There's Something I've Been Dying to Tell You (5 page)

What I loved about Renishaw Hall was the fact that not only did it hold all these wonderful priceless antiques, but because the family still lived in the house, it had all sorts of personal touches. There was even a statue in the main entrance on which someone had left a pair of reading glasses!

I was given a bedroom in which to change and it was all themed on the sea and seashells. There was even a chair made of seashells. It was quite exquisite. Goodness knows what the heating bill must be but in those few days, when it was so bitterly cold, the house was always warm. This is the problem for all these owners of stately piles; they cost a fortune to run, and so have to be made to support themselves. Alexandra works day and night thinking of new ways to present the house and grounds. There is a lovely café, run by a super couple who we filmed for the series – together we made a delicious gluten-free orange cake. There is also a fantastic vineyard which up until 1986 boasted the claim that it was the most northern vineyard in Europe. They produce a gorgeous Prosecco which, I believe, was sold in Waitrose. We spent a very jolly morning with me treading real grapes in a huge bowl.

I made two very dear friends in the housekeepers at Renishaw who were called Pat and Sheila. We did a bit about how on earth one would clean such a house. There were so many nooks and crannies and objets d’art to dust or drop. We spent a morning, me and the girls, climbing step ladders and cleaning the tops of the curtains, and then we skated round the unbelievably polished floors on our mop bottoms. They were just such lovely ladies and full of mischief, but completely dedicated to the house and to Alexandra, which was so lovely to see. The girls often text me and send me their best wishes for a speedy recovery. I wish!

There was also a fully equipped Victorian kitchen, where a lovely lady who was an expert on Victorian cooking showed me various specialities. Now that kitchen was bloody cold, and the cooking range was not functional, so there was no heat coming in anywhere. By the end of the day I was blue! I learned how to clean my teeth with a concoction of vinegar and baking soda and, as usual, I jumped in and tried it without thinking and it was disgusting. I couldn’t taste anything after that. All the dishes like the rose jelly and the pies looked lovely but I am sorry to say that thanks to my earlier teeth-cleaning efforts, it all tasted pretty terrible. I can’t believe I ruined such a gorgeous meal.

We filmed a similar thing at Ragley Hall, next in the series, only this time it was cooking with war rations. A lovely girl came to show me the joys of cooking without flour or sugar or eggs. There was absolutely no joy, and I cannot begin to understand what it must have been like to eat some of that stuff, although hunger is a great motivator, isn’t it? I worked out, though, it would have been definitely better to live in the countryside where the hens were still laying and the rabbits were still breeding! It just makes you realise how lucky we are now to have such a rich choice available to us, and how ridiculously greedy we have become.

Perhaps the most interesting facts for me were to be found in the room at Renishaw with all the records dating back for hundreds of years. There were some fascinating letters from Edith Sitwell there. She had a running battle with D.H. Lawrence because she was convinced he had used Renishaw and her family members in
Lady Chatterley’s Lover
. She was renowned for her scathing tongue and she uses it to great effect when discussing the merits of Lawrence’s writing ability. I loved the idea of Lawrence’s gamekeeper in the novel pacing the woods and making passionate love to Edith!

As I mentioned, after Renishaw Hall we travelled to Ragley Hall in Warwickshire. With all respect to Alexandra and her beautiful home it was the sublime to the ridiculous. This was stately with a capital S. As we drove up the very long drive, through fields of sheep dotted under unimaginably huge spreading chestnut and oak trees, the huge house beckoning us in the distance, it was like going back in time. Nothing had changed. I remember doing a book fair at Althorp, another incredibly beautiful house, and one of the perks of doing the fair, if you are lucky, is to stay for the night. Earl Spencer puts on a fantastic dinner and you spend the night in one of the many amazing rooms. Michael and I were put in the King William bedroom where allegedly his majesty William III spent the night. We were completely overwhelmed by the beauty and uniqueness of our surroundings. The wash basin and toilet were disguised behind one of the immaculately wall-papered walls which looked like a closet. As you looked out of the windows the scene was exactly as it would have been 300 years ago. Enormous trees, well of course they have grown a bit over time, and the odd sheep grazing on the sloping field. This was exactly what I was looking at now as we approached Ragley Hall. I got such a sense of time and history. Michael parked his Range Rover right outside the front door and proceeded to take photos of himself and his beloved car in front of his new house. What a poseur!

