NOT such a Mad Marquess Marquess
He inherited aristocracy’s most toxic title from his drug-addled brother. Now ‘Fred Bristol’ tells how he plans to rebuild the family fortune ... brick by brick
SCANDALS have long been as much of a feature of certain aristocratic families as grand titles and vast, crumbling houses. Yet Frederick Hervey, the 8th Marquess of Bristol, can claim a heritage so calamitous it puts other disreputable lineages firmly in the shade.
His father Victor, a playboy known as The Reptile, was married three times, went to jail for jewel theft, and briefly found employment as an arms dealer. His half-brother, John, squandered £30million on drugs and high living, lost the family seat, Ickworth House in Suffolk, and died at just 44. Another halfbrother, Lord Nicholas Hervey, hanged himself after battling drugs and depression.
Then there are Frederick’s sisters, Lady Victoria and Lady Isabella, who became It Girls in the 2000s largely due to Victoria’s penchant for nipple-flashing – on yachts, in men’s magazines and somehow ‘by accident’ while attending elegant soirees. They cashed in by providing downmarket shows such as Celebrity Love Island with an incongruous injection of posh totty.
So perhaps it’s unsurprising that Frederick, or Fred as he is known, is somewhat wary about discussing his notorious relatives – even though he is without so much as a hint of his forefathers’ infamous dissolution. Smartly turned out in a crisp navy suit, with impeccable manners and an obviously sharp brain, he chooses his words carefully for this, his first proper interview.
Rather than lambast his brother John – whom Lady Victoria once described as ‘evil’ – he seems determined to strike a very forgiving note.
‘I don’t feel anger towards my brother because when you’re a drug addict, you’re not rationally deciding to do things – something else is controlling you,’ he says.
‘John was a drug addict and shouldn’t have been given control of things maybe he shouldn’t have had control of. If you take a drug like heroin it’s a way of blocking your feelings, so it stunts you emotionally, which made him quite child-like.
‘My mother and John didn’t get on, so when I was a child I didn’t see him much, but I became close to him later in his life, when I was older. I never knew my father, because he died when I was five, so when I got closer to John it had a huge impact on me.
‘He was the only male member of the paternal line of my family I’ve ever known. By the time I got to know him, he was quite ill and frail, but I’d go to stay with him and he was nothing but caring towards me. He made me promise I wouldn’t ever try drugs. I kept my promise to him, and never did.’
Fred, 37, believes the losses he has suffered – first of his father, then Nicholas when he was 18 and John the following year – have made him more determined to make a success of his life.
‘I don’t block out what happened to my family, but I don’t dwell on it either,’ he says. ‘I’ve tried to take what meaning I can from it and move on with my life. Having two brothers who died made me very aware of mortality and how finite life is, and it made me want to work hard to achieve things which make a difference.
‘Like everyone, I have a last name, and while my title is a bit longer than most people’s, it doesn’t define me.
‘I’m not burdened by anything. I’m not going to be pressured into doing anything just because it’s expected of me. I’m careful to make sure I’m leading my life my way.’
To that end, Fred has just launched a new business, Brickowner, a platform which allows investors to buy a stake in properties. His fascination with the concept, he admits, stems directly from his family’s experiences with building – and losing – property and wealth over the course of generations.
For more than 500 years, the Ickworth estate near Bury St Edmunds belonged to the Herveys. They built and demolished two mansions there before the eccentric 4th Earl of Bristol and Bishop of Derry built Ickworth House, an Italianate palace with a vast rotunda, in 1795.
In 1956, the house and estate were surrendered to the Treasury in lieu of death duties and handed to the National Trust. A lease enabled the family to live in the East Wing until that too was sold by John to the National Trust for £100,000 in 1996.
As a result, Fred finds himself a Marquess without a manor. So does he feel resentful at being shut out of the family seat?
‘If you’d asked me about Ickworth when I was 20, I’d probably have been more upset then, but if you’re a healthy person you move on and evolve.’ One day he would like to return to Suffolk, but for the moment he lives surrounded by oil paintings and heirlooms in a rented flat in Chelsea.
His family’s recent history is a complicated business. John was the only son of Victor Hervey, the 6th Marquess of Bristol, and his first wife, Lady Pauline, who divorced when John was four. Victor, briefly a career criminal, was jailed for three years for his part in a robbery. His accomplices were sentenced to lashes with a cat o’ nine tails .
Victor remarried and had a second son, Nicholas. Then in 1974 he was married for a third time to his former secretary, Yvonne Sutton, with whom he had Lady Victoria, Fred and Lady Isabella.
