Maintaining A Magnificent Elizabethan Manor House | American Viscountess | Real Royalty

[Music] athl Hampton house is a tutor Manor House in Dorset in Southwest England in 2019 Giles keing became its new owner and one of his first restoration projects was to return the kitchen back to its Elizabethan Origins give it a good stir and then 10 15 minutes hopefully we can try it and then it's lovely and thick looking for ways to live in a more sustainable and cost-efficient way in a historic house is a challenge but at athel Hampton this challenge has been met in a new and revolutionary way you would never guess that these were here I I couldn't see them from anywhere in the [Music] garden when I married into the British aristocracy it was the start of a wonderfully exciting Journey but it was also a little daunting I became a VI Countess and for an American girl from a small town outside Chicago that was quite a shock I live with my husband Luke heir to the Earl of Sandwich and our family at maon house in Dorset living in a place like this is a joy but also a challenge and every day we're aware that we're preserving a very special part of Britain's heritage [Music] mton has opened up an extraordinary new world for me and I can't wait to share it with you all so if you love castles and manners and stately homes as much as I do please join this American bountis as I journey into the British Countryside in search of some of Britain's Finest historic houses [Music] welcome to the drawing room here at maon and this is really the tutor wing of the house it was built in 1540s and in this episode I'm actually visiting a rather similar and wonderful grade one listed 15th century Gem of a tutor manor house and it's located in the heart of Dorset athel Hampton is about 30 minutes from mton and do you know what's crazy is that I have actually never visited athle Hampton so I'm really excited to see it because it is an extraordinary tutor building and if you're like me and you love the history of these buildings well you're going to love this house but what is even more fascinating is that the owner Giles actually bought athel Hampton in 2019 so it's not one of these houses that's been in the family for hundreds of years so I'm really excited to see what he's done with AEL Hampton and personally I feel that these new historic house homeowners bring their own inspiration and they inject new energy and ideas into these houses but first of course I am really Keen to hear more about the history of AEL [Music] Hampton history hit is a streaming platform that is just for history fans with fantastic documentaries covering fascinating figures and moments in history from all over the world we've got unrivaled access to the world's leading historians with hundreds of documentaries featuring everything from buddika to the British royal family we're committed to Bringing history fans award-winning documentaries and podcasts that you cannot find anywhere else sign up now for a free trial and real royalty fans get 50% off their first three months just be sure to use code real royalty at [Music] checkout hello great to see you so nice to see you I've finally made it after all these years it's so good that you're here I know it's brilliant so I was just walking up of course uh I've seen AEL Hampton photographed all that but now I'm here in the flesh I'd love for you to just tell me a little bit about the fabric of the building is that pleasure I know it's cold so we won't stay out too long let's come and do it let's go for it so so here we are beautiful yep now the way I always like to describe this is this part here is the older part 1485 so the the wars of the the end of the wars of the Roses Henry iith the first Judah my goodness and then over there you've got what I call the modern extension built about 60 years later the start of Queen Elizabeth I First's Reign right they they got a bit of money from knocking down some of the abies locally and that was what they built that was it and that was what they built but what are the sort of the men purched on top so the the this is the uh Martin ape so the Martins were the family who built this and the ape is their family symbol and you'll find it all over the house yes well if you're into medieval um fables you'll know there's um the the fox reard the fox yes and one of the characters in that is is Martin's ape who is actually the kind of the good guy um and uh and so and here look you can see you've got the ape at the top of the tower and on the other side that's the Unicorn the poor thing has lost its hor uh but because the very first Martins Who Built This married into the farington family and the Unicorn was their family symbol so it's the marriage of the ape and the Unicorn all right well this is fascinating Giles because it's I think it's always really interesting of course when you come to these houses and to first look outside yeah because you know there's of course there's so much going on in the inside but looking at the fabric of the building and the carvings that were done so beautiful and the stone is all local Stone and so on yes it's just wonderful brilliant brilliant well I can't wait to see what's inside come along in out of the C come on isn't that fascinating I mean it really was the most perfect day to see athel Hampton for my very first time and once I was inside Giles was really Keen to show me one of his first and might I say very big [Music] projects so Julie here we are in the Elizabethan kitchen oh my goodness and then what you see here this amazing big brick Arch so this is where the cook the cooking range right and we've got a bit there for turning and