The Ribble valley in Lancashire presents stunning views across the ancient Forest of Bowland, a designated national landscape. This scenic area has the UK’s highest concentration of wedding venues, and one of the most popular of these is Browsholme Hall, ancestral home of the Parker family.
Couples looking to tie the knot at Browsholme can do so either in front of the house, in a converted tithe barn, or at a timber-framed pergola next to a lily pond. A wooded glade is being replanted to meet the growing demand for outdoors ceremonies. The festivities continue in the stone-built tithe barn, with its dancefloor, fully licensed bar, and a late-night pizza oven in the courtyard. Guests don’t have to travel far for their overnight accommodation: in addition to converted estate cottages, ten luxury sleeping lodges have recently been installed.
Visitors to Browsholme are left in no doubt that this is a lively, bustling place. But this hasn’t always been the case. Fifty years ago, Browsholme was one of Britain’s forgotten houses. The main residence was in a dilapidated state, riddled with damp and decay. Its sole occupant was Colonel Robert Parker, a childless bachelor who retreated to increasingly fewer rooms as the responsibility for maintaining the property weighed more and more heavily on his shoulders. Colonel Robert died in 1975, but not before he had settled the house on another Robert Parker, a distant cousin whose parents farmed near Cambridge.
Young Robert was just twenty at the time, a student at agricultural college, when he was notified that he had inherited this significant Lancashire country house. The inheritance turned out to be the making of both Browsholme, and of Robert. Robert’s parents sold the family business and relocated to Lancashire to begin work on restoring the hall while their son completed his studies and began his career. On Robert’s return to the house in his early 30s, he developed it into the thriving enterprise that it is today. Robert now counsels other house owners as the technical adviser to Historic Houses (or HHA), the association that represents the UK’s independently owned country houses.
Browsholme is not alone in having experienced such a dramatic reversal in fortunes since the mid-1970s. Back then, it was widely feared that the British country house had reached the end of the road. An exhibition at the V&A museum in October 1974, The Destruction of the Country House, featured more than a thousand houses that had been lost in the preceding century.
It was a reminder that the threat of demolition was never far from the front door of these mansions, a consequence of declining farming incomes, the rising costs of repairs, and overbearing levels of taxation. The V&A exhibition was a direct riposte to the newly elected Labour government, which proposed a new wealth tax on the biggest accumulations of capital assets including country houses.
The campaign against the wealth tax by the HHA and other heritage groups worked. Denis Healey, the chancellor of the exchequer, shelved his tax-raising plans. He also made it easier for owners to hold onto their houses. Provided owners were willing to open their doors to public visits for a minimum number of days each year, they could gain a temporary reprieve from death duties. Browsholme Hall was the first house to take advantage of this scheme, which so far has since enabled more than three hundred houses to remain as lived-in, family homes (and not be sold for scrap, or for conversion to hotels or offices).
Many houses emerged from these dark times to become early 21st -century success stories. Each has found its own route to survival. The crumbling gothic towers of Knebworth House in Hertfordshire were rescued after its enterprising owners resolved to hold large-scale music concerts in the grounds. From Tim Buckley and Van Morrison in 1974, Knebworth went on to host the likes of Pink Floyd, Queen, Robbie Williams, and Oasis.
Another house, Stonor in Oxfordshire, very nearly lost everything in 1976 when its contents were sold off at auction. The next generation of owners resolved to buy back as many of the pieces as they could, and fully restored the house and grounds. It remains a popular destination for visitors, as do the likes of Sudeley Castle in Gloucestershire, Powderham Castle in Devon, and Hever Castle in Kent. All are member properties of Historic Houses and offer free admission for anyone with a Historic Houses visitor’s card.
National economic recovery in the 1980s and 1990s inspired many country houses to become more commercial in their outlook. Chatsworth in Derbyshire became the byword for the ultimate visitor experience, after the Duchess of Devonshire opened a smart farm shop as well as a restaurant in the stable block. Goodwood in West Sussex instigated a literal Revival in the form of the annual celebration of fashion and cars of the same name, which now attracts thousands of participants each year.
Timber-framed Pitchford Hall in Shropshire was sold to meet debts in the early 1990s but has since been repurchased by the same family and is now being carefully restored. It offers tours and overnight accommodation, as well as drawing an income from investments in renewable energy installations. Wentworth Woodhouse in South Yorkshire has been rescued by a charitable trust and is now reinvented as a local community resource, offering arts events, educational services, and volunteering opportunities.
Historic Houses, supported by Sotheby’s auction house, gives an annual award for the most heroic act of country house restoration. The list of winners is a reminder of the greatest instances of country house revival in recent times: St Giles House in Dorset, Combermere Abbey in Cheshire, Iford Manor in Wiltshire. The restoration award complements another, supported by Christie’s, which celebrates spectacular gardens, such as at Newby Hall in North Yorkshire, Helmingham Hall in Suffolk, and Gordon Castle in Scotland.
All are evidence of the dramatic reversal in fortunes at British country houses since the mid-1970s. Thanks largely to the enterprise and energy of individual owners, these houses and gardens have acquired new relevance and purpose. It is something for which we can all be grateful.
The British Country House Revival by Ben Cowell; available to House and Garden readers for £30 when you buy direct from the publisher at boydellandbrewer.com and quote promo code BB285
