And now for something different

The days of pulling up the drawbridge are long gone. Over the past 50 years, many owners have turned around the fortunes of their country houses with imaginative diversification, becoming major rural employers in the process, as they tell Kate Green

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THE question of how best to juggle commercial enterprise and still preserve the magic is nothing new for country-house owners, as the minutes of a meeting held 60 years ago at Chatsworth, Derbyshire, demonstrate. Necessary work on roofing, drainage and Joseph Paxton's greenhouses was estimated to cost up to $10,000 a year (nearly $200,000 now), yet those present agreed that the provision of a café to raise more money from visitors would be a jarring presence and encourage litter.

Chatsworth's then chatelaine, Deborah, Duchess of Devonshire, recorded in her book Counting My Chickens: 'The idea was that it was unfair and greedy to expect people to part with more money than the entrance fee (five shillings). It only dawned on me slowly that people actually wanted to take something away to remind them of their visit and that they were hungry and thirsty as well.'

The Duchess was a pioneer of diversification, credited with turning around a sad, shuttered, debt-ridden post-war Chatsworth. In 1977, against trustee misgivings, she opened a farm shop in a building that once housed a Shire stallion. It sold meat from the estate, then eggs, pâté, cakes, yoghurt and jams. Under the Duchess's imaginative direction, the shop led the way in tasteful yet unmissable branding—it has been seen as a blueprint.

As for many old families, the days of pulling up the drawbridge and merely 'living' in their gracious country house, perhaps keeping the estate going through farming and peppercorn rents, are over. 'Not a chance,' says Roger Tempest, who has transformed his family home, Broughton Hall in North Yorkshire, adding to it an exquisite spa and retreat. He highlights the responsibility such a house has to the neighbourhood and what it can do for local finance and pride.