The Revival of the British Country House

This presentation celebrates the 50th anniversary of Historic Houses, the association established in 1973 to save the British country house. Back then, houses faced all sorts of threats, most particularly from proposed new levels of taxation. Intense public interest in these historic houses was then ramped up by the groundbreaking 1974 exhibition at London’s Victoria & Albert Museum, The Destruction of the Country House, which documented over 1,000 houses that had been lost in the preceding century. Early policy successes by the Historic Houses Association then paved the way for a significant revival in the fortunes of country houses in the last 50 years. Houses have found new ways to generate income: tourism, hospitality, events, weddings, and many other business activities now take place in country house settings. This economic revival has helped to keep Britain’s special heritage of country houses and gardens safe and secure for future generations.

Live broadcast: February 9, 2024
Presented by Ben Cowell
Moderated by Curt DiCamillo

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Hello and welcome to our art and architecture webinar series I’m cty cllo the curator of Fine Art at American ancestors I will be your moderator and virtual MC for today’s event American ancestors is a nonprofit organization supported by our members and donors we’re the oldest and largest genealogical Society in the world we

Specialize in providing resources research and expertise that uncover the stories of families family objects and family homes we are pleased to offer such programming for our members and friends around the world I’d also like to note that we are broadcasting from our homes to yours with various limitations and distractions we

Apologize in advance if there are any interruptions from our end and thank you for your patience even if we do lose connection you will have access to a full recording on our website that you can watch at any time today’s webinar will celebrate the 50th anniversary of historic houses the

Association establ estblished in 1973 to save the British Country House intense public interest in these historic houses was ramped up by the destruction of the country house a groundbreaking 1974 Exhibition at London’s Victorian Albert Museum that documented over 1,000 houses that had been lost in the preceding Century early policy successes by

Historic houses has paved the way for a significant Revival in the fortune of country houses in the last 50 years these historic houses have found new ways to generate income through tourism Hospitality events weddings and many other business activities that now take place in these historic house settings

This economic Revival has helped keep Britain’s special Heritage of country houses and Gardens safe and secure for future Generations I would like to thank the Joseph and Robert Cornell Memorial foundation for their generous sponsorship of the art and architecture webinar series but now to our speaker Ben Cal is the director general of

Historic houses the london-based representative body for nearly 1,500 houses Gardens and castles across the United Kingdom in May of this year B’s groundbreaking Brook we could say brook or it could be book in this case we’re going to say it’s a book it’s called the British Country House Revival and it traces the

History of country houses in Britain from 1974 until the present day as I said this will be published in May and I have already pre-ordered my copy and I have to say I can’t wait and I can’t wait to introduce all of you to Ben it’s yours now

Ben thank you so much thank you Kurt and it’s a great pleasure to be speaking to you and to American ancestors on this topic this topic which is so dear to my heart but is something that I sense Kurt certainly shares and many of you will

Share as well this love of the British country house and concern for its future uh as Kurt was kind enough to uh talk about the book that I have coming out on this topic in a few months time I will uh crave an Indulgence and uh do a

Littleit bit more plugging of this book uh by showing you a picture here of the front cover of uh the book called the British Country House Revival coming to your bookstore soon a and you may um have Rec recognized already that the house on the front cover here is a

Version of a place called hulum Hall in Norfolk uh which is on the Eastern side of Britain um and uh hokom Hall is a splendid example of the sort of house that I’m going to be talking about uh in this in this talk uh what you can see

Here in fact is an artist’s depiction of hok Hall and in the foreground that amazing Monument the monument is very much there at hokom Hall and this is a monument to the first Earl of Leicester of uh second creation I think who was the great agricultural improver of the

Late 18th and early 19th century these country houses these places were really the embod of the wealth and the fortune that came from farming and uh if you were to go to this Monument today you will see at the base of it there are various pictures and representations of scenes from the

Life of the first Earl of Leicester and there are pictures of him with his estate stewards uh examining estate documents and Maps there were pictures of cattle of sheep of people going about the business of running a large landed estate and the reason I’ve chosen that picture for the front cover was because

I imagined in the opening section of the book what an equivalent Monument might depict today because although hulum remains a very large agricultural estate uh it is uh nonetheless it gets probably more than half of its income from a range of different sources it gets income from from tourism uh from

Hospitality uh there’s a big Caravan Park a holiday park just a few miles away that the the estate runs there’s a hotel on the estate there’s a nature reserve there um there are people buying ice creams it’s all sorts of things that you could choose to depict and in this

Picture you can see the um Memorial that I referred to in in the in the background there and this fine palladian mansion in the front now the other point about houses like this is that this house has been in the same family hands since it was built in the early Decades

Of the 18th century the same single family the Cook family um continue to live in this Splendid Palace today it has never been on the open market and that is the case for quite a few of the houses that we represent at historic houses the next picture shows blenham

Palace for example uh in Oxfordshire another classic example of exactly this and these the the pictures I’m showing you now are I suppose examples of some of the finest and the biggest of the houses that I’m going to be talking about uh in in the course of this lecture

This of course is famous uh Chatsworth house famous around the world the home of the Dukes of devire um I put into just for a bit of fun I put into chat gbt um what is the best British country houses and all of these houses I’ve

Shown you so far appeared in the top 10 list of country houses I’m very pleased to say uh the point being that um the majority of these houses are still in private hands although we we love the National Trust we love working with the National Trust which is a very big

Heritage charity actually the biggest country houses are still owned privately and Chatsworth and blenham are both two of the most visited country houses of their kind in the UK and this one is another example of what I’m talking about this is Castle Howard in Yorkshire but our organization is made

Up of country houses of all sorts of shapes and sizes and ages and all sorts of architectural Styles and there’s a great diversity in also the ways in which these houses are able to continue to survive in looking as they do in these pictures this is won Castle in

