I'm Hired for a RESTORATION Job at This STATELY HOME | Deene Park

today I'm ready to get stuck in on a lot of the future projects that are happening here at Dean Park I mean Dean Park is vast it's beautiful historic house but of course we're always as homeowners trying to think of ways that we can incorporate more income to help to preserve this part of England's Heritage and that's exactly what I'll be doing today I'll be catching up with Mark Coombs estate manager of the broodnil Estates lovely Long Grass that's right yeah I love this yeah it's beautiful isn't it we've stopped putting fertilizer on here about two years ago fantastic anything like that and you can see that well the butterflies all the all the biodiversity and vertebrate life is really it's really kicked in it's beautiful Marcus leading projects to growth financial support State the plan is is that we're going to have this as a holiday Cottage as the first one we will have done on the estate well this is one of the sweetest Cottages I've ever ever seen hardly any people get to see this so what we've got here it's an extraordinary building I think it's one of the only of its type of it's uh in the UK [Music] 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 mapperton house endorse it mapperton has opened up an extraordinary new world for me and I can't wait to share it with you all foreign so if you love castles and manners and stately homes as much as I do please join me as I head off to visit some of Britain's most spectacular historic homes [Music] [Applause] thank you [Music] good morning good morning this is this is heaven it's all heaven isn't it yep good morning can I just say I slept I was going to ask you but do you think it's the horse hair mattress it's also it's also because you're you're here you're staying under somebody else's roof so your um worries also go slightly it's very very tranquil here yeah yes you do have a traffic which you know it's the best sort of life outside yes it was beautiful but I yeah I slept like a log oh well done excuse you coffee Charlotte absolutely I don't speak until I've had a cup of coffee I know sitting in here the stained glass is extraordinary was this always here not at all no we're looking at the remnants of a ballroom that was built after The Charge of the Light Brigade to commemorate the great Victory or not Victory and there is um a sort of Gap there was a Regency RV lard that came through and the ballroom went right outside and was designed by Grace it was very high Victorian right I think the color of the stone was was like it was like remember I remembered yeah certainly but if the stone color of the stone was slightly different to the rest of ours so you remember it was here we do it was taken down to be in the 80s I remember we we had a school here was in the late 60s early 70s and we used to play badminton in here and uh later of course when my parents opened the house to the public we had uh we had teasing man we had our 21st party in the ballroom and so this was so this doorway here that I'm looking at stove I mean on for parties there were three big rooms available where we were the night last night then you open up the twin doors behind in the bedroom into the drawing room and then these doors open and then you came into the boardroom and this was a double height room in here it was the there was a mental Gallery upstairs from steps and then downstairs was like it is now and then you walk through I don't think there were double doors here like oh no right but uh when you had the ballroom right to the far end and the toe to the end was doubled height when it is now my parents pulled it down the floor level was the same and they had underground heating they had um underground so this floor here went straight out went straight out yeah one of the things of course I love to do when I come and visit magical places like Dean Park is just to be able to get on onto the estate because I think especially for me the American when I first moved here and I would see these grand houses these palaces these Manor Homes I just thought that was it you've got the the house and the history of the house then you've got the surrounding land and and there's a lot going on we need the land all around it because that is what supports the house every town on the roof needs to need some funding somehow right um and we are very blessed here because we've got a whole lot of um different ways of diversification I think generating income generation income yeah yeah so today you're going to hopefully go and have a look at some of the things we've got some of the building works that we're doing which we will be able to have commercial lets with and um and then see what we're doing with the grant with re regeneration in in terms of rewilding and the bees we're very fond of our bees and and some of Robert's cattle when you took over you know nine years ago did you feel when you stepped in there was still a lot for you to do I mean what was your biggest concern in nine years ago um my personal one was being absolutely scared rigid I'll quite honestly say that I was I didn't like Dean I didn't know how it worked I didn't know how it ran there was this sort of feeling that it's got to carry on as it was and financially we couldn't do that I felt really the Newbie and I was trading on eggshells everywhere it was a very horrible horrible time but you learn yeah and everybody's very helpful and of course my love for Dean is is unquantifiable now we have had a lot to do here at Dean in the last nine years we had to re-roof most of the house we had to create Central no yes but we did I think a half of the house and a point I always loved saying when we do that the scaffolding took six weeks to put up the scaffolding put six six weeks we couldn't get a lottery close enough so they had to walk it through and also roses are in front of the flowers that were fun uh roses do not like iron do not like scaffolding and therefore we had to be very careful but if we damage those Roses uh it would not be regeneration of those roaches out for for a good 10 15. 