A YORKSHIRE tea room is to make a cameo appearance in the next episode of the hugely-popular period drama Downton Abbey.

Bettys, which has tea rooms across North Yorkshire including in Harrogate, Northallerton, York, was approached by the programme's art team to ask permission to create a fictional version of the iconic cafe.

With the current series based in 1924, five years after Bettys first cafe opened, it is historically accurate in that Bettys did exist at the time.

A Bettys spokeswoman said: "As Downton is set in a fictional Yorkshire estate we don’t know where their Bettys is meant to be. We sent them images from our archive so they could see what Bettys would have looked like in the 1920s and we sent them bread cakes and treats that would have been similar to those available in our shops around the same time.

"In the 1920s Bettys was spelled with an apostrophe - but we chose to leave it out in our fictional Downton tea room signage so that anyone who spotted us would recognise us.

"We also took some further artistic licence and included Fat Rascals in the window – they weren’t yet invented in 1924, but who would know Bettys without a Fat Rascal in the window?"

Visit http://www.bettys.co.uk.