Oxfordshire a beautiful moed site uh lived in by uh Lord say and seal in fact sadly um uh Lord SE and seal died just a few weeks ago the uh the former Lord say andil who died uh at the rip old age of 103 and his son Martin has now taken

Over this is Martin fines from the the Great British acting family the fines family uh but Martin Martin is now now the latest Lord Sean seal to live here at Bron and here’s another example of a place uh that is in fact a castle this is monaster Castle in Cumbria near the

Coast uh in the northwest of England uh just on the edges of the late district and a beautiful place uh perched on this um clifftop overlooking uh the sea in the distance but I think the family who live there the here the fost Penningtons would agree that this is probably also

The coldest castle in the country country living here is not easy it’s not easy to heat somewhere like this uh and the family very much confine themselves to a single kitchen and they huddle around the arer and in order just to keep warm especially in these winter

Months but it’s places like these that that are the lifeblood of historic houses we’re so proud of the families who live in and sustain these Splendid palaces and as Kurt said at the start we’ve been around for 50 years now we celebrated our half century at the end

Of last year and we are proud to be the representative Organization for all of the houses you’ll you’ll be seeing in this talk uh they all have the same common interest which is how can we keep this place going and how can we pass it

On to the next Generation in as good if not better condition and as Kurt mentioned the origins of our association were very much to do with pictures like this these were much more common sites about 70 years ago in fact I think this picture is from 1950 or 51 this is a house

Called thorington in suffk so you can see this the classical architecture there the Portico in the process of being demolished and this was not an uncommon site in the British Countryside uh in those years just after the second world war here’s another house uh that in effectively ceased to exist in the the

Way it was originally this is the very important house board house in Wilshire uh which was pulled down the main block you can see there was pulled down entirely in 1955 as it happens uh a a part of the house least the stable block and the

Service Wing at the back was kept and the family still lived there so Lord lown still lives at bowood and it’s a very thriving estate today it’s there’s a hotel in the grounds there’s a golf course the gardens are spectacular they have many visitors each year but back in

1955 the future looked particularly Bleak for places like this here’s another example less well known as a house perhaps this is foxley in herfordshire very near the border with Wales and this was the home of yuell price who was the great writer on the picturesque in the late 18th and early

19th century but by this time again this is just after the war um the price family had long since uh sold up I think they sold at the end of the 19th century and uh the family who did live there were not able to keep the house

Going and here’s another example this is a a a house that used to live uh used to be very near where I live in Essex uh in England so this is a place called Eastern Lodge and this would have been perhaps the grandest most spectacular mansion in Essex uh you can still see

The stone steps are still there leading up to the front door of the this Mansion but when you get to the top of those steps all you can see is this uh this this small cops of trees and if you um rumage around in the roots of those

Trees you can find the foundations of this Splendid Mansion lived in by uh the counters of Warick a fascinating figure um I’m really interested in the counters of Warick but all sorts of reasons she was a um I suppose she would be called The It Girl of her day she was a

Society um figure uh reputedly the Mistress of uh the Prince of Wales um who then converted to uh supporting the uh left-wing cause of the labor party and tried desperately for many years to to give her Mansion away to um the the Socialist movement who wouldn’t touch it

With the barge pole um and the point is I suppose that these places were increasingly unsustainable in these years and that was to do with a factor a range of factors uh one level it was to do with agricultural incomes and incomes have been diminishing since about

1875 it was also to do with tax 1894 was the year when the first effective death Duty or estate Duty was introduced on these large Estates and then with the coming of of the War uh well both the first world war and the second world war

To some extent um the uh many of these places were taken over and this place actually Eastern Lodge was Itself requisitioned by the US Air Force so there were um American planes flying out of here day and night in in the 1940s but by the time the house came back to

The family in 19 uh in 1945 uh the family had to pull it down and uh sell it they simply couldn’t sustain it any longer and they were free to do that because there were no planning restrictions that stopped them from Simply pulling the house down this is another another estate that

Was I think taken over by the US Army this time this is the gra in Hampshire this neoclassical uh gem by William Wilkins and uh this was a place that very much was at the Forefront of discussions in the early 1970s about the extent of planning controls over important historic

Buildings so in the UK we have the system of listing the listing of buildings uh which is a part of the law and uh was introduced in fact quite late in 1947 it was only from 1947 that government officials started going around the countryside documenting important uh classical buildings and uh

Registering them on on a list uh that’s just what it is it just means they’re on a list and they’re noted for their uh Beauty and their Splendor and their importance and there’s a different level of grades grade one two star and two is how it works these days in England and

This place uh was definitely listed however there was still nothing stopping an owner from pulling down their house even if it was listed until 1968 when a a new law came in that men owners had to seek something called listed building consent if they wanted to demolish and the owner in this case

Very nearly pulled his house down in 1967 he delayed for some reason uh and then when he reapplied for listed building consent it became publicly known that he was planning to demolish the house and a huge kafuffle erupted a huge Scandal over the pulling down of this uh important 19th century building

And there was a public debate about it should buildings like this still exist should they be be preserved in the countryside or should the owners of them be permitted to do what they will with them if they want to pull them down sell the materials use the land for something

Else um should they and in this case uh the uh the debate around this was so intense that in the end the government stepped in and acquired this particular country house uh which nowadays is a property run by English Heritage so there was this debate happening in the years after the second

World war about the future of these places what sort of future did they have and how would they survive the government couldn’t really step in to save all of them or even very many of them um there’s another strand to this story though which is to do with the

Self-help of these Oran of these houses this is Buy in Hampshire uh a lovely property as you can see uh tucked away in a beautiful estate um in a lovely part of the country and this was a a property inherited by Lord montigue in 1951 and Lord montigue was really at the

