Chatsworth’s Laura to lose family home

SHe’S chatelaine of the most palatial house in the land — a role she assumed last year when her parents-inlaw, the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire, decided to make way for the next generation at Chatsworth in Derbyshire.

But Laura Burlington (below), wife of the Duke’s only son and heir, Bill, could be forgiven for feeling a little heartbroken.

For I can disclose that her own childhood home, a magnificent Jacobean pile in Cheshire built by her forebears, is up for sale after being in the family for 400 years.

Dorfold Hall (above) has been put on the market for £ 11.4 million by Laura’s younger brother, Charles Roundell. Dorfold has ten bedrooms, nine bathrooms, a library, a billiard room, a housekeeper’s flat, a clocktower, a tennis court, a lake, an icehouse, four cottages and two walled gardens in 16 acres of grounds.

The decision to sell appears to be the opposite of what Charles intended when he and his American wife, Candice, took over the Hall from his parents in 2017. Dorfold’s website, describing the couple as ‘visionaries’, explains that the Hall was ‘in a state of disrepair and facing a rather gloomy future’.

So they undertook ‘huge amounts of renovation in order to propel the estate into a new era’, and commissioned award-winning new buildings for weddings, parties and corporate events.

The couple decline to comment on the sale or on their plans for 53 new houses and a pub — plans which have been ‘recommended for refusal’ by the local council’s housing officer. Their departure seems likely to sadden Charles’s parents, Richard, a former vice chairman of auctioneers Christie’s, and Anthea, whose kinsmen include the earl of Dartmouth. ‘I think Anthea is going to be particularly hard hit by the loss of the Hall,’ a chum tells me.