‘I made weekends at Althorp a bit more glamorous’
Countess Spencer reveals the changes she has made at the estate – and how she manages a 60-hour week
IT IS one of the most beautiful stately homes in England, with an illustrious list of past inhabitants that includes Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, and Diana, Princess of Wales.
But some elements of life at Althorp were lacking in glamour for the Canadian-born third wife of Earl Spencer, who has rung in the changes.
“My favourite thing about life here is the English country house weekend, which is a completely foreign concept to those of us from North America,” Countess Spencer explained. “When I moved in, I made them a bit more glam: we switched dinner on Saturday nights to black tie, because everyone wants to dress up. Plus, it’s a great excuse for me to wear the Spencer jewellery.”
That jewellery includes a diamond necklace given by Queen Anne to the Duchess of Marlborough, a relationship recently portrayed by Olivia Colman and Rachel Weisz in The Favourite.
Lady Spencer has also done “some major feng shui” on the house. She earlier made headlines by installing a bouncy castle in the state dining room.
In an interview with Town & Country magazine, Lady Spencer said she “felt instantly at home” in the house, with its 550-acre estate.
“The portraits and furniture are a constant reminder that I am a tiny part of a big lineage,” said Lady Spencer, a former model who runs a children’s charity and was previously known as Karen Gordon. She married Earl Spencer at Althorp in 2011, a year after meeting him. They have a six-year-old daughter, Lady Charlotte Diana – named in tribute to the Earl’s late sister.
“I work 60 hours a week, but I tend to start early before Charlotte’s up – that buys me a little time so that I can be more present after school,” she said.
This is the first year that the Lady Spencer will have lived at Althorp fulltime. She previously split her life between Northamptonshire and Los Angeles, where her two daughters by Hollywood producer Mark Gordon are based, but moved permanently now that her eldest daughter is at college.
According to a note sent by the Earl to the BBC in 2003, the correct pronunciation of Althorp is “All-trup”, although even he has given up using it. “It is clear that alternative pronunciations only came about recently, out of laziness (it became simpler not to correct the many who mispronounced it, the majority of whom were foreign visitors to the house),” he wrote.
The full interview is in the summer edition of Town & Country, on sale from May 16.
Is there a room in your house called the Saloon? Do you have a ha-ha? Or a yew alley? If so, then dressing up in black tie for dinner may not seem strange to you; indeed, it may be seen as dressing down, since the dinner jacket was invented to avoid the trouble of tail coats and stiff shirts. Countess Spencer has been speaking about the pleasures of dressing for dinner at Althorp. She has a point. A man may hardly make a show in black and white, but it is for a lady to impress in an evening dress, especially if, like Lady Spencer, she has a necklace once belonging to Sarah Churchill, the gift of Queen Anne. Family jewellery, like family silver, is either there or not, but most people like an occasional chance to dress up. For much of the population it would be a triumph if the family could even sit at a table together once in a while.