Uh the The Cutting Edge of a a theme to commercialize houses like this here we can see here in this picture Lord montigue himself scrubbing the floor of the house in preparation for the house opening its doors now monu was a great PR man he knew exactly how

To get uh coverage in the newspapers his father had been a figure in the motor industry and had bequeathed to Lord montigue montigue along with the house a a single classic car and and montigue being a very canny operator not only opened his house to public visiting in

April 1952 he announced it would become the national motor museum and he put the classic car and a few other historic Vehicles he managed to acquire in the front hall of BU which made the whole house eventually smell of petrol and he had to move it into a

Separate uh building in the grounds um but he was um convinced that the only future for these houses was for them to become tourist destinations and famously he said um I would uh rather keep my home and surrender my privacy than have things the other way round so he was all

For these places becoming much more public uh uh attractions and buildings places that people could go to the post-war Ledger Market was just taking off and he spotted an opportunity and this is Lord monu’s son he’s speaking at the uh annual general meeting of historic houses that we had

Last November and he’s talking here about his father’s uh efforts and work in the 1950s and 1960s to encourage other stately home owners to open up their doors to the visiting public and as I say Lord montigue was a huge um marketing man he was really able to get

His face in the newspapers and was forever constructing stories such as this one the stately homes League table and quite often he ended up coming in the top three of of of those League table uh rankings of the most popular country houses in the country and here’s Edward monu’s book

The the guilt and the gingerbread or if you can see the subtitle there how to live in a stately home and make money because it was all about the money these places are incredibly expensive to maintain um and you had to have a ready source of income or else you were

Finished and as I say Edward monu’s mission was to open up these houses to the visiting public he wasn’t entirely supported by the other owners um not all of them wanted to open up in the same way but they all had to find a solution to the problem which was of the problem

Of um higher Rising costs and ever increasing taxation that was the fundamental issue now in 1973 uh Mont Edward montigue achieved his ambition which was to set up our organization the historic houses Association or just these days historic houses we are as it says here an association of owners and guardians of

Historic houses parks and Gardens we’re not just about the buildings we’re also about the grounds in which they sit and this is scampston in uh Yorkshire very fine 18th century example um we were set up by monteu initially as a sort of subcommittee of the tourism agency in

Britain uh what was called the BR Bri travel Association and then became the British tourist Authority but Monte decided in 1973 that we needed to have an independent voice we needed to be set up as an association in our own right and the reason for that was all to do with

Politics this was the very first publication that we at historic houses ever produced and this was a survey by the famous architectural historian John cornforth he wrote endlessly for Country Life a very well respected figure and he was invited by the HHA to undertake a survey of the state of play for country

Houses and this is what he produced a book called country houses in Britain can they survive question mark and the answer I’m afraid was no so this is October 1974 I think this book came out and so at the time John corworth was predicting that these houses did not

Have much of a future at all uh there were probably around 2,000 of them uh but he predicted there might be fewer than a hundred in 50 years time in other words uh uh the time that we are speak that I’m speaking to you now he thought

The National Trust might step in to save a few but on the whole these places had no particular future to look forward to such was uh the escalating costs of maintaining them and the pressures they were under in terms of uh Taxation and planning and other forms of uh State

Intervention and this was a theme that was continued in the exhibition that Kurt mentioned at the very start this was the famous Exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum in South Kensington in London uh in 1974 called the destruction of the country house and it um it it

Documented um 100 Years of Destruction I think there were 1,116 houses that featured in this exhibition and this is a picture I took in The Archives of the VNA of the designers uh coming up with their plan for this exhibition I think it was probably quite radical for its time or

At least quite innovative it was an in yourface sort of depiction of just the sheer level of Destruction and demolition that had happened in that 100-year period leading up to the time of the exhibition and this is another picture of the central focus of the exhibition

Which was called the the Hall of lost mansions and really all of it was about photographs these black and white images of houses none of which uh still existed they’d all been pulled down in that 100-year period and this exhibition was really the uh product of this man this is Roy

Strong famous British historian and uh at the time he was the newly uh newly appointed director of the VNA he started at the VNA in January 1974 and this was his first big exhibition and his Diaries he’s published many Diaries and they’re wonderful very interesting books to read

Um but this is his a quote I think from one of his diary entries where he talks about uh the times he’d stood in that exhibition watching tears stream down visitors faces as they battled to come to terms with all that had gone so this was a very um

Obviously emotive exhibition this was tugging at the heartstring this was reminding people just how much Heritage we have in this country in in Britain and and how much we had lost and how much in bracket we were going to go on to lose if things didn’t improve because I mentioned this was a

Very political act and this was really part of the Heritage movement finding its political feat the exhibition opened just two days before a general election in England uh in October 1974 I should say the election was in Britain shouldn’t I not in not in England it was

In the UK and this gentleman here is Edward Heath Ted Heath the Conservative candidate and here is Harold Wilson he’s the labor candidate in this election now 1974 was unusual uh for students of politics they will know there were two general elections in the UK in 1974 the

First was in February of of that year when Howard Wilson who you can see here uh was returned to power he had been in power in the 1960s but he came back in 19 February 1974 but with a minority government there was not enough they didn’t have a

Enough seats in the House of Commons to form a majority so so he had a very um Slender uh position and went back to the country in October 1974 the point is though that the labor party Manifesto contained within it a proposal for a new form of Taxation uh

It would be a wealth tax a tax on the individuals with the biggest Assets in the country whether that’s uh land buildings uh collections or money in the bank and when labor came back in again in October 1974 with a a much stronger majority it then became a political

Reality that we would soon have in this country a wealth tax uh that would be an annual tax on the owners of the houses that I’ve been showing you so far in this talk and this was where our um newly formed Association sprang into action we uh Mo were motivated straight away to