roasting things on and uh it's it's it's incredible but can I ask Giles when you know you you came here in 2019 is that right that's right and was this one of your first big restoration projects absolutely it was I mean I think when I first arrived you know this was all covered the bricks were covered in thick layers of paint we had 1950s kitchen units right the way across no um an old ARA that didn't really work very well in the middle and indeed underneath the arch was all bricked in ah was it so you you broke through here broke through all of that and there was some quite complicated engineering to hold it all up yeah so you've restored it back to of course the Elizabethan kitchen what it obviously would have been and it smells amazing but it also looks like it was I'm smelling something that's well I was going to say let me introduce you to G our head chef so J Julie hi so nice to meet you so now what are you making here it smells absolutely amazing so I'm making Tudor pottage right Tudor pottage so tell me a little bit about that recipe obviously it's Tudor but it was popular yeah so it's popular um it is made out of uh vegetables it's it's a vegetable stew based on a French recipe I think originally okay um yeah so tell me what vegetables are in this recipe traditionally the the main recipe that we've sort of grown towards because it's the most popular one it has turnips onions parsnips sweet carrots which I don't think would have been orange then but they are now obviously and lots of herbs and spices come from pepper and things like that really and it's thickened with pearl barley or oats you know in the Elizabethan time here we were in this big kitchen you know what was happening in this was sort of the heart of the house for all day long it was being used all day long I think that's absolutely spot on I mean obviously this is if you like below stairs yes but though you can imagine maybe the lady of the house would come in from time to time see what's going on uh chat with the head chef right so I think always a hive of activity certainly from very early in the morning until late at night the fire burning away right and of course over there you've got the the what I think was like a hob where you'd have little fires that would keep things Brewing away over there yes yes you've got you always are having a pot on something is happening all the time because you're feeding households guests yes and you know breakfast lunch and dinner so it's it's it's ongoing right so listen Jamiah always ask can I can I lend a helping hand absolutely yeah always yeah what what would you like me to do we are getting to the stage now where we need to put the PE barley in CU it does take a long time to cook so okay we need about a cup full of pear barley popped into the pan all right do do you want me to just guess my cup full yeah I mean yeah just a normal cup full I mean there's a cup full of onions carrots um and sweede in there right now so you can a bit of a guess of of a butterup I mean they didn't have a no they didn't have so we can do okay whatever you fancy are we happy with that yeah I think that looks good perfect I do love proly and then give it give it a good stir give it a good stir and then we'll give it 10 minutes and then we'll add the uh the things that don't need cooking so long like the leaks the mushrooms so prepping here this is would have been busy hustle bustle yeah finish the meal and then what's the next step wow we would uh serve it through our lovely serving hatches so I can we can perhaps have a look at these we've got essentially here an inh hatch to put the empty plates in and then you load them all up along this kind of table here which they actually called a dresser in Elizabethan times and then it goes out through the other hatch to be taken to be served to be carried through and served in the Great Hall to the family right so I Now understand that is the incoming yep dirty plates exactly Y and that's the outgo plated but when you were restoring the Elizabethan kitchen were these two hatches I mean they were here originally but could you see them so the the inbound hatch yes that had been used in Victorian times the outbound one though was bricked up and you know we could just about see the outline but it was bricked right right but from your research of course you knew that there would have been an in and an out exactly yes we knew there had to be in and out that was the way it happened in Tuda times and a bit like the way in a modern kitchen as well no no of course of course so this is your first Big Res restoration project here at athl Hampton and it's wonderful and the public can come in as I said I've already passed um many members of the public wanting to come in here but do you have other restoration projects you know you've been here since 2019 so you know you've you're relatively new yeah yeah yeah no well I mean obviously in a grade one listed house you're you you don't have that many but we have got one other big exciting one going on at the moment and that is a window in the Great Hall which has been blocked up up for hundreds of years and we are now opening that up yes okay brilliant well I'd love to see that love to see that I'm sure Gemma needs your hand a little bit longer but so I'll I'll perhaps head off leave you with her and then meet you up in the Great Hall yeah perfect perfect okay I'll meet you at Great Hall Giles and GMA do you mind if I just sort of do a little bit more okay yeah so um the P body's had its bit of time cooking so now we're ready to add all the herbs and stuff which is all chopped and prepped and ready okay so we're going in fantastic give