How to make money from a manor house - Owners of big houses face a dilemma when their children grow up: sell up or stay put. Max Davidson looks at different approaches
To sell or not to sell? For owners of big country houses, who have lavished years of love and attention on their properties, it can be an agonising choice.
Sell and they kiss goodbye to a large part of their life. Stay put and they risk ending up in a house that is too big, expensive to maintain and crumbling around them.
It can be very difficult to strike the right balance between nostalgia and pragmatism, particularly about a beloved family home.
“This house has been a labour of love,” says Julian Bannerman, owner of Hanham Court, in Gloucestershire. “I think of it as a republic, self-contained, a world within a world. But there is no point in clinging to the past. You have to move on.”
Julian and his wife, Isabel, are award-winning garden designers, responsible, inter alia, for the British 9/11 Memorial Garden in Manhattan and the Stumpery at Highgrove. They have worked at some of the best-known stately homes in England, from Waddesdon Manor to Arundel Castle, but it is Hanham Court, which they acquired in 1993, that is their pride and joy.
Hanham Court is on the market for £2.5 million through Savills (01225 474500; www.savills.co.uk)
Hanham Court, which is mainly Tudor, was a wreck when Julian and Isabel Bannerman took it on in 1993
In 2010, Hanham was voted number one Dreamy Garden in Britain in Gardens Illustrated. It is easy to see why. The gardens – open to the public two afternoons a week in summer – have a fairy-tale quality, seducing the eye and beguiling you with their subtle scents. There is a formal area, bordered by lilies, old roses, tree peonies and fountains. A woodland garden is overrun with tree ferns, snowdrops and magnolias, while meadows of wild flowers overlook the River Avon.
Everything any gardener could ever wish for, and much more besides, is seamlessly blended into the 26-acre estate. Whoever buys Hanham, which the Bannermans have finally decided to sell, is privileged indeed. But of course – and this is the pathos of selling up – what they do with it is anybody’s guess.
“The sort of buyer I have in mind is someone abroad who is dreaming of England,” says Julian. “But who knows what will happen to the place? There is no point in trying to keep it the way it is.”
Julian turns 60 this year, and he and his wife will soon be empty-nesters. The last of their three sons is in his final year at school. It seems the right time to move on. They have already bought a smaller property in Norfolk, which will be their base for the immediate future.
But they will be leaving a wealth of memories behind, with the life of the family inseparable from the life of the property. On the very day they moved into Hanham, Isabel was rushed into hospital to give birth to their second son. “This was our sons’ childhood,” she says. “They have loved Hanham as much as we have.”
If the garden is the pièce de résistance, the house is not too shabby either. This sense, of a grand old country home blending perfectly into its surroundings, gives Hanham its enduring appeal.
The earliest part of the building is the chapel, which dates back to the 13th century and is now incorporated into the main house, a large Tudor property with many later additions, such as Palladian windows, Victorian turrets and gargoyles.
For 200 years, Hanham belonged to the Creswicke family, prosperous local gentry, before a period of decline in the 20th century.
When the Bannermans moved in the place was a wreck, with plastic cornices and other modern excrescences, which had to be weeded out if the property was to be restored to its former glory.
For years, it was a work in progress, all higgledy-piggledy, rather than a candidate for the Ideal Home Exhibition.
“Many of our friends found the borstal-cum-bed-and-breakfast aspect of Hanham daunting,” says Julian. But though the plumbing and central heating were erratic, there was no getting away from the romantic charm of the property, with its wood-panelled halls, quirkily shaped bedrooms and Tudor spiral staircases. It is a place of magic and adventure, for adults and children alike.
Julian says that the two things he will miss most about the property are the wisteria and the Elizabethan fireplace.
“I’ve never known a fireplace that both looks so good and functions so perfectly,” he says. Leaving will be a wrench, one way and another.
The Bannermans are unusual in that they are not under financial pressure to move. But for many, the upkeep of such a home can be prohibitive: roofs and windows have to be replaced, and the heating bills read like bad jokes in Christmas crackers. The trouble is that “sensible” options for balancing the books tend to get muddied by sentimental considerations.
“We all know in life what we should be doing, but that doesn’t mean we do it,” says Ruth Watson, the presenter of Channel 4’s Country House Rescue. The show’s cavalcade of aristos with moneymaking wheezes, such as butterfly farms, has made the programme compelling viewing for lovers of English social comedy.
Luckily, not all cash-strapped owners of country houses are so eccentric. Some bring a welcome pragmatism to the task of staying put, come hell or high water, in the home of their ancestors. A hundred miles to the east of Hanham Court, in West Sussex, the Fifth Viscount Mersey – Ned Bigham to his friends – has no intention of selling up.
