Can ‘Downton dinners’ save stately home?

EVER since Downton Abbey hit our TV screens, the owners of Britain’s stately piles have cast envious glances at Highclere Castle, home of the Earl and Countess of Carnarvon and backdrop for the fictitious Crawley clan.

For while the Carnarvons have hit the jackpot, others have struggled to keep an aristocratic roof over their heads.

Four years ago, Lord Gerald Fitzalan Howard, brother of the Duke of Norfolk, and his wife Lady Emma, had to sell- off £2 million-worth of family silver and heirlooms to do just that.

Now they are hosting Downton Abbey–style suppers and other money-making wheezes as they struggle to hold on to Carlton Towers, where the family can trace its roots back 1,000 years.

‘Things are tough. We have to be inventive — there is not much we wouldn’t do to save our home,’ father-of-three Lord Gerald tells me at a champagne dinner hosted i n the magnificent Venetian drawing room of his Grade Il i sted Victorian Gothic gem. Indeed, that very room has been used for a gay marriage despite the Norfolks being the country’s leading Catholics — the church opposes same-sex weddings.

The house, which sits in 2,000 acres of Yorkshire parkland, has a new beauty parlour in the old servants’ quarters, where you can get your ears pierced or enjoy a hot-stone massage and a glass of champagne for £200.

Not to mention the £295-a-head Downton dinners (minimum of ten people) that include a night in one of the 16 bedrooms.

‘We don’t mind meeting new people,’ says Lord Gerald. ‘We’ve had to step up our business plans. I want this house to stay in the family for another 1,000 years. Even if my son Arthur doesn’t want the responsibility, I’m prepared to leave it to one of my daughters.’

Other schemes include converting a spot beneath the minstrels’ gallery into a pay bar for weddings. They have taken on a full-time wedding planner, too.

The family’s problems have been exacerbated by a recent misunderstanding when a gipsies’ Christian conference went wrong, and they felt compelled to give the £4,000 fee to the local village.

‘ It was terrible,’ says Lady Emma. ‘Less than 2,000 people live locally and 5,000 gypsies descended. I hadn’t realised it would be so large when I took the booking. The villagers felt violated, so we had to make a donation.’

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