it a good stir and then 10 15 minutes hopefully we can try it and then it's lovely and thick that's the pearl barley making that soaking up all the juice that is fantastic we'll give a bit of a test and see if it needs any more oh it smells so delicious I it's just like a really really good vegetable isn't it it is exactly it's brilliant okay so um leave this for you and you can that'd be amazing I'll look after it okay I'm gonna go see Giles in the Great Hall but yeah it smells incredible absolutely incredible my belly rumbling already yeah exactly perfect on a very cold day that's for sure at the heart of really all of these medieval tutor manners was always the Great Hall and athel Hampton's Great Hall well it is TR tremendous it has been described as one of the finest examples of 15th century domestic architecture in all of [Music] [Music] England oh my goodness I mean this is this is a perfect Great Hall I mean it's it's it's it's in intact in it's beautiful you must tell me more because this is astonishing I mean this this Hall is very similar to the way it would have been in 1485 when it was built and you know that and that is such a historic date I mean that's the when the wars of the Roses come to the end and Henry iith comes to power the Tudor dynasty begins yes and you know it lasts for over a 100 years to 16003 when when with Queen elizab being the last of the tutors in the second half of that of course what's caught my eye is the minstral gallery right there they definitely was one there when it was first right but it sort of disappeared over the years and then that one is very much as it would have been and it is a very old one but from another house right right so when I walk into the Hall the Great Hall at these historic houses you can always tell with the with the roof the ceiling right here here but explain to me just this bit because it's absolutely beautiful the way that it's been carved so yes so this is a hammer beam roof So Co because of the shape of these beans and it it it is one of the finest certainly in the county perhaps in the country actually and and it's pretty well original it's really I think fabulous it is I mean it I will definitely say it's one of the finest I've ever seen and I've seen a lot of historic houses but looking Beyond then I can see windows up there so so what you're looking at there this is the kind of latest restoration project those windows are original they go right back to the beginning of the hall but they have been blocked up for hundreds of years yes so we've now we've just actually unblock we taken the wood away uh literally a couple of weeks ago oh my goodness and we're going to we're now going to put some glass in there and we're going to put in actually uh we're being a bit bold um we're going to put in laser etched glass but so when you arrived 2019 was that did you know that there was a window there was it blocked up you could tell that there was a window or was this a later Discovery could just about tell there was one there but it was difficult because there was an organ there but the organ was removed along with the rest of the furniture parts of these buildings Fabrics of the buildings when you come to them is so many of them have stained glass and it's almost a lost art these days but when you arrive at a historic house like yours and you see here they are still intact and I see very much the stained glass I have this slight obsession with coat of arms just I mean I probably need to do a whole course on heraldry I suspect but I love the way that you can see the impaling and for me my learning curve as the American who's come over and married into this family was of course you know hundreds of years ago these noble families would then marry into other noble families they had to so then their coat of arms you know the the male would be impaled with the females family's coat of arms and I can see that happening there absolutely you can I mean for example we were talking earlier about the the Martins marrying the faringdon and the fingon had the Unicorn as their symbol and you can see that the unicorns there in the middle of that yellow bar with the with the the unicorns down the middle of it and then talked about the Martin ape that was the the family symbol of the Martins and if you look at each of those windows there is the ape at the top of them I mean it's fascinating what I do love about stained glasses is that they tell a story always yes I agree that's what's so brilliant and they there's so many different elements to them in each element again you can the page is ready oh my God goodness wonderful get it thank you wow Julie do take a seat please here this is you know I don't think I've had I've ever I'm just trying to think of course I've had veggie stew before but you know Elizabeth and pottage I don't think I've had pottage before should to it up oh my goodness that looks beautiful thank you wonderful yeah for you all right I'll just remove that fantastic give bit yeah okay Giles I'll pass these over to you thank you thank you lovely lovely okay brilliant wow capu you want some more enjoy okay thank you so much you're welcome oh my gosh it looks delicious okay um wow give it a try lovely yeah m m that's great that is brilliant part perfect on a cold day would you say it's just perfect for it it really is yeah oh it is and the spices are fantastic I can really the Rosemary is really coming through yep yeah I think Gemma has done a brilliant job here and I love the way all the vegetables you know can be grown locally which is just fabulous I mean absolutely wonderful I've also noticed that we are eating on pewer dishes so this