Sudeley Castle: The Home Of Catherine Parr | Crisis At The Castle | Real Royalty

soodler castle the ancestral home of the dent brocklehurst family high society aristocrats with celebrity connections [Music] henry accounts liz hurley as a personal friend and his sister molly is big in the world of contemporary art their mother lady ashkam is a socialite and charity fundraiser but beneath the glamorous facade soonly is facing one of the worst crises in its thousand-year history this estate is actually sort of hemorrhaging money i mean i quite frankly don't know what's going to happen as the family tries to find a way to save that ancestral home two generations go head-to-head in a battle that threatens to destroy both the family and the future of the castle to make an estate run you really need a good therapist a good lawyer and a good business manager that's the modern way that's right what's and then you need a good rehab in the states to send people off too april it's easter monday and the start of a critical season for soodley castle in gloucestershire there was a time when the easter opening was a big event hundreds of people would queue to see the award-winning gardens exhibitions and private house with its important collection of art and antiques not anymore [Music] 120 thousand visitors a year suddenly used to attract is down to less than fifty thousand and the castle is deep in the red [Music] lady elizabeth ashcam has run soonly as a tourist attraction for over 30 years but now at this difficult point in the castle's history she's in the process of handing over the intention always was to hand over to my children that from the very day i inherited it on the death of mark their father that's that's what i thought that i will keep it and do my best with it until they're of an age and mind to take it on and and and and and you know make those decisions themselves and that's this this time right here we're talking about we're right in the middle of it in 2002 the family agreed that lady ashkam would retire by the end of this year her two children henry and molly are to take over the running of the castle they and their families will move in and lady ashcam move out henry currently lives in hawaii but molly and her film producer husband duncan have already moved in everything right i grew up here yes i mean it's probably all [Music] different sorts of designers i think that's where i kind of shortly after taking up residence molly and duncan found that sharing their new home with the public wasn't to their taste what they decided to do was a shock to everyone especially lady ashken molly and duncan just moved in i think it must have been one winter after we closed and then we didn't open it again the next year i thought that there would be disappointment with the visitors and indeed there was closing the state rooms and private quarters to the public has been catastrophic the castle has lost over 30 thousand visitors in the last two years and if today's anything to go by this year could be even worse at the visitor center people are still turning up expecting to be able to go inside the castle some of them come back though complaining that it's been closed and we do explain to them that they just don't listen yeah and it does get quite hard at times as the new public faces of suede molly and duncan are now on the front line of public discontent [Applause] i would just like to say chill out relax just you know breathe a bit of fresh air and it's not as bad as you think i know some ethiopians are a little bit more predicament at the moment and so on molly and duncan live in the east wing of the castle lady ashcam across the courtyard in the west wing but living under the same roof isn't proving easy there's growing tension in the family this is the end of the line for me you can see i'm i'm locked locked out but that's where molly and duncan and lucian and violet start their their their life over there and uh and this is a shared room henry calls them um england switzerland and germany well i don't know i won't go into the reasons for it but this is switzerland it's neutral territory yeah and so so is the snooker room so is the swimming pool and tennis court and courtyard all in switzerland as the visitors leave and the staff cash up things look bleak this estate is actually sort of hemorrhaging money i mean i quite frankly don't know what's going to happen and it's made all the more complicated because there are three of us who are involved there's my son henry my daughter molly both their families and myself um who all have a vested interest in soodle and to try and keep us all happy it is it's an interesting challenge anyway one of sudhi's bigger challenges in history i think [Applause] the man who has taken on the challenge is david sherbourne suderly's new chief executive the family are hoping that he'll use his 30 years experience in managing land in the states to turn the castle's fortunes around so if you think that soodley is known as the most romantic castle in the country well when you look at that setting and its integrity and entirety over there i think it more than lives up to that reputation absolutely amazing what's the core of your challenge to enable the company to make money and to convince the family that you can make money depends which member of the family i talk to i mean all you've got to do is look at that and think well it should be reigning pound