Bignor Park, the family seat for generations, is a magnificent Georgian property set in 1,200 acres overlooking the South Downs. It is still a family home – Lord Mersey lives there with his wife and children, while his mother has a cottage in the grounds. But it is also a commercial business.
“I had to do some serious number-crunching when I inherited the title in 2006,” he says. “My father was a lovely man who took his responsibilities to the estate and its staff seriously. He was a bit like the Earl of Grantham in Downton Abbey. But he was not always very practical. His passion was forestry and he planted many new trees on the estate. But forestry is a long-term investment: you have to wait years before it produces revenue. I needed money for extras such as gravelling the drive and maintaining the garden, neither of which is cheap.”
There is more money in weddings than trees, and it is to weddings that Lord Mersey is looking to boost his family income. Bignor Park is the only property in West Sussex licensed to hold outdoor weddings and, for £3,000 a pop, you can rent the Greek loggia and surrounding land to hold a ceremony.
It used to be just family and friends who got hitched at Bignor, but the venue is now open to all-comers. “We don’t want the whole thing to turn into a conveyor belt,” says Lord Mersey.
“We’re not offering cut-price deals if you get married on a Tuesday in February or anything like that, but we are taking the operation seriously. I have a first-class events manager and have cherry-picked the catering companies, so the quality is guaranteed.”
If weddings are the big new attraction, they are not the only source of income. The golf course option was considered by the Fourth Viscount but rejected. Yet there are five cottages in the grounds, let out commercially, which are nice little earners. A recent fashion-shoot with Emma Watson suggests that it could have a future being used as a dramatic set.
Lord Mersey works in the music industry and, although turning Bignor into a recording studio is not viable, he likes the idea of staging concerts on the estate. “I’m not thinking of gigs attracting 20,000 fans,” he says. “They already hold big concerts at Petworth and Cowdray Park. But it would be nice to host the odd boutique event.”
Scraping every last penny out of the estate is not the objective. Nor are hare-brained schemes or aristocratic follies. “We just want to do sensible businesslike things,” says Lord Mersey. “That is the best way to guarantee the future of Bignor.”
He is following a different course from the Bannermans, but he is certainly following it with gusto. ( telegraph.co.uk)
To sell or not to sell? For owners of big country houses, who have lavished years of love and attention on their properties, it can be an agonising choice.
Sell and they kiss goodbye to a large part of their life. Stay put and they risk ending up in a house that is too big, expensive to maintain and crumbling around them.
It can be very difficult to strike the right balance between nostalgia and pragmatism, particularly about a beloved family home.
“This house has been a labour of love,” says Julian Bannerman, owner of Hanham Court, in Gloucestershire. “I think of it as a republic, self-contained, a world within a world. But there is no point in clinging to the past. You have to move on.”
Julian and his wife, Isabel, are award-winning garden designers, responsible, inter alia, for the British 9/11 Memorial Garden in Manhattan and the Stumpery at Highgrove. They have worked at some of the best-known stately homes in England, from Waddesdon Manor to Arundel Castle, but it is Hanham Court, which they acquired in 1993, that is their pride and joy.
Hanham Court is on the market for £2.5 million through Savills (01225 474500; www.savills.co.uk)
Hanham Court, which is mainly Tudor, was a wreck when Julian and Isabel Bannerman took it on in 1993
In 2010, Hanham was voted number one Dreamy Garden in Britain in Gardens Illustrated. It is easy to see why. The gardens – open to the public two afternoons a week in summer – have a fairy-tale quality, seducing the eye and beguiling you with their subtle scents. There is a formal area, bordered by lilies, old roses, tree peonies and fountains. A woodland garden is overrun with tree ferns, snowdrops and magnolias, while meadows of wild flowers overlook the River Avon.
Everything any gardener could ever wish for, and much more besides, is seamlessly blended into the 26-acre estate. Whoever buys Hanham, which the Bannermans have finally decided to sell, is privileged indeed. But of course – and this is the pathos of selling up – what they do with it is anybody’s guess.
“The sort of buyer I have in mind is someone abroad who is dreaming of England,” says Julian. “But who knows what will happen to the place? There is no point in trying to keep it the way it is.”
Julian turns 60 this year, and he and his wife will soon be empty-nesters. The last of their three sons is in his final year at school. It seems the right time to move on. They have already bought a smaller property in Norfolk, which will be their base for the immediate future.