really is the full Elizabethan experience isn't it it it is yes you know the the pot is is is the kind of pot they would have had the spoon and as you say puta yeah definitely if you think about our kind of backgrounds you know we're the New Kids on the Block yeah yeah good way to think about um for me one of I think the most surprising uh I think Revelations is it is difficult to maintain and preserve these historic houses and I think a lot of times people have this false narrative that we living like they did in the dtown Abbey age but yet what we're trying to do is we're not only preserving you know this part of England's Heritage but we're also wanting to put our own mark on it do you find that as well I think that's very important and I mean by putting your own Mark we don't mean putting up a glass extension of course not but it's sympathetic and harmonic with the building and I think that's very important and yet using modern technology where that's relevant well exactly where that's relevant and and that's what's so I think wonderful when we were just talking about what you're doing with the you know the new found window which is of course would blocked up for hundreds of years but putting the laser cut glass on it yeah and the restoration of the window in the Great Hall isn't the only area at athel Hampton where Giles is using the latest technology to revive this tutor Manor House athel Hampton is striving to be more sustainable and economical by being the first solar powerered manor house in the country heating historic homes is one of the greatest challenges house owners face in the 21st century and when Giles moved to athelhampton in 2019 he was faced with the enormous task of heating rooms without insulation or secondary glazing but he took on this Challenge in a new and revolutionary way Giles this is beautiful and I can see we're coming into this the gardens how how many acres you know I always have to speak in acres as the American Gardens do you have here sure so about 208 Acres of gardens here incredible and you've picked the most brilliant day to come you really have I I do that I do that so Luke and I have always said oh my gosh athl Hampton are neighbors they are the first Net Zero and I'll follow it up with Castle because I'm the American in any big manor house I always think of a castle but this is true you've been able to achieve something that not very many people have been able to and in particular in a grade one listed house I think you you're right and we're I mean we're very pleased to being able to do this yeah so where are we entering into right now Giles so this is the kitchen garden now and a lot of the produce for the cafe comes from here fantastic um well I had a delicious uh I have to say jacket potato I haven't had one uh in quite some time and I was very pleased it really warmed me up so very good very good kudos to the chef but we're now heading somewhere that is a part of this net zero project that began how many years ago uh so it began nearly three years ago now actually yes I'm going to show you something that helped produce that jacket potato that you had it's fantastic well but here of course is an enormous Greenhouse yes indeed I shall step inside cuz I know it'll be lovely and warm in here oh it's lovely and warm isn't it yeah yeah know great for growing the tomatoes for the cafe and so on wonderful come on through here and I will show you there have to duck your head there we go o I get to go into the no entry Zone entry zone no entry Zone exactly very Lu very lucky you can come too everybody yes exactly and here we are oh the solar panels yes my goodness yes oh my goodness this is extraordinary this is unbeliev and how clever that I mean you would never guess that these were here I I couldn't see them from anywhere in the garden nowhere could I see them they just invisible exactly yeah I mean I don't know what the right question to ask do I ask how many solar panels you have or what are you producing what tell me so these combined with some that we have in the field around the corner produce uh at maximum 130 kilowatt in the middle of the day yes and across the year as a whole we're producing nearly 140 megawatt hours of electricity that is a serious amount of electricity yes is that and and that okay can how close can you get to these can I can I we can come up absolutely you can come and touch them if you want yeah oh can I okay great we have to do that occasionally anyway just if they I mean normally they're okay but occasionally they just get a bit dirty so oh my goodness yes yep look at and they're warm course they are of course they are yeah yeah lovely and warm this is magical okay Giles I have so many questions and I think many people watching this program we'll have questions as well first and foremost you know you you came to athel Hampton in 2019 so not that long ago it was I presumably it was heated how and electricity was the normal way is that right so what we had we had gas tanks LPG tanks and that was by far the biggest source of power for lot and we had lots of gas boilers which needed a lot of Maintenance and and then there was a small oil fired arer yes yes we have still have that Y and then we had a for emergencies we had a diesel generator great sort of big beast of a thing okay um and so all of that has gone all of all of it has gone yeah oh my goodness and what was your inspiration for this project well and and taking this here and especially in a grade one listed house I mean did you know coming in you thought right this is something I want to do you had an idea around that or was it once you lived here for a bit you thought hold