notes really [Music] it's may day and david's down on the shop floor for what should be one of sudery's busiest days of the year the beginning of this week we had no morris dances at all anywhere not on the phone not certainly not here turn up today and two sets of morris men turn up but of course neighbors come to watch them so that's a bit of a problem we've just got to have something that is of appeal to each age group if we're going to hit that hundred thousand target again because you know i want to put a wow factor back into the castle [Music] around in the mulberry garden things aren't much better even the cd player is packed in one thing that is still popular at soodley is the award-winning gardens but the number of gardening staff has been slashed and those left have not had a pay rise in over four years no one's taking this place on board at the moment several there's several bosses from the family side but no one's actually taking the castle on board and gardens to push it forward the staff who just kept in the dark so much we don't know what's going on if the castle's opening staff are leaving left right and center because the family feel that the family's not interested anymore so not valued as staff really end of the day the mood is no better in the castle's corporate functions office with visitor numbers dwindling suedly increasingly relies on income from weddings and functions but the family find them highly intrusive if the decision is made to restrict the amount of events that we have then i will be looking to see that my target's reduced because otherwise it will be physically impossible i think people live in their own little worlds don't they and i don't think they really consider the bigger picture of what might happen or what could happen or if they care yes please don't many thanks i'm still here thank you over in the restaurant david finds that half the staff hasn't bothered to turn up the ceo has to roll up his sleeves and wait tables his 10 year old son has to help out too he only came along for a day out next david has to deal with disgruntled visitors unhappy about not being able to go inside the castle we've had to accommodate the fact they all want to live here there's an exhibition area and there's a loop video that's all we can do to always but there are guides up there and so if you've got any questions they're very knowledgeable have a good time at the end of the day people came here to go around the castle you can't shut the castle and expect the business to carry on as before i need to persuade convince cajole whatever it takes to get the family to reopen the castle i've said it both to duncan now and to lady ashken we've lost 30 000 visitors over the last couple of years and a huge part of that is really bad pr from last year people turning up to look at the castle when it wasn't open and the publicity didn't say so and at the end of the day it's called swoodly castle i said to lady ashkem yesterday at lunch i said we'll have to call it suede gardens if you're not going to open the castle the next day david calls an urgent meeting with lady ashcam but we have just got the best facility potentially in the whole of south of england i think it's a very exciting time i think the house opening needs to move on oh sure it needs to reinvent it exactly liz absolutely and i think that we could just as you were in your time in the 70s david's come up with a plan to get the castle open to the public again rather than offer free access as they did before he proposes they run scheduled guided tours three days a week anyway um thank you thank you for enthusiasm it's very encouraging well i'm enthusiastic in many many ways and then i've got the downside of it as well let's let's focus on that side i think i honestly think it's capable of resolution quite simply yeah i really believe that the family reluctantly agreed the proposal it's a victory for david but he knows it's going to take more than a few tours to get suedly out of its financial crisis it's nice isn't it that there are families who live here yes i mean it keeps it alive it does it does it has a different feel i think from um yeah from a house it's just a museum it's not it's just a living sort of thing yeah [Music] next on david's agenda is revitalizing soodle's tired events calendar this could make a huge difference to the castle's bank balance yeah i wanted to see today in terms of what we're going to do weekends next year the sorts of things you're thinking about so far i've come up with a list i've got lots of different ideas what i want at the moment yeah because i think as i've said to you both before i want to be ambitious okay because i think it's i think the more ambitious we are the more people take notice the more spin-offs there'll be the more visitors there'll be the more money we get and so on and so forth is echo by email actually so i have got it on the computer but i just haven't got it here or jump to run off a copy no yeah because you're enough copy david's starting to feel cautiously optimistic we've got different sorts of events and we've got you know artists calling up mine it's just fantastic we've got lots and lots of things that um but the implications of that is infrastructure as debbie currently said health and safety employees it has an effect on on all of that plus the added thing here family i forgot about them the family yeah yeah the champagne is flowing in the