People say, where’s the stately home?
The ‘Big House’ may be long gone, but Glanusk Park still has charm and a royal link, writes Eleanor Doughty
Harry LeggeBourke grew up at Glanusk Park, a Welsh estate. Here, he enjoyed an “idyllic” childhood being taught to “ride, shoot, gut a fish, pluck a pheasant”.
His children, Lachlan, 17, and Serena, 12, have learnt the same skills: “Serena can back up the tractor as well as I can,” he says proudly. “Living here makes you practical.”
Harry, 48, the son of cavalry officer Capt William Legge-Bourke and Dame Shân Bailey, grew up on the estate near Crickhowell, 25 miles from Newport, with his two sisters, Tiggy (later nanny to Princes William and Harry), and Zara. “People say, ‘you have a silver spoon in your mouth’, and yeah, I’ve got a whole set,” he says.
After school he joined the Army – not the Royal Horse Guards like his father, nor the Grenadier Guards like his grandfather, but the Welsh Guards. “My father was disappointed that I didn’t join the Blues,” he says.
He loved the Army, serving as aide-de-camp to Field Marshal the Lord Guthrie, and supposes that he must somehow be one of few members of the Guards to have never worked on Trooping the Colour. The prospect of running Glanusk was ever-present, and he left the Army in 2001. When his father died eight years later, he found himself in charge of its 16,000 acres.
The estate came through his mother’s family, having been bought by her great-great-grandfather, Joseph Bailey, an ironmaster from Yorkshire, in 1826. Bailey built the “big house” of Glanusk Park shortly after, a three-storey Tudor-Gothic mansion. “Like all the great Victorian industrialists, they built what they wanted,” says Legge-Bourke.
In 1899, Bailey’s son, also Joseph, was made 1st Lord Glanusk; at one time, the family owned about 160,000 acres in Herefordshire and mid-Wales. “As my father once said, ‘I had very illustrious ancestors and very decadent descendants’,” LeggeBourke adds with a chuckle. “One Lady Glanusk was a compulsive gambler – two flies would be sitting on the wall, and she would bet which one would fly off first.”
The 160-room Glanusk Park was requisitioned during the Second World War, and the family moved into the 16-bedroom Dower House, also known as Penmyarth House. In 1944, a fire destroyed Glanusk; four years later, Legge-Bourke’s grandfather, Wilfred Bailey, 3rd Lord Glanusk, died of a heart attack aged 56, leaving “a gutted house and massive death duties”.
In 1953, Lady Glanusk demolished the house, and later married William Sidney, 1st Viscount De L’Isle VC, the sometime governor of Australia, commuting to his house in Kent. “In their day my grandparents lived here very grandly,” says Legge-Bourke. “My grandfather had his own train that went from Abergavenny to Scotland.”
This means that there is now a hole in the estate. “When anybody comes to Glanusk they say, ‘where’s the stately home?’” The church remains, where Legge-Bourke officiates at Christmas. Over lockdown, he set his children repainting the railings – “it was fun for the first two days and then became really dull”.
The Legges are descended from Thomas Legge, first Lord Mayor of London. The family’s connections give them a claim to the post of Lord Great Chamberlain, one of the Great Offices of State, currently held by the 7th Marquess of Cholmondeley.
This is not the only royal connection in the family. Legge-Bourke was a page to Queen Elizabeth II, and his mother a lady-in-waiting to the Princess Royal. His sister began working with the princes on account of their parents’ friendship with the Prince of Wales, who stayed at Glanusk during his time at Aberystwyth University. “My grandmother knew the Queen during the war and she looked after him,” he says.
Legge-Bourke’s collection of more than 300 oak trees includes the Queen’s Avenue. “When the Queen came to stay in 2012, I asked would she like a wood planted in her name, or an avenue. In 100 years’ time, it will be magnificent.”
Like the majority of estates today, Glanusk is diversified, with holiday cottages, a caravan park, a gin and whisky business, and field sports on the estate. Lockdown hit it hard: LeggeBourke postponed 12 weddings, and had the annual Green Man festival cancelled.
Happily, the caravan park has reopened, and people are able to enjoy Glanusk again. “I didn’t have a contingency,” he says. “We don’t have huge amounts of property, or massive farms.
On some years it’s better on the events, some better on the farming, so you’re always robbing Peter to pay Paul. There have been a lot of sleepless nights, wondering where the next pound is coming from. It’s been tough, but we will push on through.”
He is devoted to Glanusk. “I want to make it secure,” he says. “My grandmother told my parents [the finances] were sorted out before she died, but they weren’t. They had to sell the properties in London, the best pictures and we still had huge debts.” Legge-Bourke is more interested in saving the house than its contents. “I like my own types of pictures, instead of a Rubens. One can appreciate a good picture, but not if it’s at the price of losing your home.”
‘People say “You have a silver spoon in your mouth”, and yeah, I’ve got a whole set’
‘There have been a lot of sleepless nights. It’s been tough, but we will push on through’