on this is not sustainable I'm going to get ahead of the curve it did not make sense to be burning all that fossil fuel and just really you know having a kind of rather old inefficient system and why not put in something brand new that actually uses the new technologies and is zero emiss s and we you know that that 140 megawatt hours is enough across the year to cover everything we need at affle Hampton everything which is the heating the cooking in the commercial kitchen lighting like even charging the occasional car so no it is it is great that is incredible so okay I'm just going to I know that this is a silly question but I am going to ask it because I know what the answer is but I just want to hear it from Giles is so you do not receive any electricity bills or gas bills so for the athle Hampton house and the gardens and the cafe we we get a bill in the middle of winter and then we get money back uh in the summertime okay um net in carbon terms yes we actually are genuinely neutral because the the the the what we're drawing down in the middle of winter it's a little bit technical but it comes in the middle of the night right when the grid is very low carbon yes yes um in terms of actual money we pay a tiny bit because unfortunately what they they don't give us as much back for each unit that we put back in as we buy from them I see which you know I can Grumble about but at the end of the day it's tiny it's it's tiny compared to what we are in in now the the electricity and and the gas prices it's it's tiny and also your heating and and lighting electricity a a grade one listed house very big Manor House you've got your your Cafe yes so yes you know without this that bill would be enormous it would be horrendous and then I mean as I'm sure you know then of course what you end up you have to is you turn the thermostats right down or off yes and then that's not so good for the fabric of the poor building no not nor for the fabric the PO people but that's another matter but yes no that is oh my goodness it's incredible but this my understanding is this is just one I'm seeing just one part of the product project that you implemented is that right that's right yes so this solar this is all drawing it in from this beautiful sun exactly Y and then what happens so this then is going to go to the heat pumps which is what creates the Heat and the hot water for to actually keep the house warm okay should we head there and look at those have a look at those those let's head off this this is so clever and especially in a grade one listed building and [Music] garden so now we're going to look at the heat pumps and the heat pumps here are being they're being powered by the by the solar power we've just seen I see so you've got solar power where we were just in kitchen Garden yes exactly coming all the way underground underground of course underground up through here yes now explain to me their purpose so I can get my head around these Machin and you may be able to feel it they're a bit like an inverse air conditioner yes and um so what they're doing is they are draw yes this one is is going you can feel it pumping out air oh yes so this draws in uh air at one temperature and it pumps it out at a lower temperature okay okay and it extracts the heat from from the air okay so these two are working in tandem yes well the system the kind of computer turns on and off as many as it needs at any given moment oh my goodness yes so so they're using the solar power to extract in effect heat from the air which is rather clever oh my goodness this is some serious technology here it's it's good this is very good and you have it looks like you've got sort of what is this 10 we've got 10 here yes and then there's another bank over the other side and you're very C very clever Giles because they're hidden away from view well that is essential and I mean obviously you can see we're we're very close to even the Elizabethan part the Tuda part of the house but they really are tucked away in this kind of you know groty area where we were just had dust bins or something you would exactly exactly nobody can see them um but here they are nice and close to warm up the house nice and wow okay so this now is heating to that taking what would be discarded usually recycling it if you like Heating and then there's another step isn't there right so yes so this goes through one more kind of thing that looks a bit like a boiler and then of course it has to come into the house yes and in in a kind of oldfashioned say a gas boiler you'd be heating the house through radiators yes and we are doing that to some extent but we're also making a lot of use of underfloor heating and we've even repurposed some of the old grills that were put in in the Victorian era so I'd love to see inside then now sort of the end product if you like coming up through the grills and this heat that I've Just Seen that's being extracted and pumped in at no cost let's let's come and look let's come and look now I have to say I did notice these yes before when we were in here having our Elizabethan lunch let's let's have a good look at them shall we my goodness yes so these are the original Victorian grills fantastic so these during the Victorian period then of course were to heat the hall that we're in right now absolutely heated by coal by coal like coming up yes exactly and then when you came in this had then was this being used at all as a heat Source they they' kind of modernized it I don't know 30 years ago with a very clunky old uh system right and so barely working I would say up right and so that now you've you're piping it up through and the Heat's coming up exactly