west wing lady ashkem is having an intimate soiree with some old friends chimpanzee weirdo so did the chimp run out of tree yeah yeah and then the trip was so stressed that it couldn't stay at the party unfortunately she hasn't got the house all to herself [Music] known as one of the most romantic castles in the country weddings are a lucrative part of soodler's business that they're the bane of lady ashken's life if you look at our function sheet there all the time now if it's not a wedding it's a small concert or it's a play in the garden or it's you know something and their favorite place is marquiat on the north lawn and of course that's right in our garden as well when it's somebody else's wedding that's going on on outside your window you know till all hours it starts to grate a bit [Music] with the guests paying up to twenty thousand pounds for the privilege of getting married at soodley they feel they can make as much noise as they want it was such a lovely walk and then to you know to be looking for the ancient well and then to happen upon it you know you usually clean up vomit on a saturday evening yeah i've been known to it's worse when it's in the hall for events manager sarah jane weddings can also be a bit of a nightmare [Music] it's coming up to 11 o'clock we've got an hour to go everybody's been very happy maybe some a little too over happy all over the place okay i'm on my way i know he won't go far but i can't have him going that way because of the family it just split up with him okay he's just he's had a lot hasn't he but do you have parties on the scale quite often well we do have parties and that is part of our business section weddings and wedding parties and you know some of them are fairly fairly large-scale we've moved on from the sick phase i must say liz i appreciate the perfect hostess touch that when we came in it was the table covered with the earplugs my and they usually overstay their welcome their license a little bit as well but i'm now going to ask my security men to remove you from the premises that's fine because i've had enough of this stop it regret it stand there stop it i have never had behavior like this at soodley never and i am absolutely disgusted i would have quite happily stuck my pointed shoes right up his nose yeah but i didn't think that that was quite appropriate well i'm not in the nose now no the business has taken over from in my opinion anyway from being able to feel that you live in a sort of environment that is sustained you know that is comfortable they want the money to come in because they want to be able to stay here but they forget that to get the money in you've got to put on events like this to enable that to happen so it's a no-win situation sometimes the reality is that the castle can earn more from one wedding than two months worth of day visitors intrusive there they are it's part of the business that david desperately wants to increase he's just applied for a new premises license that will allow him to put on far more weddings and events at the castle [Music] lady ashkam has made her feelings about weddings and corporate functions abundantly clear to david but he knows that according to the family handover agreement she should have moved out by the end of the year so it will cease to be an issue the problem is it's already june and lady ashkam's move is way behind schedule or anything and then there's a drawing room which is exactly the same size as this one davis brought in his architect to try and speed things up there's an access through here to go into the dressing room so that the idea was that you could just be wheel your suitcases in and out so it's not carrying no suitcase carrying around there is a very charming um virtually derelict like everything but um a little farmhouse on the edge of the estate and i would like to be able to renovate that it's charming it's a good word when all that green foliage is gone yeah it's just completely um would like to live here on the estate in very close proximity to my family and grandchildren and this is my dream anyway and to still be hopefully involved in in the development of soothing in the future in some way or form particularly the garden you see this was the problem but for some reason handing over the family estate well before death is the norm for the aristocracy but it's a custom that's going to be especially hard for lady ash she's not a typical english aristocrat she was born elizabeth chips the daughter of a doctor from kentucky her connection with sudley began in the 1960s when she went on a blind date with the dashing english aristocrat mark dent brocklehurst mark was the only son in heir to soodley i was living in new york when i was introduced to mark i was very young you know and impressionable and i thought he was great he was i'd heard a lot about soodley and i was a bit nervous about coming i remember coming in the gate and the castle was all lit up by the moon it must have a full moon it's something you know out of a kind of gothic film really my first impressions of soodley and mark's life here but i i was completely captivated by it and him after a whirlwind romance they married and the girl from kentucky became the lady of an english castle she and mark said about renovating soodly but just two years into the restoration mark had a massive heart attack and died he was just 40. lady aschem was left with two young children a partially