cars.”