TRY DECKING THESE HALLS!
’Tis soon the season for Xmas decorations — but for Belvoir Castle’s chatelaine, baubles from the attic just won’t do...
WHEN it emerged that Lady Eliza Manners got a reduced fine for speeding last week after claiming ‘cash flow issues’, the snorts of derision were as unmistakable as the turrets atop her family’s ancestral seat.
How on earth could the 24-yearold socialite — youngest daughter of the 11th Duke and Duchess of Rutland, brought up in the splendour of the 356-room Belvoir Castle — have money problems?
Yet Eliza is not the only member of her family to lament the challenges of life as a landed aristocrat. For all their privilege, keeping the Manners’ 1,000-year-old Leicestershire home from falling apart is a costly business. Her mother Emma, 57, described maintaining the castle as a weekly ‘battle’; running costs alone reach £500,000 a year. And that was before Covid hit, cutting off vital revenue.
Now restrictions are over, they are pinning their hopes on the biggest money-spinner of all: Christmas. The Duchess has hired Charlotte Lloyd Webber, who runs a theatrical installations company, to present A Regency Christmas.
It will see Belvoir bedecked with a host of fantastical decorations reflecting the property’s history and opened to the public.
Ex-wife of Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber’s son, Nick, and mother to his grandchild, Molly, 13, interior designer Charlotte is on her fifth year transforming Castle Howard in Yorkshire into an award-winning festive wonderland.
Now living in a cottage on the grounds of Belvoir, she and her design team have been creating festive decor since January, including a kissing bough so big it needs scaffolding to install and a peacock Christmas tree like no other.
Charlotte says: ‘Stately homes are wonderful, but they are beasts,’ adding that her work has made her ‘aware of the difficulties’ owners face. ‘They’re struggling. It’s nuts.’ She says Emma is ‘beside herself’ with joy at the end result. ‘She was a bit tear-jerked.’
The castle hopes to attract up to 1,000 visitors a day over Christmas, which, at £21 per adult ticket, should earn over £500,000.
But what what does it take to transform the stately home into a festive spectacular? The Mail got an exclusive preview to find out . . .