restored castle and massive debts you know after mark died it got really difficult so it was a very bad years there were huge inheritance tax and death duties so there was a huge financial burden on the estate it had enormous restoration problems as well and it didn't have a business really we hadn't started to build it up so i mean it couldn't have been in a worse position [Music] but by the 1980s lady ashkam had single-handedly built soodly into a successful visitor attraction that was then lady ashcam knows it's now time to retire but she wants molly and henry to keep suedly as the family seat and to run it in a way that she feels will preserve its precious heritage i do very much valuing the history it really resonates with me i love the sense of timelessness whereas i think maybe if you've grown up with it like my husband and my children well he was very interested but it's more taken for granted you know and uh sort of i see a look glaze over their faces when i start to talk about it [Music] it's mid-june and soodler's gardens are undergoing an amazing transformation [Music] this is molly's vision for sudely's future [Music] molly is a player in the world of modern art she's starting to put together a major exhibition of contemporary sculpture in sudley's garden [Music] i'm a very aesthetic person i really enjoy beautiful things so my vision is creating a very beautiful sculpture park is something which you know it's not very popular so in a way it becomes it's something which is beautiful and exclusive it's clever the pieces are coming from all over the world in preparation for a big opening in august the very high level of contemporary art we're doing it's something which you know some very important um internationally renowned artists are giving you know major works for so um i think it brings a different energy to the place [Music] at the same time we're trying to kind of make it so that so that that if if you're coming to see the garden and it's not something you're interested in that you know there's enough garden to enjoy which isn't being swamped by sculptures [Music] [Music] oh the installation of the art has been abruptly halted by unusually heavy summer storms it's not just molly's exhibition that's been affected there's been a massive leak in the castle roof one lady that we're coming through always going up the private stairs but pete said just to warn you that as you go up the steel ladder um apparently that which there is um it is loose so be very careful thanks for the warning over somewhere somehow the corner of this roof um we got a flood which is coming through the corner of the stone drawing room and through in particular through that balcony window leaks are becoming all too common at soodley this one was nearly a disaster you know when you look at the ceiling up here we've got crazing on the ceiling if that came down it would just be a part of history lost the concerns is that fact we've got this picture here which has our value in excess of seven figures a valuable picture right my concern is that the stability of the ceiling sure because if the ceiling comes down the picture could get down to the picture there's also a very valuable table below the picture the problem david is that these catchpits are too small and if the water is pouring through at a heavy rain it's only got to get up to this sort of level here and it can start to come through the wall or come through here and it will track under by capillary action this is not as immaculate as it usually is because we had the flood coming through the the ceiling there um which is why we've got all these going uh i'm afraid and look at that that's that's deposited from from being absolutely flooded yeah doesn't it wait a bit here all the sand this painting is also a van dyke the curtains one of which of course is drying over here i do have it hasn't been severely damaged the cruel work on these curtains is actually 17th century some of the things we're seeing here are not and no i accept that but there's stuff that should have been done over the years essential maintenance is just one of many things that has been neglected as the castle's financial situation has worsened the only way to stop the rod is to get the business back on track it's late june and henry lady ashram's son is back from hawaii [Music] the return of the jet setting film producer has attracted the attention of the local press i'm just too old to do cross-legged what about like that but henry's agenda is not a hello magazine style interview he's spending the summer at sula to prepare for his permanent move home next spring with the castle in such a state he means business [Music] what would be your dream both of you in terms of the castle well i think i know pretty clearly what i'd like to achieve i would like the castle to be the most unbelievable commercially well-run location that the families earn the right to participate in based on the commercial viability of it which hasn't been the case in the past i think the challenges are out there for my sister and i to establish that so it's really having a very clear and definitive arms length relationship with the castle that is pragmatic commercial realistic that's something i'd like to have a little joke between yourselves a chat to each other whether henry's heart knows commercial ideas will be compatible with his sister's more aesthetic vision remains to be seen thank you there