so what is coming up from here is actually the heat that's being produced by those those air source pumps that we were just looking at yeah fantastic fantastic so as far as the sort of architectural design of all of this and where the pipings the pipe was coming through that was the infrastructure was already there it was in one sense it was replacing is that right that is absolutely true here in the Great Hall okay but as you went through the rest of the house in some places maybe there were old radiators which we could use one or two of but mainly had to upgrade but also we decided on another solution in some places which was to remanufacture these grills and put them in other rooms ah okay instead of having the wall radiators exactly much prettier much prettier yeah giles's Innovative thinking and vision is shared by co- Mastermind Stephan Pitman who met me in the PowerHouse of the whole project so I walked through you know a lot of this project that you and Giles uh did together I've seen the solar panels I've seen the I call them air conditioners but they're not but and heat pumps heat pumps and but now we're here and so just remind everybody who's watching again these it's almost as if you're tell me if I'm wrong but it's almost as if you're almost like your own electric company uh well yes you're so we're generating electricity from the solar panels okay now obviously that's only a certain peak of time yes um and that changes throughout the year yes and your demand changes throughout the year as well so in the summer for example it's generating more energy than it usually would use right and rather than that just be sent back to the Grid it's storing it in these I see and when that generation declines as that decline becomes to a level that the the estate needs more the batteries start trickling in um oh my goodness and that's how it balances it out and that I see the first 12 months of this system up and running it used uh it drew 9 and a half megawatts of electricity from the grid but sent back 7 megaw right so that's that's a difference of 2 and a half me which is smaller than most three bed semis right right um and beforehand you know that was just masses Way Beyond any of those numbers so so ultimately these batteries are offering that balance yeah they're offering the it's a 12 bed significant Tuda uh Manor House largely single glaze Etc I understand J has gone through all the upgrades we did inside the house we've got the Coach House which which is great to Star thatch building other than the thatch there's no insulation there you know River cottage which is similar there's out buildings and and sort of all the grounds um and estate needs there and within all of that the energy usage from the grid is less than a three bed semi detached house unbelievable so unbelievable that is incredible yeah right there it's quite impressive is really impressive and and all those you know sort of aspects you just said single glazed there's not double glazed on it you're talking about no insulation a 500y old house and same goes for the Coach House the that Street restaurant now um you know uh the cost to heat those buildings right now without this would be astronomical absolutely you'd be looking at six figures easy yep six figures that's exactly right well thanks Stefan this is fantastic so thank you for taking the time brilliant project so nice to meet you [Music] how amazing to think that until 2020 100 tons of carbon were emitted annually at athelhampton and the aim of this project is to cut carbon emissions to zero Giles has of course made a massive investment but what is so inspiring and also rewarding is the long-term benefit to the environment now what's fascinating for me as an American to be perfectly honest is that always it seems like you know when you go to these historic houses yes there's the history the fabric the architecture the inside the stories but then of course you get to walk outside do and there's usually a fantastic Garden is that right course you know they go together they really do yes yeah and the and you know the English love their Gardens don't they yes yes absolutely they do and here of course I've heard so much about the gardens here at athl Hampton so you're going to give me a tour is that right I will do yes I will show you come on come on through here wow and this this we call it the corona sounds a bit bad given what we've all been through but it's probably very popular now it's a crown and you can see these these uh little pyramids around um or obelisks forming this crown and this is really this circular this small circle is the the heart of the athel Hampton Garden fantastic and the the garden has it evolved over the years and obviously it has but can you give me a little bit of History around it of course but the designer was a man called enigo Thomas um and he was amazing man real thinker and designer um architect and so on and he drew inspiration from the Renaissance from the Elizabethan era he drew it all together and he had this idea of rooms of outdoor rooms and so this is the room as we at the heart of the outdoors and we can go into each of the little doorways around the edge okay and and in fact we've just come through one which is is the where of course in front of the house where you would arrive and that links is to the house now if you like we which room are we going to let's come here to to to what we sometimes call the private or the East Garden here oh it is stunning look at this beautiful absolutely beautiful oh and then you just have this fantastic view from the back of the house exactly absolutely wonderful and overall how long cuz when I