Peer lets out country mansion to pay bills
WHILE the Queen ponders calls to rent out her palaces to fund spiralling repair bills, I discover one of Her Majesty’s loyal hereditary peers is having h to do just that.
Shipping heir Lord Rotherwick, whose lively wife Tania is the sister-in-law s of Mark Carney, C Governor of the Bank of England, is having to let their magnificent 17th century Oxfordshire mansion, Cornbury Park, P exchanging it for a modest cottage on the 2,500-acre estate.
Cornbury, home of the Wilderness music festival, aka Poshstock, is no longer financially viable for f Harrow-educated Robin Rotherwick, whose Cayzer family shipping empire once included the famous Union-Castle Line. L Tania tells me the upkeep of the property — a former royal hunting lodge — has become prohibitive. ‘These big houses are tough to maintain and very expensive to run,’ she says.
Tania, who became the second Lady Rotherwick in 2000 after flying enthusiast Robin’s divorce from construction heiress Sara McAlpine, adds: ‘We thought we had rented it out already and then unfortunately it didn’t happen. But we are still moving out.’
To add to their problems, Tania is finding it exhausting driving her children, aged 13 and eight, to Oxford every day for school.
‘It’s a three-hour round trip so I am also renting a house in Oxford and I will be there from Monday to Friday,’ she tells me.