are other places in the world i mean in england that do what's going on perhaps per se as molly seizes the opportunity to promote her exhibition david takes henry to one side david's plan to increase sudley's corporate functions business isn't going down well with lady ashkam she thinks that soodley should not be used for unrestricted corporate events she perceives the guts castle and gardens are so absolutely hers she's pretty much going to call it you know she's saying nope while i'm here no noisy corporate [Music] there are just two weeks before the launch of molly's art exhibition for the first time in many years three generations of dent broccolhurst are living under the same roof but it's not happy families a lot of things haven't happened as quickly here as i would have liked i think my mother has to realize that being a matriarch forever and just holding it and it being a certain way is gonna like any generational handover has to come to an end and that although it would be lovely and really nice if that could happen forever and a day the practical realities are that it can't for henry the handover is not going to plan according to the handover agreement lady ashkam should be ready to move out by now and of relinquished control of the castle neither has happened for some reason the the key issues out of the 2002 agreement haven't been able to be addressed which is like even refurbishing the farmhouse for ada to move to it so they've just built up this huge tension and frustration that nothing appears to have happened and where where tension arises it's not surprising that communication gets difficult it's like turning around a huge battleship hopefully not hopefully not the titanic hopefully we're not sinking but it is uh you know it is like turning the corner with something that's um you know that's been going one way for quite a long time [Music] anxious to apply the same tough business model to every element of soodle henry turns his attention to the castle's 1500 acre estate this is a very flat piece of land here if we were able to restore this to some sort of parkland a completely flat area we've got an access road up this cottage we've got planning permission to rebuild from scratch so it could become part of the corporate offer at soodley it could become part of a fantastic wedding suite that people stay in to get married here you've got the location you've got the electricity you've got the parking and all it would really take is a bit of a negotiation with the tenanted farmer as to how you could lay this out that's one view it sounds straightforward but henry has to get the agreement of both his mother and sister before anything can happen at soodley you can choose to be in business with a business partner because you like what's on offer and it's an equitable fair arrangement it's a different thing being in business with your family so that is another struggle and another trial and another journey that is always going to have to have in some ways a mediator and a negotiator i.e david or anybody else who's advising the family because you have got multiple interests and when you've got three lots of them i mean to make an estate run you really need a good therapist a good lawyer and a good business manager that's the modern way what's your priority and then and then you need a good rehab in the states to send people off too a rare sighted sudely a queue the big attraction is the blues in the ruins concert a regular summer fixture at the castle when david's new premises license comes through he's hoping to stage events like this on a regular basis but one of his three bosses isn't going to like it i'm really the enemy number one in the family and the administration who are working really hard to create this business and then there's me it doesn't feel right for the almost the integrity of the space in the building to me and it's just very odd really you know the music comes pounding down the chimneys the noise not just me it's the whole neighborhood whatever's going on here because we live in a kind of natural amphitheater can be heard all over the hills in winchcombe we've had a lot of complaints and and i don't disagree i totally sympathize with the complaints [Music] [Applause] sooley sits on the edge of winchcombe a quiet cotsworld town the residents have become so angry that they formed an action group to put a stop to noisy functions of the castle just give us an idea of actually what it can be like lying lying in bed having been woken up loud music and this thump thump of drums um going on until two in the morning not funny at all we are particularly keen to make sure that events that they hold are done in a sensible and professional way with care for the whole area rather than just for themselves [Music] the action group have heard about the new premises license application and are now preparing to up their game but when you say complain who too to the council it's 9 a.m the morning after the concert yeah and david's got an unhappy resident on the phone one thing i must say i would find helpful in the future is if there are any concerns or if there are calls to objectives if people talk to me before they rush off to the borough council because certainly as far as i'm concerned in managing this operation if there is disruption it is certainly not something that we wish to do either deliberately or inconsiderately nice to talk to you thanks bye-bye somebody