Um campaign against this new form of Taxation and here are here are our um supporters from uh nadas now called the art Society this is the National Association of decorative and Fine Arts societies and in the summer of 1975 we working with nadas put petitions in uh country houses and stately homes

Up and down Britain um in which we called uh for people to sign their names if they supported um telling the government no to this new form of Taxation and amazingly over a million signatures were gathered in this way I think that’s the biggest petition that’s ever been delivered to Parliament uh in

Its history in fact until the age of um internet polls which we have many many of these days and I think they sometimes get more than a million people to them as well but at the time it was quite extraordinary this response to this um labor party uh proposal in its Manifesto

For a new form of Taxation this picture shows Lord montigue in the dark suit there just below the clock tower of Big Ben and next to him is Ted Graham who was a labor MP um and at the far right of the picture is uh Commander Michael Saunders Watson the owner of Rockingham

Castle another big figure in the early days of our association here they here’s here’s Edward monteu again delivering the the petition as I say he was a great showman and really able to get uh media coverage for the cause he was very Adept at that and the thing is it worked he had

An impact he had an immediate impact in fact this this man here is Dennis Healey he was the chancellor of the exer in other words he was in charge of the money and he was second in command to howold Wilson as prime minister and um

Healey in the end he had such a barrage of opposition to his claim his proposals that in the end he dropped the um the wealth tax idea the the idea was putting to the longrass in December 1975 and actually Dennis Healey went on to um the following year to make life

Significantly easier for the owners of country houses he did that by in fact increasing the range of options for owners to um if you like um uh protect themselves from a Capital Tax charge we have a charge on death in this country it was called estate Duty uh it then

Became something called Capital transfer tax these days is called inheritance tax and when you die when you pass away um the government lays claim to 40% of your estate now if you’re the owner of a 10 million pound historic house if that’s the value of your property and that

Might be the property without the collection in fact um you can see that this is is an existential issue for owners it was then it is still today in other words um You probably don’t have4 million pounds in the bank to pay pay the tax authorities to honor that Tax

Claim um and what Dennis Healey did for the owners of country houses was make it easier for them to exempt their properties that’s we call it conditional exemption they as long as they promised to open open their buildings up to public visiting for 28 days of the year

They were freed of the um the need to pay this exorbitant tax charge and capital transfer tax I think was something like 75% back in 1975 1976 so this house is in Lancashire and we think it’s the very first house to have taken advantage of this change in the

Code this is a house called bruum Hall bruum b r wsh h o l m e uh so quite often the houses are pronounced nothing like how they’re written but this is a lovely house in a part of the country called the Ribble Valley and uh in fact

A colleague of mine the technical adviser at historic houses this he owns this house he his name is is Robert Parker and um he inherited it in 1975 it’s an interesting story in fact because Robert had never I don’t think he’d been to the house I think he’d been

There once but he hardly knew it at all he lived in a totally different part of the country he lived in Cambridge and um uh had no idea he was going to inherit this property but the fact was a distant relative of his uh another Robert Parker in fact another

Trad of the British country house is that the eldest son is always called the same name so this H this place has been owned by Robert Parker for quite a long time anyway Colonel Robert Parker was living here I think he had inherited in 1936 and by 1975 he was a an elderly

Gentleman the house was in a very decrepit State and he died without any children so he never married he lived on his own and the place was increasingly the rooms were shut off and it was in a very poorly State indeed and he left in his will the house to his fourth cousin

Who is our Robert Robert Parker I just mentioned my colleague um and he at the time was I think he was 19 or 20 he was at College at agricultural College learning uh the ropes for how he might become a farmer or a land agent and I

Had no idea he was going to suddenly be saddled with this uh important uh 17th century house mainly uh but an important house with a very important collection inside it and um uh this was one of the houses that signed the deal with the government that provided they opened

Their doors to the public for 28 days of the year um they do not have to pay that Capital Tax charge that technically was um owed to the government at the point of Colonel Robert’s uh death and I I think that’s the big message of our organization it’s really

All about that story of succession it’s the story of passing houses on from one generation to the next that is that is what we’re trying to achieve and uh these are just advertising um campaigns that we never actually used in the end but they’re emphasizing the Domesticity

Of these of these places they are still invariably family homes people live in them that’s the big differential between us and say an organization like the National Trust or English Heritage fine organizations but they’re running places that are no longer lived in they’re they’re beautiful Museum pieces in our

Case the 1500 um houses that are part of historic houses are invariably lived in family homes where family life continues to unfold and the story for the rest of this talk is really about this revival from about the mid 1970s when that tax change happened but also with the

Revival in uh economic conditions more generally from the 80s and 9s onwards we see a Revival in the British country house and nowhere more than this place this is glorious Goodwood in West Sussex and here’s the Duke of Richmond with his class car and it’s a great example of an estate that has

Diversified that has um absolutely been uh a place open to public access hundreds of thousands of people uh go to Goodwood every year and they go there for the big festivals and events the the festival called the Goodwood Revival which the Duke of Richmond um personally reintroduced in his tenure as the owner

And custodian of this amazing house and collection I think they they had a a motor circuit in the grounds and it it it ceased to be used but he brought it back to life and created this amazing Festival the Goodwood Revival where people uh go in in Period costumes and

They go with classic cars and they watch car races happen and it’s a tremendous event uh and it’s really about the positivity the positive spirit of Celebration and survival that suddenly these houses came imbued with 10 years after that that depressing exhibition of the VNA we had this this

Stunning exhibition in Washington DC called the treasure houses of Britain and this was really indicative of that positive spirit of survival and Revival and this was an exhibition that featured hundreds of objects from British country houses all transported across two to Washington for this tremendous uh exhibition I think uh Kurt was telling

Me yesterday has has had the most visitors of of I think many exhibition any exhibition uh to have taken place and in that particular uh Museum and I think uh this was such an important event uh I remember it as a uh lad I remember when um the Prince of Wales now