But they will be leaving a wealth of memories behind, with the life of the family inseparable from the life of the property. On the very day they moved into Hanham, Isabel was rushed into hospital to give birth to their second son. “This was our sons’ childhood,” she says. “They have loved Hanham as much as we have.”
If the garden is the pièce de résistance, the house is not too shabby either. This sense, of a grand old country home blending perfectly into its surroundings, gives Hanham its enduring appeal.
The earliest part of the building is the chapel, which dates back to the 13th century and is now incorporated into the main house, a large Tudor property with many later additions, such as Palladian windows, Victorian turrets and gargoyles.
For 200 years, Hanham belonged to the Creswicke family, prosperous local gentry, before a period of decline in the 20th century.
When the Bannermans moved in the place was a wreck, with plastic cornices and other modern excrescences, which had to be weeded out if the property was to be restored to its former glory.
For years, it was a work in progress, all higgledy-piggledy, rather than a candidate for the Ideal Home Exhibition.
“Many of our friends found the borstal-cum-bed-and-breakfast aspect of Hanham daunting,” says Julian. But though the plumbing and central heating were erratic, there was no getting away from the romantic charm of the property, with its wood-panelled halls, quirkily shaped bedrooms and Tudor spiral staircases. It is a place of magic and adventure, for adults and children alike.
Julian says that the two things he will miss most about the property are the wisteria and the Elizabethan fireplace.
“I’ve never known a fireplace that both looks so good and functions so perfectly,” he says. Leaving will be a wrench, one way and another.
The Bannermans are unusual in that they are not under financial pressure to move. But for many, the upkeep of such a home can be prohibitive: roofs and windows have to be replaced, and the heating bills read like bad jokes in Christmas crackers. The trouble is that “sensible” options for balancing the books tend to get muddied by sentimental considerations.
“We all know in life what we should be doing, but that doesn’t mean we do it,” says Ruth Watson, the presenter of Channel 4’s Country House Rescue. The show’s cavalcade of aristos with moneymaking wheezes, such as butterfly farms, has made the programme compelling viewing for lovers of English social comedy.
Luckily, not all cash-strapped owners of country houses are so eccentric. Some bring a welcome pragmatism to the task of staying put, come hell or high water, in the home of their ancestors. A hundred miles to the east of Hanham Court, in West Sussex, the Fifth Viscount Mersey – Ned Bigham to his friends – has no intention of selling up.
Bignor Park, the family seat for generations, is a magnificent Georgian property set in 1,200 acres overlooking the South Downs. It is still a family home – Lord Mersey lives there with his wife and children, while his mother has a cottage in the grounds. But it is also a commercial business.
“I had to do some serious number-crunching when I inherited the title in 2006,” he says. “My father was a lovely man who took his responsibilities to the estate and its staff seriously. He was a bit like the Earl of Grantham in Downton Abbey. But he was not always very practical. His passion was forestry and he planted many new trees on the estate. But forestry is a long-term investment: you have to wait years before it produces revenue. I needed money for extras such as gravelling the drive and maintaining the garden, neither of which is cheap.”
There is more money in weddings than trees, and it is to weddings that Lord Mersey is looking to boost his family income. Bignor Park is the only property in West Sussex licensed to hold outdoor weddings and, for £3,000 a pop, you can rent the Greek loggia and surrounding land to hold a ceremony.
It used to be just family and friends who got hitched at Bignor, but the venue is now open to all-comers. “We don’t want the whole thing to turn into a conveyor belt,” says Lord Mersey.
“We’re not offering cut-price deals if you get married on a Tuesday in February or anything like that, but we are taking the operation seriously. I have a first-class events manager and have cherry-picked the catering companies, so the quality is guaranteed.”
If weddings are the big new attraction, they are not the only source of income. The golf course option was considered by the Fourth Viscount but rejected. Yet there are five cottages in the grounds, let out commercially, which are nice little earners. A recent fashion-shoot with Emma Watson suggests that it could have a future being used as a dramatic set.
Lord Mersey works in the music industry and, although turning Bignor into a recording studio is not viable, he likes the idea of staging concerts on the estate. “I’m not thinking of gigs attracting 20,000 fans,” he says. “They already hold big concerts at Petworth and Cowdray Park. But it would be nice to host the odd boutique event.”
Scraping every last penny out of the estate is not the objective. Nor are hare-brained schemes or aristocratic follies. “We just want to do sensible businesslike things,” says Lord Mersey. “That is the best way to guarantee the future of Bignor.”
He is following a different course from the Bannermans, but he is certainly following it with gusto. ( telegraph.co.uk)