is a mover and shaker in silk mill street or in castle street and has spotted the premises license application and has wound up a number of the other residents so that 15 people and representing 12 or 13 houses have all objected to our premises license application i would quite like to know who the ringleader is because i would quite like to talk to them i got no feedback from him whatsoever and which makes me think then unless i said okay we're going to stop noise generating events altogether that he wasn't going to um be satisfied looks like david's got a fight on his hands there's been another storm and more roof leaks this time the rain has done severe damage to the castle's offices and to molly and duncan's east wing their bedrooms have been worst hit molly's precious 17th century bed has to be put under wraps and the family has to move to other quarters the fabric of the castle is deteriorating fast sorting out soodles huge maintenance problems won't be easy there are three possible individual sources and there's molly henry and and lady ashgam where the the best source that most suits them all comes from it could be from a sale of a chat it could be for them contributing individually they could borrow against assets but it needs to come from somewhere i would say a million pounds would be very conservative the most obvious way of raising the money is to sell a painting or valuable antique but henry refuses to countenance this short-term solution selling family chattels doesn't feel good to anyone unless you fundamentally change from within that's just plugging the damn and then you're gonna have to sell another one another one another one to me that's an unsupportable and unrealistic situation fired by henry's vision david goes to work on getting the castle to start earning its keep a new kids adventure playground is high on the list to get the day visitors flocking back to my mind this is a wonderfully sheltered and self-contained site next david gets some businessmen interested in what could be a multi-million pound property development the rest of the family are starting to believe that soodles fortunes could be changing yeah the sort of thing i'd be thinking of is that we contribute the land you contribute the build well i think the whole concept sounds fantastic but the best way of generating cash is large-scale corporate events ones like this can make the castle up to fifty thousand pounds a time if we have just five of these sorts of events each year we'd make our corporate budget on those five events alone so it's a question of balancing the interests of the community the demands and requirements of the business and the what the family themselves will accept unfortunately for david corporate events are now high on the local action group's hitlist as a result of their sustained campaign the council's noise police have been called in [Music] they're now monitoring every event at the castle before they come to a decision about david's new premises license every august the castle plays the local villages in a friendly cricket match this year molly's husband duncan is captain lady ashkam is there to support her team the game might be played with good spirit but relations between soodle and winchcom are deteriorating at the castle the council have demanded a meeting to discuss david's new premises application sodali's current license allows them to have a limited number of events that can play music until midnight the new license would both increase the number of events and extend their finish time to 1am i'd just like to say one of our objectives behind our mission statement is to forge close local partnerships with our stakeholders one of which is you guys quite frankly because you're very important to our business but actually also with the town things are going well for suderly on the cricket pitch but david is in for a shock the cutoff is 12 events a year roughly that's when we need to be inside and outside in order at 11 o'clock if events are regular for the sake of discussion at the moment more than 12 a year then we would look for inaudibility inside somebody's house inside inside just find it ridiculously easy to play this game and win every time what is the test of inaudibility no complaints well so in other words it is even harsher than inviting someone into your house and having a conversation with them let's rub it in of a heroic second victory we have our own restrictions as it is with the family so then if you said to me right 12 events one a month but these are your classes that's not gonna work for us one to go before we win [Applause] victory for sudler's first 11. but for david it couldn't have gone worse far from allowing him to increase his licence the council want him to reduce the number of events to just 12 a year not only that they want loud music to stop at just 11 p.m this would virtually destroy the castle's wedding and corporate business i'm not prepared to do that as i've just said it will unreasonably restrict the business of sudley castle to operate profitably david gets straight on the phone to his lawyer very roughly it's between a million and a million and a half just to run this place a year and we make at the moment a loss of a hundred thousand a year and that's why i'm so adamant that we are not going to compromise on what we are already allowed to do through our tens notices because corporate is our only profit is our only