When I was thinking of an idea for my first novel, I began thinking of all the things in life that interest me. One of these is the concept of the landed gentry and the way they have always led a totally separate life to the great unwashed.
A privileged life where peasants doff their caps, waiters serve you meals and maids make up your magnificent four-poster bed. Oh and you get to live in a humble pad about the size of the Dorchester hotel. In fairness, some of them allocated a few square yards of land for peasants’ hovels within their thousands of acres of countryside.It is the fascination with this concept that spawned blockbuster TV series such as Downton Abbey and Upstairs Downstairs.
What makes the subject even more intriguing is the fact that these noble families are struggling to adapt to the modern era and this in itself provides the world at large with an immense source of fun
It is this undoubted entertainment value and the potential humour involved in this struggle that made up my mind to base a novel on it. I have always loved reading humorous books, so why not write one. Why not create a farce from a fictitious, clueless family of aristocrats who watch their castle disintegrate around their ears and do not have the wherewithal or nous to do much about it. So Open House at Cove Castle was born.
As a starting point I unearthed a piece of text about Burleigh House, which typifies the rocky road that most of our magnificent stately homes encounter. Sincere apologies for not crediting the piece, but I have absolutely no clue as to its source. It does, however, highlight when and how our aristocracy began to experience problems.
THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF BURLEIGH
He was born on a chill April morning in 1880. His mother, diminutive in the massive four-poster bed, was exhausted by her long labor. After he had nursed and been cleaned, his father, the Duke of Wiltshire, took him out of the bedchamber and held him aloft for the servants in the hall below to see. They smiled and clapped, welcoming the eighth Lord Burleigh, healthy and robust, into his privileged world.
The family home, Burleigh Hall, was a famous landmark, a massive, 18th century porticoed stone edifice topped with statues. It was surrounded by landscaped gardens and served as the seat for twenty thousand acres of rich farmland, all owned by the Duke. The vast estate included villages of houses, shops and pubs and small farms with cottages and barns.
Lord Burleigh wanted for nothing. From the moment of birth, servants saw to his every need: nursemaids to rock him and read to him when he was small, a gardener to lead him around the grounds on a pony, and a gentleman’s gentleman to put out his dinner attire and attend him when he was a young man.
His father the Duke was a hereditary member of the House of Lords, as Lord Burleigh himself would be one day, and was often in London attending Parliament. The family had an elegant town home there. His mother, the Duchess, gentle and kind, directed the household activities of the servants from the drawing room with her books or needlework close at hand. From her Lord Burleigh learned the advantages of an even temper and steady habits. His father was less even-tempered, and one of his most vivid early memories was of the Duke raging through the house damning Prime Minister Gladstone to hell. “He’s done us in!” the Duke had roared. “Given the vote to every dreary shopkeeper and tradesman! No good will come of this!”
Lord Burleigh’s education was the best–public school at Eton, then Oxford, where he excelled at history. After graduation, he returned to Burleigh Hall to prove himself a worthy heir to the Duke. Then came the government’s efforts at land reform and its determination to raise taxes. Lord Burleigh winced at the vicious attacks on his class by Lloyd George and others, who accused them of being useless wastrels. His father had his first stroke that year, after months of fighting the reforms.
The Great War gave Lord Burleigh hope that he and his fellow aristocrats could at last forcefully prove their mettle and value to the realm. He raised a company of working-class men from the estate, and crossed the channel with them as their captain. “I can’t wait to see the show,” he wrote to his mother from France, “I’ll give them what for.” But “the show” proved more terrible than he or anyone else could have imagined. Virtually all the boys he had known at Eton and Oxford were killed or wounded during the first two years of fighting.
By the summer of 1916, he had no more illusions: He was there because he was there. He knew it was no longer a question of if he would be killed, but rather when. In the nightmarish world of the trenches he became closer to his men. Whatever their social backgrounds, he respected them as soldiers, shared their hardships and grieved over their deaths. And then came the fateful day of the big push. When the signal to attack came, he clambered out of the trench and led his men forward. They were met by a sheet of flame.
