Peer lets home for £3.6m to pay for marriage split

THE king of the Chipping Norton set, Lord Rotherwick, has been unseated from his Cotswolds castle following his separation from his second wife, Tania. Shipping heir Robin Cayzer, the 3rd Lord Rotherwick, lives in the lodge on his 2,500-acre Cornbury Park estate, above, near Charlbury, while Lady Rotherwick lives in nearby Oxford.

In lieu of an expensive settlement, the canny peer is renting out Cornbury House on a tenyear lease for £3.6million, as a more elegant way of funding the estranged couple’s separate lifestyles.

Grade I-listed Cornbury House, the scene of the annual Wilderness Festival — aka ‘Poshstock’ — was put on the market this week for £30,000 per month on an initial ten-year lease. Harrow-educated Robin, 62, tells me he is ‘very happy’ to downsize to a smaller house after spending 26 years in the 17th-century mansion. Hinting at the separation, he tells me: ‘There are personal reasons that make it a workable solution.’

The additional income for the couple, pictured below, who count David and Samantha Cameron among their friends, will also help cover the maintenance costs for the house.

Tania, 52, whose sister, Diana, is married to Bank of England Governor Mark Carney, previously said the sums involved had become prohibitive. Lord Rotherwick adds: ‘These houses need permanent ongoing maintenance. It would be wonderful to help pay for the upkeep.’

Lord Rotherwick married Tania in 2000 following his divorce from construction heiress Sara McAlpine, and the couple have a son together, in addition to three children from Robin’s first marriage.

Before reports of their separation emerged last summer, Tania said she had moved to Oxford because doing a three-hour school run to the city each day was exhausting. Cornbury House was briefly let to media mogul Elisabeth Murdoch following her 2014 split from PR man Matthew Freud. It has been available to rent privately for the last two years, but Lord Rotherwick is now ‘exposing it to all and sundry’ after no tenant was found. ‘It’s not good for these stately homes to be left empty,’ he says. ‘They are designed to be lived in.’ Should one of Lord Rotherwick’s friends prefer even more comfortable lodgings than the luxury yurts pitched at August’s Wilderness Festival, they should give him a call. The aristocratic landlord tells me that the terms are ‘negotiable’.