Our King flew over uh for the opening of this exhib with his then wife Diana and Diana Princess Diana danced with John Travolta at the gala ball the night before the opening of the exhibition but I think a great statement of the positive Revival of British country

Houses and these are the sorts of figures that we now use when we’re talking to politicians which we do all of the time we are um impressing upon them just how important these places are important to the National economy um important to jobs uh we estimate over 21

Million visits were made to Our member houses in 2022 and that supports over 32,000 jobs and generates over a billion pounds uh for the UK uh economy and it speaks to the fact that people don’t really come to the UK for uh the weather necessarily they come

Here for the heritage in fact half the people that are asked when they come off the plane why have you come here uh they say they want to visit historic houses or castles that might be second on the list actually I think the first on the

List is shopping or maybe it’s going for meals anyway something like that but we’re we’re quite good at all of those things but we’re particularly good at Heritage in my view and these houses have not just been economically revived they’ve been revived as um social destinations as cultural destinations they’re places

That people go and see festivals events exhibitions uh recital um you have school groups going thousands of of uh School pups um uh visit country houses in this country every year and many thousands of volunteers are able to take play their part in supporting the work of these wonderful

Places I think the rest of my pictures are going to be really about the different ways in which these houses have Leed to survive and we started here didn’t we at Chatsworth in darbishire and this place was famous for being uh in the Vanguard of stately homes that

Were diversifying their incomes this is some sort of event taking place in the grounds of chats I forget which event it was but Deborah devire when she lived here when she was the chatan of Chatsworth in the 1970s and 80s uh again someone who was very good at getting

Their face in the newspapers and acquired a a reputation for diversifying the the income from the estate uh Deborah um or Deo as she was known affectionately set up the farm shop at Chatsworth she set up the the gift shop uh the restaurant U Mont Edward montigue

Was quite rude about Chatsworth in his book The One I showed you from 1967 the guilt and the gingerbread he said that visitors to Chatsworth then could could hardly expect to get a glass of water let alone um decent lavatories but this was all changed by the 1980s and the

1990s Chatsworth had gone into the Super league and it was all down to the Enterprise of Deo devire and lots of places started setting up um you know coffee shops cafes restaurants this is usure in the northeast of England and if they weren’t making money from retail and from Hospitality they

Were making money from big events uh the two houses you see here are firstly hul Hall in the bottom right but at the top left is nworth house in hartfordshire and nworth in particular uh acquired a reputation for its large scale rock concerts which celebrate their 50th

Anniversary this year because it was in 1974 that David Litton cobal the owner of nebor he just inherited a few years earlier decided to put on the first nebor Festival which I think featuring on the playlist were the duie brothers the Alman Brothers Van Morrison and Tim

Buckley that was the Stellar cast of the the lineup of the 1974 nebor Festival but it was a a willful deliberate move on the part of David Len cobold to find a new way to make money from the historic estate because heaven knows these places need money nworth is perpetually in a

State of okay it’s crumbling away it’s a very fine uh Gothic building as you can see here but every one of those gargoyles needs care and attention and the the roof and the towers all need uh plenty of money spent on them they they still do and they still hold concerts at

Nworth they recently had a a concert by the lead singer of Oasis Liam Gallagher and um these concerts genuinely help to keep the tower hours standing here’s another example this is not just about rock music this is um I think an AA party at bowood um so if you

Choose you can do that you can go to the glind house jazz festival you can see glind in the background there that’s a beautiful house in West Sussex but that’s their way of making some money or if you’re more culturally inclined you can you can go and enjoy

Outdoor Shakespeare I think this is van in Su a house called van and this is the uh Shakespeare in the park being shown there other houses have found new routs alog together this is Powder Room Castle in Devon and the owners the current generation o o the owners of pwder room

Castle um are very committed to um uh mental and physical health and well-being and so you’re more likely to see these days yoga classes in the Great Hall than simply um being expected to walk around in reverent silence looking at the family portraits it’s a much more

Active use of these houses as Community spaces another example here this is hul again actually this is the a cycle festival at hul I think hul also do the park run I don’t know if you have the park run in the States but um we have the park run in this country

Which is a wonderful uh voluntary activity where um hundreds of when thousands millions possibly of Runners get together on a Saturday morning at 9:00 it’s always the same time um in hundreds of places around the country and they do a 5K run I think they do

That at hul these places are learning to become uh parts of their Community but it is also about the money so this is doddington Hall in Lincolnshire and there’s the owner James Burch he he and his wife CLA uh live at doddington um and James uh they’re both

A very entrepreneurial couple but James in particular spotted that Lincolnshire which is a very flat part of England um is full of the weekends of people cycling around on very expensive racing bikes so James went and built a Cycle Warehouse in the ground of dodington it’s that sort of Enterprise and

Entrepreneurialism that has been the secret of the success of many of these houses and events and Hospitality have equally been an important part of the story this is a a garden party at Ford Abbey in Dorset but here’s a wedding at Burley house very important house Burley um

It’s in the middle of the country I think on the Cambridge Lincolnshire borders but weddings have been in many ways the life blood of the historic house Revival in the last um 40 or so years there was a change in The Marriage Act the act of Parliament that governs

The regulation of weddings in 1994 which meant that secular buildings EG not religious buildings could be opened up for wedding ceremonies and this was a a fresh lease of life for many uh historic houses they make perfect settings for uh not just the ceremony uh the ceremony

But also the wedding breakfast the big party that happens afterwards uh the the food the drink the dancing in the evenings uh and it can all be done in a glorious historic setting sometimes in a Marquee in the grounds uh but sometimes in the house itself and along with that comes