I met Lord and Lady Hertford in the stable yard. Henry is the 9th Marquess of Hertford and he is married to Beatriz, who is Brazilian, and they have four children. The house has a long and interesting history as you would expect, but by the 1940s it had been turned into a hospital for the war. By the time it was returned to the 8th Marquess it was in a terrible state, so the then Lord and Lady Hertford worked tirelessly through the early 1950s to restore the house and gardens to their former grandeur. The 8th Marquess is best known for the mural that adorns the south staircase walls. It took fourteen years to complete and everyone seems to be in it, all the family including the pets. I must confess it was not to my taste but what a great way of remembering your family history.

The present Lord Hertford has a fantastic collection of carriages which we filmed and then I did a piece with a supposed horse whisperer and a horse that Lady Hertford was worried about. It was a huge animal but I thought he was lovely. Maybe a bit naughty, but as we filmed I had the distinct feeling the whisperer should have been whispering louder! Anyway, what do I know?

The lady of the house was an absolute charmer and so full of life. It was hard to imagine how she had come to find herself in the heart of the English countryside, in this huge mansion that looked like Buckingham Palace. She basically fell in love, she laughed, when I asked her, and although she was homesick sometimes for the hot sun and bright colours of Brazil, there was always so much to do here on the estate she never really had the time to think about it. She talked so naturally about her children and how worried she was about their future and the future of the house. Her eldest son would eventually take over and, like any mother, her ladyship was concerned he would not meet the right sort of girl. Not that she was being snobby, far from it, but she was worried that the whole thing would fall apart.

It was really like talking about any mother and son, and I absolutely understood where she was coming from, I have the same worries for my two sons. It does seem sometimes that the balance between men and women has gone slightly skew-whiff. So many young women seem to chase the money and glory from a man but give nothing in return. If I married a rich man I would want to contribute in some way to the relationship, be it having a family or making him a good home from which to work – ‘behind every successful man . . .’ and all that. But a lot of modern girls can’t cook and if they do have children they then dump them on a nanny while they go shopping! I do worry about it as a mother.

Being the owner of a stately home is as much a burden as a prize. The family live in a flat at the top of the house, which seems to me it was a bit like living over the shop! They do use some of the state rooms for special occasions but in the main, even though they own this sprawling grand house, they are closeted in a flat! Lord Hertford is also, unfortunately, not 100 per cent as he was injured in a riding accident, so he is often at home in front of the telly watching Australian soaps.

Michael was waiting for me to finish filming in the kitchen when Lady Hertford found him and dragged him off to have a glass of wine with them. ‘Excuse Henry,’ she told my husband, ‘he won’t talk to you when he is watching his favourite soap so we will sit and drink until it’s finished.’ Well Michael was very happy with that arrangement but he is the sort of man who is naturally curious and he could not help but ask his host about the estate. To the amazement of her ladyship, the two men engaged in a long conversation about farming and the like and the soap was forgotten!

I really admired Beatriz and how she had just taken the bull by the horns and made her life work in such different surroundings. It was very clear to me she loved her husband and family, and worked hard to keep her children’s feet on the ground. She told me a wonderful story about a party they gave for one of their brood. As it was a special occasion – an eighteenth birthday I think – it was decided to use the ballroom. Believe me this was a
ballroom
. We filmed a Jane Austen scenario in it with a local Jane Austen dance group. There were about ten of us dancing a reel in the middle of the floor and the room was so vast that the ten of us looked like a tiny speck on the floor. Having been lovingly restored, I could not begin to imagine how any parent would open their lovely home to a horde of teenagers, never mind a listed ballroom with parquet flooring and gilded columns. Anyway, her ladyship explained that it was a formal gathering in the ballroom, a black tie affair, and there was a champagne fountain.