Fred spent his early years in Monaco, where Victor was living as a tax exile until his death in 1985. When Fred was seven his
‘I’m not burdened… I lead my life my way’
‘When you’re an addict something controls you’
mother and the children returned to live in London, spending their holidays from boarding school in Monaco.
Fred’s half-brother John, meanwhile, had inherited £4million and 16,000 acres of farmland and woods after he turned 21.
He gradually spiralled out of control, taking ruinous quantities of cocaine and heroin, sleeping with what he claimed had been 2,000 male prostitutes and flying his helicopter while high on drugs. John disliked Fred’s mother Yvonne and tried unsuccessfully to sue Victor after his will named her and her children as the main beneficiaries of his personal wealth (separate from the Bristol estate).
When Fred arrived at Eton he became increasingly aware of the family divisions. ‘We’d all read the newspapers, so John’s problems were difficult to avoid,’ he says.
It was no great shock when John died in 1999, aged 44, having squandered his fortune. Just £5,000 remained in the estate, which was engulfed by expenses.
To his half-brother and sisters he left little or nothing beyond the title of Marquess, which Fred inherited when he was 19.
‘I think I was expecting it because of John’s health problems, but his death affected me far more than other members of my immediate family,’ says Fred. ‘I’d spent far more time with him and was much closer to him than my sisters were. Becoming Marquess was something I had to adjust to. As the third son, I hadn’t expected to inherit the title. John was quite high profile, so obviously that meant when he died it shoved me into the limelight a bit, too.’
His sisters’ fondness for attention is something Fred does not share. Although supportive of their exploits, he says he never saw any of their reality television appearances. ‘They’ve done what they wanted to do and I’ve done my own thing,’ he says.
Lady Isabella now lives in Brussels with her husband, businessman Christophe De Pauw, and baby, named Victor after their late father. Lady Victoria, who has just written a semi-autobiographical novel entitled Lady In Waiting, has lived in Los Angeles for 14 years. ‘I get on well with them both,’ says Fred. ‘We’re scattered around the world, but when we’re in the same place we get together with our mother.’
After graduating from Edinburgh University, Fred spent seven years living in Estonia, where he managed property investments in the emerging Balkan market.
He views his title as part of him, but not the defining feature.
‘In my normal day-to-day life I’m just Fred, but there are occasions where I’m invited because of my title, for example to the Suffolk charities where I’ve been asked to be a patron – The Athenaeum in Bury, Friends of West Suffolk Hospital and Friends of the West Suffolk Record Office, where all my family’s papers are kept – and if I turned up dressed in jeans and a T-shirt it wouldn’t be appropriate.’
He is at peace with his family’s history and keen to remember his more successful ancestors.
‘Everyone grabs on to more recent events. There have been ups and downs just like in any family but my history includes people who did interesting, unusual things, too.’
Although effectively powerless to reclaim his family seat, in 2005 he started a charity to raise money to refurbish St Mary’s Church at Ickworth, his family’s spiritual home.
‘Generations of my family are buried there, including my father and my brothers, so I felt a need to restore it,’ he says. ‘After it was made redundant in 1984 and John bought it, it fell into a very bad state of repair. People had stolen stained glass, there were holes in the roof. There was a painted gold dove on the font cover and someone had even cut that off.
‘We raised around £1.2 million and now it’s open to the public for six religious services a year, and concerts and exhibitions. I’m really pleased to have made a difference. If I die tomorrow, it’s there.’
It makes sense, given the Hervey history, that Fred would place more faith in tangible assets such as bricks and mortar than mere cash, which can be frittered away.
It’s this conviction which drives him in Brick-owner. People with as little as £100 can invest in properties, which will then be looked after by asset managers. Investors will receive monthly dividends and after a year can sell their share.
‘If you own real assets, you can conserve wealth inter-generationally, but as soon as you liquidate those assets and have cash in the bank, that disappears very quickly,’ he says.
‘I’ve seen both those things happen in my family, and it’s what makes me want to help people own stakes in property – for instance, those who can’t afford to get on to the housing ladder.
‘There’s a link back to the building my family did in the past, but this is a modern day version of working with property. I think it will help people, and that’s what I’m driven to do.’
Fred has an American girlfriend, Melissa, and hopes one day to marry, have children and move back to the Ickworth area.
‘I feel such a strong link to it,’ he says. ‘I’d love to build my own house there – that’s my dream.’
With luck it would have more solid foundations than the recent past, at least.
‘We’ve had ups and downs like any family’