Accommodation so a quarter of our houses offer holiday lets holiday accommodation you can go on our website and find all the places where you can go and stay in the UK in a historic house and the other form of income came from film and TV work there was a a host

Of examples in the late 1970s and early 1980s of film Productions in historic house settings uh the famous example of I think um Castle Howard being used for an adaptation of brid head Revisited uh but this is uh a house called chavenage in gler being used to film a a

Dramatization of Po dark the the historical novels po dark and a third of our houses when we asked them told us that they do some sort of filming here’s another even War Book being uh uh filmed at I think it’s Golden Grove in Wales and this of course famously is

Downtown Abbey uh also known as high clear Castle in barsh show and Beyond filming and TV work uh many of our houses are also cultural destinations this is hton in Norfolk a very important um uh House of the 18th century incredibly important Interiors um connected with our first prime

Minister Robert wole but nowadays he has Modern Art hanging on the walls these are the Damen Hurst spot paintings in one of their exhibitions they do an annual Contemporary Arts um Exhibition at Howton and owners of these places uh we’re back at Chatsworth Again by the way owners are still collecting they’re

Still adding to their um Fine Art collections with modern and contemporary pieces and that’s another way in which I suppose these houses continue to live and breathe and adapt and change being in private ownership means uh they can sustain themselves much more than they might be able to do

If they were um holy in charitable ownership the bottom line that uh is the story for all of these houses is the sheer cost of looking after them I think without doubt that is the one factor that unites all of our member properties all 1500 of them um they all

Have this similar um shared burden which is the sheer cost of Maintenance and I reckon this is my figure by the way um I think it costs between about 100,000 and £300,000 every year just to keep a house stand standing that’s the sort of income you need what is it

$150,000 or something like that you need that income just to keep the roof on to keep the windows repaired to stop the place from falling down now obviously you need to make money to heat your building as well and to feed your family so um all of the owners of these places

Have the same fundamental problem and the fact is there’s this backlog of repairs that haven’t been carried out of around2 billion pounds worth we think that has gone up during the covid pandemic um but that backlog exists and it’s an everpresent danger that’s where we come in we are the lobbyists for uh

These houses uh if you like we their Trade union um but I think it’s I’m also going to share with you now just um as we approach the end of this talk just a few examples of truly heroic rescues of major country houses and this still happens from time to time this is

A amazing house in Yorkshire called Wentworth Woodhouse um said to be the widest facade of any building in Britain although Andrew Hopton at Hopton house in Scotland disputes this and claims his house is a meter wider but Wentworth Woodhouse is uh without doubt a huge property with huge problems there are

Hundreds of rooms in this house it has a huge roof to it it’s a beautiful place but it needs care and these days is now owned by a charitable trust that’s been set up just to preserve the property uh you can see pictures here of the decaying Timbers I

Saw these on a visit I made to Wentworth Woodhouse last year there’s so much work that needs doing at Wentworth wood house I think the estimate is more than 100 million pounds they still need to raise they’ve become a charity it’s owned by a charity they’re doing wonderful work

Reuniting Wentworth wood house with the local community making it a house for the people of the people which hopefully will gather lots of support to help um show up the the foundations of this property and keep it going and they won our garden of the Year award last year because they’re

Doing to work in their Gardens it’s a very popular place and this is a chamelia house in the grounds of Wentworth woodh house which again they’ve been restoring in fact they they had to take the entire structure of the House of the chamia house down where they left the plants themselves where

They were because these are the historic um uh appeal of this particular place here’s another house that’s been heroically rescued in recent years this is marchmont in Scotland uh this was being used as a care home it was a hospital um with long-term residents in it uh but the

Family here bought it back I think about 10 years ago now and set about restoring it returning it to life as it might have been as a lived in Family Home and they’ve done a tremendous job uh in making this Immaculate uh house come back to life

More more to the point though they’ve given it purpose it really was about inspiring craftsmanship it was the making of furniture that really motivated uh that family who who live at um marchmont to bring the property back to life and to give it new meaning in the 21st

Century I do think that these places do sometimes require superhuman heroic e effort this is a a Folly really I suppose it’s a it’s a ruin in North Wales called grick Castle it was a 19 early 19th century Gothic uh Castle it was lived in until the 19 uh 30s and 40s

I think and then it really fell into disrepair in the 1950s and 60s the the roof Le was taken off and sold uh the place was um I think occupied by squatters for several years but the place was really in a bad State and it

Was a local resident a young man who set up a charitable trust to preserve this castle and and this the charitable trust now own the castle and he has managed to secure a grant of about2 million from the national lottery in this country to bring some of the rooms back to life and

Put put rofes back on again and bring slowly bring the castle back to life but there are examples of these heroic efforts all over the country this is Dum Free’s house in Scotland which our King uh King Charles personally stepped in to save and make sure uh it was still there with its

Collection for public access this is lthm in the northwest of England and lthm uh won the restoration award for historic houses last year in fact they were joint winners the other property was this one this is uh Walton in noruk another example of a house uh really heroically rescued by uh

Two owners who stepped in um I think it was about eight years ago now bought this quite important house another another wall Poole house in fact um uh like Halton and really invested huge amounts of money in it and turned it into what is now a beautiful um Suite of

Rooms that can be hired you can go and have your weekend family party here if you want to um you have to pay a little bit of money for it I’m sure but it’s a beautiful setting and a truly wonderful house brought back to life through the Enterprise of these two

Owners and just finally just to touch on the issue of the environment perhaps the biggest issue of our day the issue of climate change and um the fact that these houses often bear the brunt of the worst excesses of uh extreme weather events and also added to that the fact

That heating these places is inordinately expensive so here’s an example of a house in Scotland that has put in solar panels just outside the battlements of the uh historic property um I was amazed that they got the planning permission because so much of these properties are hemmed in by