‘But I know what these kids are like with alcohol,’ she laughed, ‘so I arranged with the wine merchant and the caterers to restrict the flow every now and then. I also spoke to my housekeeper and sent her out to buy lots of plastic buckets to put around the place so they could throw up as much as they liked but not on my beautiful floors or furniture.’

What a woman! Downstairs in the cellars they had created a disco for later and here the kids could change into dancing attire.

‘I was shocked with all the girls,’ confessed her ladyship. ‘They didn’t so much change their dresses as undress! They went from ballgowns to tiny pieces of material. I was very unhappy with these girls. They are supposed to be ladies.’ It was good to think it happens to the best of folk, not just us struggling boring middle-class parents, who are trying to instil some measure of style into our children.

‘I also tampered with the cocktails for this part of the evening,’ said Beatriz with a cheeky grin. ‘I had to pay full whack for the cocktails and the boy to mix them, but he was instructed to use only half of all the ingredients, which helped the sick factor considerably.’

I had such admiration for her and looking at all the family photos dotted around the house it was clear what a close family they are, which is no mean feat.

I loved the atmosphere of the house, and even though it was so huge you could still really inhabit a room and feel at home. Well, nearly!

Our last episodes were filmed down in Devon at Ugbrooke House, owned by Lord and Lady Clifford. They were both wonderfully mildly eccentric and what one kind of imagines a lord and lady should be like. This house was beautiful and probably the nearest thing to somewhere you could live in, supposing you found it in a terrible state and had loads of dosh to do it up. This house had been around in various incarnations for 900 years since the Domesday Book. Robert Adam was commissioned to remodel the house around the same time that Capability Brown was working on the garden. So there’s pedigree for you. Alan Titchmarsh eat your heart out – mind you, I love Alan, he is such a lovely man.

All the rooms are just out of this world and interestingly used and lived in by the family. The place I loved the best was their private chapel. It was a gem and inside the house in the library there was a secret door in the panelling through which the family could sneak and take their seats up in the gallery, above the public and staff, and watch proceedings sometimes completely unnoticed by the folk downstairs. It was such a perfect place and we filmed the choir practising, their young voices soaring to the high domed ceiling. It was like a mini St Paul’s. When I was diagnosed I received the loveliest postcard with a picture of Lady Clarissa and her beloved dogs wishing me better and telling me they were having special prayers said for me. I was very touched by this.

In fact I have to say that I constantly have to pinch myself when I receive such words of comfort, not just from friends but people I have never met. All their stories are a testament to bravery and courage in facing adversity. It is truly humbling and another reason I wanted to write the book as it is as much their story as mine.

The owners have a butler and wife team living at Ugbrooke. The wife does the cooking and he butlers. We did a great piece about setting a banqueting table. All the candelabras are absolutely in a straight line, and all the cutlery is laid using a kind of slide rule. The silver is polished to within an inch of its sparkling life and every glass looks like new. Each placement was a little soldier as I recall, or knight, so unique. I learned an extraordinary fact as we set that table. When laying the table should there be an odd number and if it is thirteen you still lay a place and go and fetch the witch. The butler actually popped off and came back with a rather large doll looking like a witch with a coned hat and horrible warts on its face and sat her down at the top of the table next to where his Lordship would sit.

‘You are not serious,’ I asked incredulously.

‘Absolutely,’ came the reply. ‘Superstitions never leave us, do they, and this takes the spell of the number thirteen issue.’

Can you imagine going to this really posh dinner party surrounded by heads of state and sometimes royalty and you look down this beautiful table and see a witch rag doll sitting there staring at you? Adds a whole new element to
Come Dine with Me
. Mind you some of the competitors in that series look quite similar to the witch!

I discovered that Lord Clifford’s pet love is his military collection and paintings of the Crimean War, in which his ancestors fought and some lost their lives. He was a joy to listen to because of all the stories he had to tell, and his obvious pride and delight in his family history. He also works incredibly hard on the estate to keep it up to scratch. The lands and garden have some very ancient trees and the tree surgeon told me all about how he goes round all year tending to them.