Open House at the Palace of the Peaks ; After a Pounds 15m Facelift, Visitors Can See More of Jaw-Dropping Chatsworth Than Ever Before, Says Frank Barrett Where History and Hollywood Collide

Summary

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IN THE late Thirties Noel Coward gently lampooned the dishevelled state of the great British country houses, singing: ... if the Van Dycks have to go, and we pawn the Bechstein Grand, we'll stand, by the Stately Homes of England.' The Depression had left the great estates, like the rest of Britain, in straitened circumstances. Comfortably perched on their aristocratic pinnacle, however, they could barely have guessed at the financial horrors about to come.

After the Second World War the landed gentry were almost knocked flat by the imposition of new death duties; suddenly the future existence of Britain's most glorious ancestral piles was in jeopardy. Hitherto, the likes of Longleat, Woburn Abbey, Beaulieu and Blenheim Palace had enjoyed a quiet, contented existence and there seemed little reason to suppose this wellordered state of affairs would alter. But at a stroke, the noble families of Britain not only had to find ways of paying off huge tax demands (more than a few Van Dycks and other Old Masters went to the sale room to meet these bills), they also had to establish a way of trying to safeguard a way of trying to safeguard the future.

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Open House at the Palace of the Peaks ; After a Pounds 15m Facelift, Visitors Can See More of Jaw-Dropping Chatsworth Than Ever Before, Says Frank Barrett Where History and Hollywood Collide

Some opted out completely by handing over their homes to the National Trust, but others fought on. Lord Bath famously established the Lions of Longleat and the Duke of Bedford followed his example with a safari park at Woburn Abbey, while Lord Montagu opened a motor museum at Beaulieu.

But it is arguably England.'s most handsome country house - Chatsworth, ancestral home of the Dukes of Devonshire - which has survived most impressively. In fact, it has not merely survived but has successfull...

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