profitable cost centre [Music] the premises application will go to an [Music] appeal it's the launch of molly's sculpture exhibition the world's art press have turned out in force for the party you know it's a kind of an ironic take on on the road castle and the perfect fairytale which is turning suddenly into a trendy sculpture park might be molly's dream but elsewhere in the grounds henry knows art isn't the answer to the castle's financial problems he's come up with a much simpler but far more radical plan there are enough rooms in the castle to accommodate an offer which includes the ceo and his family or whatever cheltenham race week small intimate weekends to stay here and if that is offered in conjunction with what we already offer it really will make a huge difference and it doesn't even have to be offered every weekend it doesn't have to become a hotel and it doesn't have to become anything other than use of the private family house a corporate venue and part-time hotel is the opposite of what lady ashkam envisaged for sudely's future i think her ultimate goal would be to see all of her children living at the castle that it and not only her well her children and her grandchildren living at the castle that she lived on the edge of the estate and that everybody lived happily ever after and there were only ever things happening in the garden that were beautiful and wonderful and supportive of the stately home but i believe that there is a whole new business out there and one and it's one that we're not really fully taking advantage of because we all live here at the moment we all live here in some way and that's what needs to change in my opinion to make his vision work henry believes that the castle cannot be both a family home and a business he's made a huge decision when he and his family return to england permanently next spring they will not live in the castle i think the likelihood is is that we'll find something local that is makes sense for us as a family and that we will live in the local community henry's decision will break a tradition of centuries [Music] the news that henry doesn't intend to live in the castle has caused shock waves in the family to counter his decision lady ashkam has announced that she is now reviewing her plans to move out and there was never in my mind a cut-off date that things were completely changed around i don't really consider digging my heels in but henry started making noises that he doesn't want to live at the castle and of course this had been lady a's home for over in a day which is very very attached to it so i think she feels well if henry's not going to use it as his home then why should i move i'm going to be here more often on all the way until mid-august more you know i'm not going away if lady ashcam doesn't move out henry will not be able to pursue his plans to turn the house into a corporate venue the disadvantage from my point of view at the moment is that the company is being steered in different directions i've got henry who thinks that the castle should be made available for exclusive use to make money period then we swing over to the lady ashken point of view which is that it's a family home where the integrity and identity of soodle as a family home should be maintained and therefore that any business should be non-intrusive business and therefore that would be her set of operating parameters as far as i'm concerned i just want one set of operating parameters so that i know which direction to take the money take the money let's take to take the company in [Laughter] an urgent family meeting is called to discuss the future of sudley's gardens but there is a hidden agenda in preparation for the handover changes have been made to the family trust funds henry and molly now have to foot the bill for lady ashkam's precious gardens molly and henry may differ on what direction to take soodly but they realize if they're going to take control of the castle they have to be united should i kick off yeah do the dynamic vision started maybe 20 years ago and one has achieved a situation where the garden is of a national interest but we feel that we need to have an agreed budget and vision so that one can implement this in the next two or three years what are our figures at the moment in terms of expenditure in the garden it's around about a hundred thousand and that is excluding machinery excluding any reinvestment one of the problems i see with the soodley gardens is that when you're actually trying to balance the commercial reality of where we're at as a business i think we have to make quite a harsh decision because it's not appropriate anymore to put money into the budget where we just can't can't see a return and our garden staff are dissatisfied and our equipment is falling apart we haven't seen a budget you know we're suddenly looking at a loss each of fifty thousand pounds or is it suddenly going to be eighty thousand we just don't know uh henry and molly should sit down with david and really have a fine-tune the budget and the expenditure so that they know what they're in for [Music] liz seems to be under the impression that she can just sell up tomorrow and that everything's hers with relations becoming increasingly strained david calls the dent brocklehurst's lawyer to establish exactly the legal position of each family member hang on hang on the interest has been assigned to the soodley settlement but it's still in trust