Matt Bron and I know are Italian Gardens took seven years 1920 to 1927 and these Gardens here what was the length so I think the the initial stage these these outdoor rooms that we're going through now were built very quickly actually in about perhaps two years oh and it was a massive effort they they had to shift 40,000 kind of tons of Earth which sounds extraordinary amount yes it does and indeed they had to demolish some old farm buildings because the house had had actually kind of become a farmhouse it was being converted back to become a mansion right so there was lots of work but they just really shall we come this way around this is enormous yes isn't this amazing this is amazing the great Court oh so this room is called the Great Court great Court yes okay fantastic okay now these P these are you yeah tell me about these pyramid you see I think Inigo Thomas put these here because if you look at pictures of old Elizabethan Gardens they often had new pyramids but now mostly they were kind of sort of knee high to a grasshopper they were sort of down here somewhere or other and of course over the years these ones have just got bigger and bigger and bigger look at this and and is this the this is their Peak or is there a potential that they could to be honest I think they're now big enough and if anything we love to just perhaps make them not quite so big that is that's a tall order but I think they're a lovely they are this is beautiful and then we made our way to giles's favorite room the Mediterranean Garden where te was waiting for us and it's my favorite because it's a bit of a sun trap at almost every time of year right and um in summertime we might come and have a cocktail here before supper sounds good uh but obviously now it's winter and we perhaps want something a bit warmer and it's the middle of the day so we've got we've got a cup of tea for you here so Sensational yeah uh eucalyptus oh my goodness this is fantastic yes yes absolutely fantastic I can see why this is your favorite part this is I I'm afraid I'm going to have to agree with you I think I mean I love the great quart don't get me wrong but there's just something spectacular about this tree eucalyptus and then brought us some tea of tea well brilliant you know what we do have this sun and it is it is when you look at it it is rather warm brilliant oh cheers welcome cheers thank you Giles what an absolutely spectacular Garden so Giles you know I just wanted to ask now that we're sort of sitting out here having a cup of tea relax the sun is on us you became the custodian of athel Hampton in 2019 and what was it that really Drew because this is a big project you know this is not like I'm just going to buy a a large modern house and have all the modernizations and it's much easier to restore repair whatever but what inspired you to say right I want to be a custodian of you know a home that's well over 500 years in in history yeah and I mean you'll you know you know better than almost anyone what a big project and how much is involved so of course but I think the answer is I mean it's a I think uh it's just almost like falling in love I mean it is an amazing place yes and if one's lucky enough to to have that opportunity very difficult to to to not be tempted by that it is just extraordinary here and I think it's because it's not just that you've got a wonderful old house it's that you've got all the amazing history all the the people who've been connected with it down history and right up to the present day I mean the wonderful people who work here and who know it all the visitors who come people who've been married here um all that that and then of course the gardens just stunning yeah no and You' put it so eloquently because that's exactly how I feel it's about the story's past but also the story's present and the community that these houses still retain but in a different way way so you know when we look back 100 15200 years ago and and of course in in a Hampton's case well over 500 years ago the community was very much tied in yes but we as custodians now our community is a much wider reach because it's the public we're saying come and enjoy what we we want to share with you and it's it's sort of making sure that those invisible walls that were once up hundreds of years ago are completely completely down and it's that shared history and story um and I think that's what's so wonderful no I couldn't agree more and I think as well as physically inviting people in or allowing them to see over over you know video and whatever it is also about showing people the history yes and understanding how people lived in the past and so on yeah that's part of it of course it isn't how we've evolved very much so um this is I'm thinking at one point when it gets warmer Giles I might have to invite myself back and I'm going to tell you I'm usually a Beer Drinker however because I am a lover of Italy Mediterranean I would have an April Spritz with you would you do that with me that sounds like a deal it sounds like a deal yeah all right appol Spritz it is everybody the next time we [Music] return

Channel: Real Royalty

Views: 35,937

Keywords: Athelhampton House, Real Royalty, Viscountess Hinchingbrooke, aristocratic living, aristocratic rituals, documentary films, estate management, heating challenges, historical figures, historical figures stories, historical insights, luxurious estates, monarchies, monarchy tales revealed, privileged living, royal ceremonies, royal lineage, royal scandals, solar powered, stately homes, sustainable living

Id: azs01u_UNvA

Length: 46min 54sec (2814 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 15 2023