10 years yeah the scaffolding went twice the height of this house can I rewind slightly on it because most people put a roof on first and then they deal with the central heating right we did actually the other way around we had a love lovely lovely expert who came to look at our books our wonderful library books and sure enough there was white mold on them so we had to get specialist in to come and unmold the books in particularly in the in the bedroom library and at the end of it they said that's perfect but you do realize that after another cold winter the mold will be back and you and you'll see us again next year so we then realized we had to sort out the heating and we've put in a mammoth wood chip boiler a mammoth one which is incredibly noisy and I love it in January but not in June yes and um so we put in the central heating in first and then we moved onto the roof and then you moved onto the roof but those are two big projects because you know at mapperton luckily my in-laws had done the roof and that I mean that is I don't think that I know I didn't realize this until I had moved into a historic house you don't have a house without the roof and the bit your biggest expense is the roof and that is so that was your huge Pro I mean one of two huge projects because then heating Dean Park and getting that biomass boiler in would have been an enormous expense it was yeah and it was yes we are caretakers of the house so everything that is done on the estate within the house is all for the good of the house it's so that we can hand it over to the next Generations so that so that history continues so that history continues that's exactly right well I'm excited to get stuck in today and to see more of the estate but gosh I really did sleep I've texted my husband first thing this morning I was like I think we need to get some a few more horse hair mattresses that Maverick because I was sure after a glorious breakfast I'm heading out with Mark Coombs the estate manager of the Brunell Estates who is masterminding plans for the future here at Dean Park so Mark we're heading off on the estate but I have just noticed obviously big wedding happening here yep um there's so much going on we have to diversify the business in order to generate enough cash to really keep the estate going you know put lead on the roof as we say yes and to be able to reinvest back into the estate so one of our diversifications is weddings right we've actually got three sites that we do weddings it states are a far more than simply Agriculture and Forestry you have land yes and that is an asset and that asset has to be used wisely both for I guess the continuing running of these Estates but that's importantly there's also a responsibility in terms of good quality stewardship and management for The Wider Community yes and other stakeholders [Music] lovely Long Grass that's right yeah I love this yeah it's beautiful isn't it it's so beautiful this is all part of a Parkland restoration scheme Okay so we've stopped putting fertilizer on here about two years ago fantastic anything like that and you can see that well the butterflies all all about biodiversity and vertebrate life is really it's really kicked in it's beautiful yeah we're really so this will get bailed off at some point in August right and then we'll actually have a music festival on here so we can do both yeah exactly right yeah it's brilliant okay so where am I standing because I did I thought when we were driving so the house is just there just through the trees and you see some Peter's Church there in the village of of Dean just here so where we are now is really in the sort of the core of the estate so this is a 500 acre Parkland okay um it's all part of the brutal of the states of which there are 10 000 Acres yes um and there's three and a half thousand acres here and a 36 and a half thousand acres just in the well and Valley in leicestershire okay so um yeah so this is all part of part as you can see this is a part of our Parkland we've converted 200 Acres of former arable land back into Parkland oh you have yep okay and we planted we've planted probably a couple of hundred Parkland trees as well over over a period of time right we're now in this period where it's trying to find that balance between food production of course and of course rewilding and what are you using your land for and making it work for everybody and that's tough yeah it's quite a balanced it's a balance I mean you never you're never going to be absolutely popular with everyone but I mean it's a fool who tries to do that I think what we do is we we have a 10-year plan we have a 10-year plan and that's a fairly broad plan if you like right we know where we want to be and then that's more detailed within a three-year window so we're quite clear where we are with our sort of development targets where we are with our internal businesses where we want to be with our stewardship Etc it's lovely to go out onto the estate and start seeing uh you know this it is absolutely lovely it is really lovely you know and and you do start to notice all of a sudden more butterflies or moths or the invertebrates are coming back okay and I'd like to introduce you to some of our catalog we've got some native breeds okay who help us manage all of this and they're lovely Placid beautifully good uh every short ones yeah so um many people know that I have a fear of cows that's fine so you couldn't meet a nicer bunch of girls they're absolutely loved you've heard of here first on behalf of myself and the entire American VI Countess team we wanted to say a huge thank you to our American VI Countess patrons because of their support we're able to create these high quality Productions films here at these incredible historic houses so do consider becoming a patron at patreon.com forward slash American VI Countess and here you'll get early access to all of the episodes a lot of behind the scenes content live q and A's American VI Countess goodies so tote bags key rings once it's to this stage it's ready to make the finished bet and patrons will have exclusive access to extra scenes filmed at the historic houses we visit here at Dean Park I met up with Simon Beale who Fells the willow trees here to produce cricket bats and the batteries then finished off it's insanied and in buffed as I look at the willow trees there how many bats can you make from one willow tree we average throughout a batch around about 38. 38. yeah okay the QR code is right over there patreon.com forward slash American VI contest if you love historic houses as much as we do please do become a patron foreign with the herd we stop off to see some of the building projects Mark is overseeing well this is one of the sweetest Cottages I've ever seen it's beautiful it's beautiful so this was the old kettleman's uh Cottage okay so the years ago they would have had their own homes here right and so this was built for core for that individual right behind us over there is the that would have been where the kennel boy would have lived and the plan here Julie is to well you can see we're restoring this so we've replaced the the collie Western roof we're turning it into a three-bed uh Cottage the plan is is that we're going to have this as a holiday Cottage that's the first one we will have done on the estate but it will support our wedding and events yes so we've got a new venue for our Woodland weddings nearby but we actually discovered we had that up in the roofs there right so we've stopped yes consulted uh Natural England yes um we put in mitigating bat boxes around around the place right and we've we're just about to start so the windows we're making new windows which are ready now for fitting and as soon as the windows are done and the gutters we can drop the scaffolding move into the building and start renovating and start renovating we've got fantastic so three bedroom here three bedroom here and then what are you gonna do with that so that's going to be a single bedroom oh wow and so the idea there is that you if you have a small wedding party yes bride and green can stay in the it's called The Dog House I don't know if that's good or bad but no that's the plan there so again we're doing a little uh Timber extension at the back there and obviously I know that you do I I'm Marquee study that that's that backdrop of the house traditionally that's what people wanted that's what we do at mapperton but you're telling me that there's now another place that people can have their weddings which is more in the Woodlands correct because that's becoming very popular people want to be in nature so we can give them a little bit more choice foreign this is our Woodland clearing for our Woodland weddings we've done nothing here other than mow it but through there through the trees we have added some some wild flowers Etc so the whole idea is that we've got a really light footprint in what we're doing here yes the intention is that you know the market goes up for that for that specific event but it's a super light sort of touch and also from an estate point of view we've not spent lots and lots of money on this exactly you know Nature's kind of done it all for us but The Meadows the meadow is actually beautiful Parts through there if you want to have it yeah exactly but it's lovely so we only put the well flour mix in in the Autumn last year okay but that what we'll do here actually is we'll we'll cut this off right once it's all seeded we'll cut it and bail it and remove it and keep taking the energy out of the grass okay and you'll find The Wildflower mixes get stronger and stronger and stronger yeah so you know if you come up here in the evenings it's absolutely full of moths and what have you it's really it's lovely in fact I come up in the evening It's Not Unusual to see a deer or two here or the hair or all that sort of thing but you can see the parts there they're sort of rudimentary a little bit at the moment but you get the idea of what we're trying to this is trying to do brilliant it's beautiful isn't it it is beautiful and you know then again you just see butterflies all around absolutely so you've got the creeping thistles in here you've got parsley oxide daisies yes there's a few poppies there's um this thing called kidney fetch down there absolutely brilliant for for you can see that these you know so this is interesting isn't it you might be able to give me a view on this slightly so uh our garden say should we be pulling these out these thistles no no well there's the answer and it's quite pretty isn't it you don't pull out the thistles because look at the wildlife that's well look at the the you know invertebrate yeah that every bee I've seen so far there they are they're absolutely full of it they're full of it and you know then they pollinate and go on and they'll go on this is this is but this is what you want to look at them this is year one so within two or three years well I can't wait to come back yeah this is maybe and maybe visit a wedding here I mean I'm going to be visiting The Big Wedding that's happening with the house as the backdrop oh right so I'll be um exploring uh that a little bit join me in a future episode here at Dean Park when I find out more about the weddings held alongside the lake oh my goodness I mean this is a sensational isn't it beautiful colors in here as well beautiful car I mean this is sensational [Music] everywhere I go Mark everybody wants to introduce me to their cattle I know it's somehow it's true isn't it it's gotten around but I have a fear of cows okay well these are probably the nicest bunch of cows you're going to meet these are our little herd of um traditional beef short-term cattle right okay so they're a native breed yes and the reason we have them here is because it's it's part of the our agri-environmental scheme so we wanted to reintroduce these grazes back into the estate ah and so we have we have a little little herd of 20. we've had them for a couple of years okay and we've got a lovely bull called Poseidon who's not here he was due to come in today we thought that might just be too exciting for everyone right so he's in tomorrow okay okay but as you can see they come in lots of sort of different um colors yeah beautiful aren't they beautiful yeah they're really they really are so this is part of our Parkland restoration we've introduced a a new Avenue here uh as you can see some lime trees yes cleared some trees at the other end so you get a Vista all the way up through there yeah beautiful as you come in into into the estate so that's part of the 500 acre restoration program what you've got in front of you this lovely cow that is the classic beef short on cow yes and you can see Isn't She Lovely in French she's lovely and friendly I mean they're all looking at me though so I'm a bit like yeah no no no but they're they're good calves and there's some there's some lovely calves in here should we go and have a look at some foreign well I'm super pleased with that cow interaction there good good all done perfectly safely all part of the process I feel very excited I wanted to introduce you to Graham who who manages all of the the estate Woodlands hi Graham I'm Julie pleased to meet you nice to meet you so you manage your forestry yeah that's right yeah yeah on the estate there's a it's just under 600 acres of Woodland okay half of it is ancient and half of it is more recent okay so I sort of managed the words I suppose in some ways like a farm we've managed the farms and um Mark and the family have commissioned a partner restoration plan and that really sort of premised on the basis of trying to reinstate the scale of the Park yeah that you can look over long Vistas and long views and get a feel for the majesty and Grandeur of the the whole entity yes which which it would have been yeah that's right it would have been a flower statement I guess at some stage but exactly so um where we stood now this was Woodland so this was right yeah and so you couldn't see through here but the idea was that as you come through the Gatehouse and approach the estate you've got views off to the north over the entire park right we're still wrestling with that clump of older down there at the lakeside because it spoils the view this way but then it Shields the park from the road when you view it back so if I'm looking down here right now yeah where is the house directly so um is that a marquee we can see through the park there just to the right hand side of the wood there's some white in the distance beyond that so the view here is really more about the setting of the house and the house itself you've got the lake and then the woods Beyond [Music] one of our amazing sponsors of American by Countess is Le chamo and mostly you probably will see me in my lishima Wellies because it rains a lot here in England but today here I'm walking in my luchimo Chelsea boots and I have to say I wear these Chelsea boots everywhere I go when I'm not wearing my Wellies and when it's not raining I'm actually wearing my lishmo Chelsea boots and I love them so much I've had a pair of Chelsea boots now for I think seven years they last and last and last and they look good too [Music] all right Mark I love a good kit so thank you for the hard hat and the hive is we've got a range of of disused agricultural buildings here right they're listed so they're they're complications uh with that yes but yes they are they're totally underutilized yep but what we're doing is converting these to form little business units um the plan originally was to do very small little workshops but we're actually going to go for offices for offices yep so yeah we've got planning so we're stripping the roofs off and we'll start re-roofing it Etc but there's a lot of stone work to do but this one here was totally gone right so we've stripped that off and it's been battened and and then we'll put the colleagues the collie Western slate back on back on there so their schedules come in the beginning of the month brilliant so you can see it's a it's a it's a classic sort of Courtyard but we we can we're going to create roughly 19 little business units okay and what we're proposing to do is heat them to through geothermal rods yes the 10 rods at 150 meters so one and a half kilometers if you like right and a little plant room and that will distribute heat and hot water for all of the businesses so hopefully we can ride the sort of the Peaks and troughs of events across and so on and so forth and and I'm just gonna have to literally rebuild the joiners will come and start replacing the Timbers that need to be replaced okay and our guys uh just pointing up the walls Etc in advance the rest of it [Music] now you know me I never miss an opportunity to get involved and I'm joining Ned Cole and Adam mccrone up on the scaffold so here um word because the buildings are where the wall plates moved and pushed the stonework yeah it's all come loose Yeah so basically what we've got to do up here both sides is replace the loose Stones okay wow and then repoint yes and then repoint right so me and Adam we did after last week and this week with help from Brandon doing this side right which is all pointed up and ready for the roofer to replace all right right so this side's ready this side's ready and then what about on the other side on the other side there's plenty of work to do that's still great okay should we have a little look at that yep okay wow this is this is your next big project this is the project now this side so yeah so basically what I'll get Adam to do now is we're here instead of it being lime some lime water it's cement oh my gosh what we've got to do is either well we've got to try and get it out and then re repoint it with lime smooth which we've been using all this is cement yes you can't you're not supposed to use cement because then it well it doesn't work well with the environment it's not breathable so all the moisture gets yeah caught in yes right yeah trapped in yes all right so what are you and I gonna do well Adam has this super fun job super exciting why Adam's doing that we what we'll do as you can see um already prepared we've talked this is where all the loose Stone was okay so what we've done is we've took it off and then all we're doing is as you can see we've got it so this is your top course and that's to go on next yeah so what we'll do is we'll just lay these Stones onto the wall without no with a width the lime cement with the lime cement yes okay so then basically what we're doing is just rebuilding it back up to this height okay so when the roof has come it's not loose it's not loose okay solid again okay do you want to start this process yep so because I have zero so what we've got to do because obviously when we clean them there's still some cement left on so just tip that off if you've got rubbish and dirt still there your cement's not going to stick not gonna stick so what you've got to do from there oh my goodness again different Brick Layers and Stones layers they they have their own way of putting joints on some put it on the one they've got in your hand and some put it on there and then basically what you've got to do is fight your way back in it's looking sort of right yeah so again when you've done that okay so I'm going to try to do one so I take this and I'm gonna Punk it on yeah correct spread it about the Lord and go far back how far back should I grab more more yep and back yep okay what do we think more no that's fine you sure that's fine that's good okay and then what you've got to do there is so you're Stone to stick you need a joint over on this stone or that stone oh right okay so what I would do I'll put it on there so then you can control the stone with your hand beautiful okay okay how's that that's fine okay now so now what you've got to do is pick your stone up without any dirt on it keep Tim milk up ish there and then tap it when you sort of level-ish yeah he's there I did it yeah I did one and then you go on to your next one are you going to the next one and then you just carry on and you just carry out and you've got all to do oh yeah so there's lots to do lots to do gosh I'm gonna have to come back here and visit this oh yes that is for sure I'm due for a cup of tea are you due for a couple I'm due for a cup of tea and the food okay let's go get cup of tea and some food did you know that you can also listen to these American VI Countess episodes that's right we have a brand new podcast and it's called American VI Countess you can find it on all streaming podcast platforms and you can listen to it on the go in the car when you're walking at the gym wherever you go you can take American VI Countess along with you so you're really seeing behind the scenes here really this is not many people hardly any people get to see this um so what we've got here it's an extraordinary building I think it's one of the only of its type of it's uh in the UK so it's a brick it's brick build listed riding school okay so it's mid mid 19th century 1840 or right so it was built by the Earl of Cardigan to train his horses so can you imagine training your horses undercover here oh my goodness walls if you look at the bottom of the walls can you see that they they slope away so yes they do yeah so the horses it's going around in its peripheral vision can see that and just keeps you and the rider it keeps the rider off the wall so you can go around here at quite high speed it's very cleverly built very cleverly built yes and as you can see it's it's in need of of restoration some of the Timbers have rotten and we've got uh Acro props keeping it up we got a little Grant from the historic houses Foundation oh did you well yep so the idea is that we will strip all these roofs reset all the timber rebuild the walls where they're blowing out yes um and then we're going to reuse this so the idea of kind of vision is here is to have markets in here at least monthly so Christmas maybe a Christmas Market a flower fair an antique fair oh my gosh so we could run electricity around the outside it'd be good wouldn't it yeah oh my goodness have a good explore it's a lovely Saturday this is definitely I will definitely it's unusual isn't it it's really unusual and it's beautiful it is actually really beautiful I've just had a brilliant day out I've learned so much about really the detail it takes to run an estate like Dean Park and it you know it always brings me back that of course these Estates have these wonderful magical historical homes that visitors want to come and see but it's a running estate there's old farm buildings that need to be repurposed yet they're listed so you have to do them the right way this is a perfect example right here of um you know an old sort of training writing school if you like and it is listed so it needs to be repaired in the right way and yes there are grants available but the grants only go so far and you have to work out how you can commercially use these spaces in order to generate income that goes back into the Estates next time I'll be joining Charlotte to explore more of Dean Park this is the main best bit showing off of Dean Park Gardens [Music] [Applause] [Music]

Channel: American Viscountess

Views: 38,657

Keywords: julie montagu mapperton house, julie montagu american aristocrat, mapperton house, aristocracy documentary, meghan markle, prince harry, american aristocrat, American viscountess, julie montagu, mapperton, viscountess, viscount, Luke montagu, prince and princess of wales, the royal family, all things royal, royalty, real royalty, bridgerton, the crown, royally obsessed

Id: 2jkCnWm0pEA

Length: 32min 55sec (1975 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 26 2022