are they entitled to the capital you're talking about henry's appropriated fund i'll ask you the second question so when you talk about 2d settlements you're talking plural yeah you're now answering the second amount to my first question are you yeah okay good good yeah that's fine okay i'm clear now [Music] david discovers that lady ashkam is under no obligation to move out in fact she's legally entitled to stay in the castle for the rest of her days but he also learns that recent changes made to the trust funds mean that henry and molly are no longer legally obliged to fund the upkeep of the castle this comes as a shock to lady ashken [Music] it's just that you know i think we've got to go back in history to see where it started it wasn't meant that everybody's portion was still theirs to squirrel away from themselves it was still meant to all feed the the central you know kind of hungry beast in a way effectively the family can hold each other to ransom henry is now beginning to have doubts about coming back to seedley at all a house is a house and the fact that it's got turrets on it and everything is is great but it's it's only you know it's only worth so much emotional uh stress and if it's time for a family to hand a building on for the benefit of that building in the family then it's really a dissolving of that person's ego because the ancestors are all dead and you know if anybody has you know a real feeling of care and compassion they're not they're not gonna want somebody who's living to do something that's gonna destroy their life and turn them into a sort of broke and depressed you know wreck [Music] david and his lawyer are heading into battle it's the day of the all-important appeal hearing for sudley's premises license [Music] behind closed doors david the council and the action group present their cases now all he can do is wait for a decision hours pass it's a bit disappointing that i think the objectives from the town just take what i say cynically i'm sure is because they mistrust the company because of um for whatever historic reason [Music] i mean they weren't they only just started deliberating if he has any hope of restoring the family's faith in him and securing the future of the castle david has to win the hearing could you do me a favor could you ring henry and say that i probably i doubt if i'll be back to sue you before 5 30. they've done it nope still talking [Music] finally the verdict [Music] how did it go then guys well thanks to jeremy's immaculate presentation um we've managed to get a license exactly as we applied for it yep sex and drugs and rock and roll absolutely david and henry can now forge ahead to start making soodly economically viable this is a summer promise night six thousand people have come to soodle for an evening of classical music [Music] david's come up with a solution to the noise problem that should keep even lady ashcam happy he's staging the concert in a field at the back of the castle [Music] [Music] i think it's a very important event for sudbury i think it's very important that they come back simply in terms of revenue it's great for profile it's got to be good for anything like this i don't care who comes to do what as you know as i said before anything that raises our profile is what we need and what i want to do [Music] october it's the end of the season at soodley the castle is closing for the winter visitor numbers have increased and the events calendar for next season is starting to look promising [Music] but david's biggest challenge remains guiding the family through the final stages of the handover i think in a naive sort of way i would say that they all put the past behind them forget the past completely they all have one eye to the future that they all not only understand but respect each other's positions that they and and through that respect and understanding because it's also personal that we achieve a resolution to the future of the castle lady ashkam is writing a book about her life at sudeley she plans to finish it before she finally hands the castle over [Music] what i hope i'll do is have the memoir and say there you are you know read it i'm done enough i finished i'm off i'm retiring the end isn't written yet is it then the uncertainty isn't written but the thing is i feel like i've i've done my time and unless i could just live here peacefully and be left alone you know and to to you know just to live in my house the rest of my life without any interference i feel it's there's nothing more i can do for it by the time soodly opens again next spring there should be a new generation at the helm we agree on the major things and we've agreed not to let the other things get too to in our faces and the major thing i think is really making super into something which is is a success and you know and maintains it as a beautiful place we're having in my opinion our last crack at it and if it works then i think we've done something wonderful and i think it can work financially i think if it doesn't work unfortunately it's actually down to the will of the family

Channel: Real Royalty

Views: 80,912

Keywords: real royalty, real royalty channel, british royalty, royalty around the world, royal history, catherine parr the tudors, catherine parr introduction, catherine parr and henry viii, sudeley castle

Id: ZunxC660_eM

Length: 58min 48sec (3528 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 16 2021