Planning restrictions but these solar panels were there and they were being used and here’s another house um that has this the same story this story of environmental sustainability here’s Giles keing who bought affle Hampton house in Dorset about six years ago now I think it was and has invested significant amounts

Of money in all sorts of energy efficiency and renewable energy systems so there are solar panels in the ward Garden uh air source heat pumps uh Tesla battery units discretly placed in the gardens and this place has become a net zero house in fact we heard today it

Has won the European HHA sustainability award and chares was over in Strasburg earlier this week to collect that award because of this significant achievement in making this I think Brit Britain’s first truly Net Zero country house so whether you’re um uh turning your house to renewable energy whether you’re welcoming wedding guests whether

You’re welcoming visitors uh whether you’re inviting people to come and stay in your house every single one of these houses has a different story they have a different route to survival uh these places are a glorious diversity of architectural style of size of um of nature uh they they all share that

Common issue which is how do we look look after this house and pass it on to the next generation and you might see here in this picture the the Harry Potter volume uh tucked into the gentleman’s library of the 18th century just a sign that these places are

Nothing if they’re not about New Life coming into the property with the new generation thank you so much for listening thank you Ben for that fantastic presentation before we get to your questions we have some upcoming programs that I would like to mention on February 23rd I will be giving a new

Lecture that I’ve just finished called American versailes Philadelphia’s Lynwood Hall And for those of you unfamiliar this is considered one of the greatest Gilded Age mansions in the United States and it is undergoing a restoration that is estimated to cost up to $100 million and then on March 21st Greg

Steinitz 2023 Book American Rascal how Jay G Built wall Street’s biggest Fortune will be held at 6m Jay G is a great story and of course many of you know that his house Lindhurst is owned by The National Trust and is open to the public and then on March 22nd we have

Our friend Christ Ridgeway who’ll be giving a lecture of the women of Castle Howard now let’s get to your questions go ahead and type as many as you like in the answer panel the question panel and we will start off actually with a question that’s come up a number of

Times which is where did the Cook family get their money Mr cowl well you know where where does the money come from for some of these houses that that can be quite a tricky issue for some owners but I think I think the Cook family can hold their heads up high

Because the money as I understand it came from farming and cook of Norfolk the um uh ancestor of the current Earl of Leicester was famous for being an agricultural improver so this was the place that was on The Cutting Edge of agricultural technology um and uh they

Were trying things out there in the 18th century you have to remember that norfol these days I’m I love norfol dearly but it’s got a reputation of being as being a sleepy Backwater in England it is uh not not necessarily the place that people go to make a beine to however in

The 18th century it was very much uh in the in the front runner it was norid was the the second biggest city after London there was so much money in Norfolk the money came from farming this was the Bread Basket of the of England this was

Where all the wheat was grown this is where the crops came from and so the the money came from Agriculture and it was astonishing the amount of money that was created because you can see the size of that Mansion at hok home can you tell us the difference between a castle versus a

Palace versus a house we actually have three things here a house versus a castle versus a palace I’m just rereading the question and now I see about Aion Mansion I mean well let’s make it more complicated let’s for a mansion into absolutely I think the true answer is

There really is no difference between those different things you can have places called Castle such as high clear Castle which clearly are not defensible places you you couldn’t really defend it against cannonballs and things like that um uh you have places called palaces there’s one called aptha Palace in

Northamptonshire I think they now call themselves ath thought Palace again but it’s a bit contested that because uh some people say a palace should only be a royal residence but then you have lenon Palace as well so um the these things to some degree are in interchangeable um we know castles have

Crenellations so that’s one thing it could be simply an architectural style um when it comes to definition the truth is we don’t have a particularly good definition of what constitutes an historic house but we say that you can be a member M of historic houses you can be a member property if

Your property is grade one or grade two star listed and this goes back to that listing system that we have which are the most important properties and by and large they are also the largest and the most significant in terms of artworks that are inside them as well so that is

Our rough um rule of thumb but we we allow many different types and sizes and uh shapes of houses to come into our association well speaking of your Association gives me the perfect segue to advertise that so this is my membership card everybody this is the historic houses membership card here’s

My name in the back so you see it’s really me and what this does is gets you into of the 1500 houses that are members of the HHA about 300 of them are open to the public and this gets you in for free to those houses you also get this lovely

Guide book that comes out of here that lists all the houses that are open and how you can find them in their websites and so forth and then you also get the magazine the historic houses magazine yes I’m actually saying this because I believe in it not because I’m being paid

To say so um the other thing to remember is that there are thousands of country houses in Britain so you have maybe maybe 1500 that are open the public including the 400 of the National Trust so most of them are closed the public most of them are very private um

And what the HHA does is give you the opportunity to see private houses that often times they’re only open for one month a year it’s it’s an amazing opportunity and this actually gets me into another question since it’s all about the HHA and that is does HHA have a

501c3 which I’ll tell you is um been a um IRS the indland revenue equivalent of a nonprofit so what this person wants to know is if she can make a donation to The HHA through a 501c3 which would give her tax deduction as an American taxpayer

Very good I’m I I don’t however know the answer except that we are not a charity at historic houses but we do have a sister organization called the historic houses foundation and that is a SE that is a charity that is a separate thing so if it’s possible to make a donation um

The historic houses Foundation is a grant giving body that gives grants to private owners and I mentioned mentioned a lot in the talk about how money is at the root of this issue about keeping these places going um but quite a lot of the private owners in our association don’t get government funds

They don’t get public support um there are Grant schemes available for Heritage but often private owners are excluded from them for example you can’t get um massive amount huge amounts of Lottery money although they have recently just uh improved the situation in that regard so it is possible to get some money from

The lottery these days but there are vanishingly few Grant givers who give money to private owners and the one that does is the historic houses Foundation I might send you Kurt the link to the that would be great I was just going to suggest that you send it to me and then