He awoke in hospital days later, unable to remember anything other than the noise and the unbearable pain. The nurses explained that he had taken shrapnel in his leg, and that his unit was decimated. Within a matter of weeks he was walking with a cane, but for him the war was over. He was shipped home, physically and mentally scarred. The sight of Burleigh Hall was a balm to his soul, however, and he gloried in the smell of the gardens and the cool feel of the marble halls. His parents had worried desperately over his fate, and were visibly aged and worn.
The Duke died two years later, and Lord Burleigh came into his inheritance. At night he would pore over the records and bills, wondering how he was going to hold it all together. Rents were down, taxes were up and competition abroad had significantly depressed agricultural prices. Awful as it was to admit, there was nothing to do but sell off enough of the estate to financially square matters. Though Lord Burleigh was now a hereditary peer, he rarely attended Parliament (after all, it was the blundering politicians who had foolishly sent him and his fellows into the trenches). And so, painful as it was to do so, he sold the London residence to a war orphan society. He also sold off over 5,000 acres of Burleigh Manor itself to several different parties. Land was no longer the key to power; it was, instead, a distinct liability.
The postwar social scene was a dismal run of parties attended by obnoxious, socially obscure young people and vulgar businessmen chomping expensive cigars. Lord Burleigh attended several out of a sense of obligation, but then became disgusted and determined to spend some time abroad. After his mother died, he closed Burleigh Hall and paid an elderly caretaker to keep watch over things.
At age 52, he married a much younger American woman. They had two sons and for a time Burleigh Hall seemed alive again as the delighted giggles of children once more echoed through its rooms. But the house was more than the family needed or could keep up, and in 1938 they demolished the wings. Then came the Second World War, and though the family was safe from the bombing raids that devastated the cities, their lives were disrupted as the British army commandeered the house and grounds for a training base.
After World War II, Lord Burleigh was forced to sell off most of his remaining acreage. The older he got the more his war wounds pained him, and his children thought him sad. He died in 1955 after a stroke. His widow struggled to keep the house up, but servants were impossible to get and she despaired. Home from Oxford, her eldest son suggested she open the house for tours, charging the public to wander through Burleigh Hall’s magnificent spaces. Being an American, she was nothing if not practical, and thought it an inspired idea. In 1957 Burleigh Hall opened to the public and people streamed through by the thousands, gawking at its treasures. Lady Burleigh would stand on the staircase as they came in, smiling and nodding. Occasionally, a guest would stray outside and marvel at the green fields and hedgerows stretching towards the horizon, and wonder what it was like to live in such an extraordinary place.
A great piece of text that identifies the reasons that such wonderful country seats fall.
If the wars don’t get you, plummeting rent, escalating taxes, falling agricultural prices, a crumbling building and shortage of staff will.
Many others families have survived in a similar fashion. Ironically Highclere Castle in Hampshire has survived by allowing ITV to film Downton Abbey there, effectively saving a stately home by allowing it to be used as a prop for a blockbuster about a stately home. Nice one!
But not every family of aristocrats had the foresight to take action. They have clung on and on hoping for the best.
A recent television series, The Guest Wing, highlighted several such families. One of them owned Chillingham Castle in Northumberland. Sir Humphry, a charming but steely septuagenarian, was keeping the 13th-century castle ticking over by hosting 1,500 paying overnight guests a year. “If you love this place, we love you,” he explained. “If you don’t, bugger off
In my mind I allowed Chillingham Castle to morph into my fictitious Cove Castle. It is widely regarded as one of the most haunted places in the country with hundreds of paranormal events being recorded.
And so ghosts in my story were born. Three distinct tribes of them. All up to no good, all playing an integral part in the plot. And just for good measure I’ve added hippy activists, explosions, drugs, smuggling, major art forgeries and assassination attempts. All designed to help and hamper Cove Castle’s attempts to survive in the 21st century.
Open House at Cove Castle is available for less than a dollar and less than a pound from Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk