RESTORING an ANCIENT LIBRARY at this ELIZABETHAN MANSION | Pitchford Hall

[Music] i know all too well how challenging it is to maintain a historic house mapperton of course but i've been able to visit rowena and james here at pitchford and see that they have the same challenging issues really that we face all historic house owners do face and that's really being able to repair and renovate and restore and preserve this part of britain's heritage it's so much work it's another job for us to get this kind of restored get mechanism working get the kind of police working and get this you know chime me out on the hour or every every half hour for most people watching and listening to you they would think two to three months is not a quick restoration but for historic house owners it actually is right [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 so if you love castles and manors 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] [Music] so excited to show you the attitude oh my goodness you know this is what i love about these historic houses there's always addicts and secret places what do you guys think of this addict for hiding or is it too scary too scary too scary this is incredible let me ask first and foremost when you came back in 2016 and you came up to that attic was this at least okay as in more than okay i mean just so good to see it like this because my parents spent 10 years doing the reef in the 80s so the one fantastic like i mean my parents legacy was the house would have fallen down in 25 years so it wasn't for the reason to be able to come in here it's very reassuring and the green oak that was here originally and it's just the guts of the house right and as you can see from here the other thing that really showed me was the bats are still here and that's a we had a plague of bats in the 80s so it's nice to see the bats the bats were still around i mean absolutely stunning just to see this that these have really survived for gosh almost 400 years yeah yeah look how brilliant they are they've survived brilliant but it's it's vast up here i mean to think that the servants used to live up here and there are taper marks so that's why this was built for the servants to live here and they hung their curtains on these pot so when i see that i kind of can picture an actual person down to nabi style up here absolutely this is this is better than downtown downstairs the upstairs is much better at pittsburgh than it is at the downstairs in downton [Music] this is great it's literally like alice in wonderland this is this is the clock tower that's so kind of prominent ah you know when you're on the when you're on the sideline and you're looking up yes to the house and ed was just testing it so this obviously used to used to work there's a mechanism which was just here it's being restored at the moment and then there's these huge kind of weights down there and a pulley system and the date of can we find it i've already spotted it no what was it because it's 1776. yeah so but is that an american connection i don't know i don't know because that's when we've really you know we declared our freedom yeah no no 1776. i know it's incredible we've got to do some research yeah no i absolutely agree so anyway look it's been there and we look it's another job for us to get this kind of restored get the mechanism working get the kind of police working and get this you know chiming out on the hour or every every half hour and before we make our way downstairs rowena shows me a rare structural treasure of pitchford's medieval past so this is the thing so in the 80s they're doing the roof and there's huge excitement they basically suddenly discover if you possibly could shine a light yeah you will see a medieval crown post so it proves that whole thing now at the back of the bendy bit so that's where the pitchfork family so this house is built on top of the pitchford family house which i love my goodness so they just covered this when they were doing it even though it was here we knew we obviously had i can see that we were very sure that it was likely but no one had proof and then this is your proof right here basically here look it's called a crown post roof and very little crown post roof survive because they're so incredibly old from the medieval times but this is a little piece of history to prove the point absolutely i mean wonderful i mean it's just i mean you'll have more and more treasures i mean don't you find that with these historic houses i mean i know you grew up here but you're still you still discover over and over again you still discover learning all the time from the youtube viewers i hope you all teach that's a whole lot more they will be prepared they're you're they're going to be sending you letters and information and artifacts and maybe some of your treasures too [Music] thank you so much for watching these historic house episodes of american vi countess we are so proud with what we are doing with these episodes and helping to really preserve britain's heritage but we need your help as we rely entirely on the support of our patrons to cover the cost of production do consider becoming an american by countess patron head to patreon.com forward slash american vi countess and i hope to see you there one of the first restoration projects the family took on when they moved back to pitchford in 2016 was the summer house no small task as it had completely disappeared under a web of ivy and moss well i can see here that you've repaired this yeah you can also see all the wood ones i wasn't going to say anything that's right so there's a bit more to do but this is one of the big restoration projects that you have completed and what is this called again reminds me so it is i i call it the picture at some house right and it's it's edwardian i i think it's edward yeah it's probably we we've got we we appear in country life in 1901 and 1917 between 1901 and 17 it appears the summer house and all these kind of uh red sandstone retaining kind of balls right so quite a lot of work was done in in the kind of early audience ages and this is in my view and edward in some house right and but i also of course um saw the restoration actually happening through your instagram channel so be sure to check out their instagram as well because you're very good at having your followers come along for the ride so i was able to really watch the stages of restoration with this and then the celebration of when it was completed well i think it's brilliant and then you were able i think i saw as well you were able to um do the entire roof because what was there was moss oh oh it's awful so yeah i mean it was just ivy and kind of vegetation all over the roof ivy kind of a you know kind of curtain of ivy and you almost had to kind of go like that to part it right and going to somehow so my goodness uh so it's a huge transformation and one of the first jobs we did was actually get up on the roof i remember with my my father who's 80 85 now and we were just cutting back the iv kind of on on the roof to try and get things back so at least we could see what we had to restore and the the roofer has done a brilliant job um these are called harnessed stone slates they're quarried about three miles away okay um they're you know they've got loads of fossils in them they're absolutely stunning that should give it 30 40 50 years of you know life exactly and an enjoyment it is beautiful but i know from your instagram that this is not the only renovation that's been completed yeah it's quite a big one coming up that's right celebration there is a there is a big one coming out and it was it was inspired by someone actually lives in a historic house about 10 15 miles away from pitchford called action rand hall and he came he knew picture very well uh when rowan's parents own the house and he came to us about a year and a half ago and said you need to restore the library you know that's your number one priority and you know we we've done it and he came up with a design based on uh a garden in hampton court a tudor garden right uh in hampton court and it it's well you know you'll see it you'll see it soon um it's quite wacky it's quite wacky oh my goodness okay i have lots of questions yeah no no i yeah it's quite out there it's quite over the top i think it's absolutely brilliant so when you got pitchford back what was in this library so this this was this was very derelict um it was one of the worst it's one of the worst rooms in the in in the highest section right so that was it my goodness now yeah yeah ev everything was gone and this is what it looked like in uh 1992 you know when when his parents left it so you know it was a nice country house library and all the books were sold at the christie's auction and then bizarrely in in the space between 1992 and 2016 all these book um cases were stripped out and we don't really know why and that's why we ended up with you know room that was in a sense a blank canvas and allowed us to you know create this neo judo gothic library a lot of people have said to us if you have got a blank canvas do stamp your own mark on it don't you don't have to inherit kind of everything from other people's tastes you know georgians victorian so there's these things et cetera et cetera so we did feel we can maybe strike out yeah in a slightly different direction and we felt that you know this was a beautiful library but we didn't we didn't need to we didn't really need to go back to that but it was inspired by this man you know uh hugh kennedy who who you know lives relatively nearby and he said this is this is well i think you should go and these are fantastic yeah i mean those those appeared about two three weeks ago and we had fun hanging them lovely i'm in their heavy lovely but here right here and i do see on each of the bookcases you've got different sort of coat of arms so it starts with the pitchford family and in the kind of crusader uh night and then it goes along to the otley family the coats family the jenkinson family the grant family rowena's family culture's family my family right and we've even got uh the kyoto princess um do you marked uh mark mark there so we we felt you know she was part of that line from what 12 80. um so we wanted to you know incorporate everyone's great guys uh coats of arms every library needs good herald so exactly this is outstanding it's it's beaut it's fantastic so we're having there's a obviously a celebration tonight it's sort of the commemoration or the cutting of the ribbon it's to thank you know it's to thank the volunteers essentially who well and the donors so a lot of people have donated money towards getting the library to this to this stage and a lot of people have donated their time in terms of painting yes so through the winter you know those kind of long winter nights there are about 20 30 people in shropshire just kind of painting away and you know it's so kind of them so this is a kind of thank you guys uh for being so incredibly supportive of you know the ashford restoration yes [Music] as you can see i've completely changed my outfit because i might get wet and thank goodness that we have lushimo as one of our sponsors for american vice countess because when i go and visit these historic houses a lot of times it gets muddy remember it rains a lot in the uk and when i'm dealing with water i want to make sure to try to keep my feet as dry as possible so here i am here we are yay so you're in for a treat julie i'm really excited because i don't know anything about do you call it coraclink correctly you said it literally perfectly what is a coracle and tell me about how this was a part of your growing up oh they're absolutely delighted to so a coracle as you can see is an absolutely fabulous very simple fishing boot so the essence was this is an iron bridge coracle the iron bridge obviously being in shropshire close by so that it was quite expensive to go across the actual iron bridge so instead they would um have a cheap and cheerful way of fishing and getting across the river how easy or hard is it to fall in if you get it right and do the perfect figure of eight which will be very very simple to teach you not a problem at all not even a ripple but if you get a bit over excited and things then they can tip over very easily which is really great fun so i used to have a great time tipping all my friends into the right lake in my childhood but i promise i won't do that to you okay so you know that i showed you the pitch well yes and the natural was sleeping up so of course look these are tar bottomed boats they are literally so they come that's how you waterproof them so every year we used to you know the spring would come out this amazing weather exactly this time of year and we'd retire the things already so they're waterproof because obviously they start leaking away losing your own pitch so we've got you absolutely you've got your life jacket i'm sure you're a brilliant swimmer julie so is do do i am i rowing it's really a figure of eight um and it's very very simple i just have this feeling i'm gonna fall in i can i just you know when you kind of go into things like this with no experience and you get this gut feeling that you're going to fall in i think that's what's going on you're not you're not [Laughter] are you really holding on to this okay so i'm facing out okay here we are thanks james okay you see then you sit right in the middle perfect do you feel happy yeah i feel happy okay are you balanced and by land i'm balanced yeah and there's very gently just don't do any sudden movements you'll be quite a little bit of a figure of eight oh my gosh oh my gosh they're much more stable than they think it's right we're trying to do what georgiana was doing oh my goodness this figure of eight what you're doing brilliantly genie that's perfect is it so i'm watching georgiana i have to say those lush have a pig boots are fabulous that's right could think for course if i do sink look for the pink boots right edward how am i doing on a scale of one to ten [Laughter] exactly okay let's show you let's have a little you're taking front of me going in circles here i mean i mean i got out here so at least i didn't stay there going in the circle [Music] i had to say i found this incredibly restorative it was wonderfully soothing [Music] i loved it i would do this every day for my mental health every day i loved it i thought it was just brilliant but now it's just getting off yeah okay here we go thank goodness for james all right so you tell me when i'm good i don't jump quickly okay great oh gosh yes i yay it i really loved that i have to say i'm happy i had my life jacket on though because georgiana and serena were telling me about the size of the fish [Music] in there so i was happy i had this on that was brilliant [Music] that was so brilliant [Music] remember not only can you watch all american vice countess historic house episodes on youtube but you can now listen to them while you're on the go so yes we've just launched our very own american vi countess podcast and you'll be able to listen to all of these historic house stories on the go and on all streaming platforms i'm really looking forward to stepping inside this norman church rowena did mention that her parents are buried here and here they are lovely primroses all around and this is where rowena and james were married and i actually find that interesting because they're obviously married when the house wasn't in their possession anymore so imagine getting married here and then you see the house that had been sold i think it must have been quite poignant for them to actually take the plunge and marry here [Music] beautiful church now rowena did mention this effigy that was in here and i wanted to come by and see it so this monument commemorates sir john d pitchford who was born in 1237 so he was one of the crusaders and here it says the effigy and the slab upon which it rests are carved from a single piece of oak the head rests upon a cushion and you can see he has his chain male right there as well whilst the feet are planted against a grotesque creature apparently a lion which gnaws at the end of the warriors scabbard wow so here it is i mean this is an enormous very tall crusader beautifully done carving's absolutely beautiful but how interesting that grotesque creature i mean i don't necessarily think of lions as grotesque but maybe they did back then okay okay sorry cut so i've just um was filming here not very well victoria's caught me a few times but as we were filming john the crusader i'm sorry i didn't even get your name jill jill yeah jill has just walked in kid you not and this is your how many times removed descendant is it 13th or 12th 13th yeah ancestor so this is the first time you've seen it jill yes your ancestor what do you think what do you react what is your because i've just obviously been researching it myself from what i read it's lovely but it's lovely but i was quite surprised at how tall he is yes very tall now where does your ancestor come from originally from france originally then they come here in shropshire okay so he was a crusader yes came over is your last name pitchford before yeah yeah yes no before you get but your maiden name yes pitchford oh my gosh that's amazing no that even makes me more excited because that means you know this crusader that of course the name has has continued on a thousand years later so your maiden name is pitchford and you happen to come to this church have you you have never been here before i've been before now thought we'd come today yeah this is brilliant no sorry that makes me even more excited you know because a lot of times when you when it's a thousand years i would have expected the name to somehow change and it would have been pitchford yeah how wonderful yeah lovely to say yeah beautiful well i'll let you video some more thank you yeah thank you thank you how incredible what better way to end my current visit to pitchford hall than to join the party celebrating the restoration of the library just walking in here you can't help but smile because really this is rorina and james's mark on things they walked into this room in 2016 and it was wet and damp and empty and a clean slate and they thought rather than putting it back to what people expect us to do and what it used to be let's create something that people will talk about and that's what you want when people come into these historic houses you want people to leave talking about something and i'm definitely um i i definitely will be talking about this and i bet you will as well this extraordinary library that has been commissioned and for me the pieces that stand out are the chandeliers i love the chandeliers because i love the contrast of this sort of very dark red and gold yellow with the blue and the yellow as well and it's really rather wonderful we raised the toaster hugh kennedy and the king henry livery and everyone who helped thank you so so much [Music] what an amazing time i've had visiting pitchford hall you can really sense the life and vitality returning to this historic home rowena james and their family absolutely love it here and their passion and determination to restore pitchford to its former glory and at the same time put their own mark on it is incredibly inspiring coming soon to american vi countess i visit bewley in hampshire an historic home with a montague family connection once a medieval abbey and now home to the national motor museum and i'll be visiting the glorious dean park in northamptonshire where i dine in style and help with wedding preparations [Music]

Channel: American Viscountess

Views: 53,318

Keywords: julie montagu mapperton house, julie montagu american aristocrat, mapperton house, aristocracy documentary, meghan markle, prince harry

Id: mHSBXhnL5jI

Length: 25min 0sec (1500 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 10 2022