Jeva can send that out to everybody who’s listening today in the follow-up email they will give you their their website um so this is sort of shocking to Americans so I can understand why this person’s asking this they want to know if it’s correct that you said 75%

Was the death duties in the 1970s I did say that and that was the number that was it was I think it had been higher as well I think it was I think it was up to 80% yeah um because I think in the 1950s that was the thing

With Chatsworth when the um when deos father-in-law died he was like two or three months short of his seven-year thing and came 80% death duties um so this an interesting question here which I think I can even answer it’s like how many of these houses are Vis

Are visitable by cars I would say all of them are visitable if you have a car um yeah What proportion of historic houses are oh I see only accessible by private automobile um probably most of them I don’t think there many you can get to in public transport except maybe buses but

I’ll leave that question for you to answer well a car is very handy to visit these places but I do I enjoy going around the country on uh trains and buses so I I I I I make it a point to do that and um that is often the issue for

Many of um these houses they tend to be in remote uh rural locations Countryside locations where it’s not always easy to get to unless you’ve got a car and it’s that final mile you can get to the nearby city or town on a train but it’s getting that that final couple of miles

And then up the Long Avenue to the house um it’s a bit of a a SLO if you’re doing it by foot James D of course did it by bicycle that’s right he did although In fairness he did take his bicycle on the train from London so he didn’t buy C go all

The way out um so I think I can answer this well so Maryann wants to know if there’s any possibility that historic houses will set up a membership scheme for oversee visitors well it basically already exists um Maran because anybody I’m a perfect example can join on the

HHA website and we’ll also give you a link to that when we do the follow-up email um I I don’t think unless I’m I’m wrong there’s there’s a different membership rate I believe if you’re overseas but other than that there’s not a specific program for overseason is

That true Ben that’s right it’s it you get all you get everything you you’ve just shown us Kurt so all the things that you would get if you were um resident in the UK you would you would get um so it is there it’s it’s an option and we very much encourage it

Wonderful for for you to join I think Geneva’s put the website link in the chat as well and we have just put on our website uh this week in fact a lovely video if you go to the homepage and scroll down there’s a video there which

Is new and is a sort of introduction to why you might want to become a member of historic houses that features many of the owners talking about uh life in their houses it would be far more interesting than my talk so that’s not true go to our website and there’s two

Minute video and you can find out more about membership um that’s not true and I will say also that the membership I think is quite affordable and when you’re doing this when you’re becoming a friend because that’s what you are when you become a member um you’re actually

Helping to support these private house owners um Sue wants to know if you can tell us the name and location of the house and the owner that you talked about that got the Net Zero award that yes that’s athle Hampton house in Dorset and the owner is stes

Keting um and he he bought it eight years ago like I say there was another family living there until then um so he’s an example which is quite unusual I have to say of houses being bought and sold every year we have 1500 houses um and that stays fairly stable uh we we

Might lose some but we might gain some but we’re talking about a dozen or two dozen at most it’s unusual for houses to be sold yes and that’s something that we’re not familiar with in the US with things um you know 40 years is considered a long

Time for one family to own a house um I will also send jev an email for aapon house because this is an enormous house um for those of you who might be interested in visiting it um so two people have asked where’s this lovely window behind me so um Geneva and B this

This is a piece of plastic that I bought on amazon.com um because behind me is my bed and I don’t think any of you want to see this and this looks to me I paid an enormous $18 um for this from Amazon and I put it

On a um I clamp it to um a pull-up piece of a um blue screen a green screen and um it gives you the idea that you’re actually sitting in a country house um let’s see there’s so many questions coming in oh well Mary has walked right

Into saying do you sponsor guy tours of some houses which would include Transportation lodging Food Arrangements home and garden tours of maybe two weeks well I know I can answer for Ben and say no because they offer day tours at HHA and which I’ll let Ben mentioned we at New England Historic geneological

Society do offer tours like this more of not two weeks but one week where we everything is included but I do want to turn this over to Ben to talk about I if I’m not mistaken each region organizes its own groups is that correct Ben well it it’s we certainly have Regional

Organizers you’re absolutely right and we have tours that are it’s a mixture actually some of them are organized by uh different volunteer tour organizers in different regions and then others are organized simply by the owners themselves they’ll just post up on our website well we’re going to open our

House on the 22nd of April and we’re going to have 25 people coming and they’re going to have a 2hour tour with a cream tea afterwards and there’s a small a small fee very reasonable um but edone seems to be happy because you often these are houses that wouldn’t

Normally be open and you’re seeing uh what life is like in these places that don’t have visitors by and large um and you’re just seeing what it’s like to live in these houses and that’s what makes visiting them so special and and I’ll say that magazine

That I held up earlier the HHA magazine which is called historic house um it has listings of these events in it every issue and as Ben just said you can also for those that don’t make it into the magazine that happens sort of the last minute they’re up on the website so all

This is available if you become a friend of HHA you’ll get email alerts this kind of thing going on and I also want to say before we end that we’ve had a number of people been who say that they’re tuning in from the UK and how excited they are

To see your smiling face talking about their country um the last question I’ll answer is Gwyn ask is their list of houses to visit and the answer to that Gwyn is is if you join historic houses you’ll get this book that I showed you earlier that has all the houses you can

See um for free if you’re a member of historic houses that is unfortunately all the time that we have for today if you have any questions you can email us at heritag tours nhs.org thank you again for joining us as you leave the event you’ll have the

Opportunity to fill out a survey and give us your feedback as we continue to expand our web wears and online offerings any and all feedback is extremely helpful and appreciated this free webinar was made possible by the generous support of members and friends around the world please consider making

A gift to American ancestors to keep these programs free and to create more programs for you and others to enjoy stay safe stay healthy and I hope to see you soon on our future online programs goodbye for now