Becoming a YouTube hit helps keep this country house going. By Eleanor Doughty

A series of unfortunate events led to Luke Montagu, Viscount Hinchingbrooke, the future 12th Earl of Sandwich, inheriting Mapperton House. Dubbed the “nation’s finest manor house” by Country Life, Mapperton is where his grandfather Victor “Hinch” Montagu, 10th Earl of Sandwich, downsized after a tough decade. He had lost his title, his house, and his career.

At the end of July 1964, Hinch Montagu disclaimed the ancient peerage that he had recently inherited from his father, which had removed him from the House of Commons, where he had spent 21 years as MP for South Dorset, and sent him, rather unhappily, to the Lords.

Determined to stay in front- line politics a while longer, he shook off his title and stood for election in Accrington three months later.

He lost by 5,500 votes, and never got back into the Commons again.

He headed home to Dorset, and to Mapperton, following the sale of Hinchingbrooke House in Cambridgeshire, his family’s seat since 1627.

His grandson describes him as “a quite a grand man, a natural aristocrat”, adding: “It puzzles me that he was willing to take that risk.”

Today, Mapperton has become well known, thanks to the following that Lord Hinchingbrooke, founder of the Metropolitan Film School, and his American wife, Julie, have amassed on their Mapperton YouTube channel, Mapperton Live, and on Julie’s American Viscountess channel, which explores the country’s heritage buildings through her eyes.

“I worked in film for a long time,” says Lord Hinchingbrooke when asked whether he intended to become a social media star. “When I took over Mapperton it was always my hope that I could combine the two in some way, though I didn’t realise it would be through YouTube.”

The Hinchingbrookes met at a party in 2003, and were married the following year. Together they have two