The Sunday Telegraph - Sunday

For sale: 286 heirlooms surplus to requiremen­ts

Henry and Kate Berkeley are getting rid of the clutter at Spetchley Park as part of a major renovation to make it a modern family home. Eleanor Doughty reports

-

Country house owners often talk about modernisin­g their homes, such as adding en suite bathrooms and build- ing kitchen-diners. Henry Berkeley, of Spetchley Park in Worcesters­hire, is taking this one step further. Instead of living with hundreds of years of family heirlooms, he’s asked Sotheby’s to sell them. Now that’s modernisin­g.

The 50-year-old former Army officer inherited Spetchley in 2017, when his father, Major John Berkeley, died, leaving the two great Berkeley houses to each of his sons – Spetchley to Henry, and Berkeley Castle in Gloucester­shire to his elder brother, Charles. The house Henry inherited needed work. The last time anyone decorated, he explains, was 1910, bar a lick of paint in the Eighties, meaning that the plumbing and electrics were Edwardian.

Worse still, it was full of stuff, accumulate­d over several centuries. The house was laid out “like a museum, with everything pushed to the sides”. As children, the Berkeley boys were not allowed to use the main stairs, and the door to the drawing room was locked every day except Christmas Eve, when present-wrapping took place. The kitchen was downstairs, miles away from the reception rooms; the heating had to be on constantly; windows, painted shut, didn’t open, and the frames fell apart in one’s hand. The hallway, painted brown, with spartan lighting – “no standing lamps, no table lamps, just two chandelier­s” – was spooky, with a 19th-century suit of armour looming in a corner.

The furniture, much of it made for Spetchley, was full of Berkeley parapherna­lia. When Henry’s mother, Georgina Stirling-Home-DrummondMo­ray, moved into Spetchley, she was given her father-in-law’s desk, but found it full of his things. “There wasn’t a drawer or a cupboard that was empty,” says Henry, mildly exasperate­d. “One cupboard contained 112 boxes of Player’s cigarettes, all empty. Another was full of Christmas cards, and had a Turkish cigarette box in it, full of wheat!”

Henry spent half his childhood in this house (the family enjoyed winters at Berkeley and summers at Spetchley), but it was no place for him and his wife, Kate, a nutritiona­l therapist, to bring up their two children, Violet, 11, and Wilfrid, nine. So they took the decision to sell up; not the whole collection, but things that were “surplus to our requiremen­ts,” says Henry. “We didn’t want to take the core of the collection away from Spetchley, but we are selling things that aren’t pertinent to our lifestyle.”

The 18th-century harpsichor­d is among the 286 pieces that will go under the hammer on Dec 11. Other items in the catalogue include George II and George III pieces of silver, much of which has long been shut away. “If it’s been in the cellar for 50 years, what is the point of keeping it?”

The sale is one part of Spetchley’s seven-figure renovation project. The couple have replanned the house with architect George Saumarez Smith of Adam Architectu­re and interior designer Emma Deterding of Kelling Designs. The kitchen is moving into the former dining room, which will shift two rooms along into the unloved drawing room, with the library in between. There will no longer be an Aga at Spetchley – “cooking is a key thing in my life and I need to have something functional,” says Kate.

Berkeley Castle has been in the Berkeley family since the 11th century, but it wasn’t until 1606 that Spetchley joined the portfolio, when it was bought by Rowland Berkeley. The original house was a Tudor building surrounded by a moat, but in 1651, on the eve of the Battle of Worcester, it was burnt down by Royalist troops. In 1811 work began on a new, Palladian house.

Then owner Robert Berkeley took his children on a grand tour, the first of many trips to fill Spetchley with treasure. During the Second World War, the house was used as a convalesce­nce home, and in 1942, Randal Berkeley, 8th Earl of Berkeley, died, leaving Berkeley Castle to his nephew and Henry’s grandfathe­r, Robert George Wilmot Berkeley, the son of Robert Valentine Berkeley, owner of Spetchley. When Robert Valentine died, the two houses were united – as were the inheritanc­e tax bills. “My grandfathe­r had to sell 30,000 acres at Berkeley, and still didn’t manage to pay it all off,” says Henry. “My father finished it off in the Eighties, and then had his own father’s death duties to pay.” The late Major John Berkeley, former joint master of the Berkeley Foxhounds, didn’t do any meaningful work to the house, instead prioritisi­ng his beloved garden. Anything that was done, “was the cheapest you could get. There was no real design to any of the rooms. Over the years, it became a mishmash of different ideas.”

In time, Henry’s father took the decision to split the two houses again, dishing out Berkeley to Charles, and Spetchley to Henry. “I was never meant to inherit either house,” says Henry, who grew up untroubled by any stately burden. In 1998, he left the Army, in 2000 married Kate, and by 2010 they had moved to Worcesters­hire to learn more about Spetchley’s 4,500-acre estate.

Selling up was tough. “We have had to empty out 250 years of history, which has never been done before,” says Henry. “I don’t feel guilty about selling the furniture,” he adds. “It’s not fair on Kate to move into someone else’s house, which it would feel like because it hasn’t changed for a century.” Spetchley today, as movers pack up the last paintings, is eerie, with shadows on the walls where once frames hung. “It looks a sad, empty place now,” says Henry. “But it is going to be amazing when it’s finished. It will be ours – full of our stuff, not everyone else’s.”

The Spetchley Park sale is on Dec 11 at Sotheby’s

‘If it has been in the cellar for 50 years, what is the point of keeping it?’

 ??  ?? NOT BY THE BOOK
Kate and Henry Berkeley with dog Parsley in the library
PALLADIAN HOUSE Spetchley Park, below; the library, bottom; a harpsichor­d from 1776, which is in the auction with an estimate of £30,000 to £50,000, top right
NOT BY THE BOOK Kate and Henry Berkeley with dog Parsley in the library PALLADIAN HOUSE Spetchley Park, below; the library, bottom; a harpsichor­d from 1776, which is in the auction with an estimate of £30,000 to £50,000, top right
 ??  ??
 ??  ??
 ??  ??

Newspapers in English

Newspapers from United Kingdom