The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - The Telegraph Magazine
The Lady kick-starts a revamp
Carolyn Hart meets Emma, Viscountess Weymouth, whose love of food is behind a new era at Longleat House
IN A HOUSE FAMOUS FOR its incumbents – one eccentric lord, 70-odd wifelets, several ghosts and a partially estranged wife – it was never going to be easy to make one’s mark as the newest member of the Bath family. But Emma, Viscountess Weymouth, who married Ceawlin Thynn, Viscount Weymouth (Lord Bath’s heir) five years ago, is making a pretty good fist of it. It helps that Longleat, the house in question with its 200 rooms, miles of corridor and safari park of lions, hippos, wolves and giraffes (not to mention her favourite red pandas) holds no fears for her. She doesn’t even mind the phantoms. ‘I’ve been on the Longleat Ghost Tour,’ she says. ‘People said I was mad, but if I’m here by myself, I just leave all the lights on, put Family Guy on the telly and turn it up loud.’
Indeed, some would say Lord Bath, 86 and perched like a cuckoo in his gloriously clashing artist’s threads in a picture on the top floor of the house, is far more intimidating than any ghost could possibly be. But Lady Weymouth – who is the daughter of an English mother and Nigerian father, and will become Britain’s first black marchioness when her husband inherits – remains impervious. It’s beneficial that she’s gorgeous, exuberant, energetic and outgoing by nature, and… that she has a plan.
That plan is food. Lady Weymouth has discovered, via her trawls through the house with the Longleat archivist Dr Kate Harris, a massive cache of domestic papers that includes recipes by the 18th-century confectioner James Gunter (celebrity chef of his day) and details of the fruit and vegetables grown on the estate, kept by previous generations.
We meet in the Longleat apartment in which she and Lord Weymouth live with their two chil- dren, John, three, and one-year-old Henry. Generations of Bath children, stretching back to the 17th century, have had their heights inscribed in a doorway, and sun pours in through huge windows overlooking the park. In the evenings, the melan- choly roar of lions and the howls of wolves reach you through the gloaming. In the pale and marbled kitchen with its gigantic oak-leaf chandelier, Lady Weymouth appears like an intimation of spring in a floral Dolce & Gabbana skirt patterned with pink roses, and shoes adorned with rosebuds.
Over tea and her own biscuits, she reveals that her intention is to revive the produce originally grown at Longleat and use it in the estate’s cafés and restaurants. ‘I wanted a role. I didn’t want to be hanging around doing nothing. I want to be productive.’ To this end, she has launched Emma’s
‘I’ve been on the Ghost Tour. If I’m here by myself, I just leave all the lights on, put on the telly and turn it up loud’
Kitchen – a shop situated in the old kitchens of the house selling biscuits, jams, chutneys, chocolates, meringues and domestic paraphernalia. ‘There was a shop at Longleat already, but it didn’t sell much. I wanted to create a kitchen shop that sold things to do with the house. Everything in it is inspired by the archive,’ she says, ‘including a range of china that I copied from one of the handpainted wallpapers in the house.’
Despite the one-time presence of a fish house, ice house and bakery, historically the culinary bar at Longleat had been set fairly low. The Baths are descended from Alfred, who burnt the cakes, and since then Lord Bath has noted, ‘Cookery has never really run in the family that strongly.’
Emma’s Kitchen should change all that. ‘The range is made and curated by me,’ she explains. ‘All the biscuits are my recipes, made with my favourite flavours: oats, pineapple, chocolate – it’s a bit trial and error because I love adding things.’ Her shortbread is made fresh every day and ‘always sells out. We try to source all the ingredients locally. Longleat used to grow and create so much of its own food. I’m determined to bring that back.’ They have already reintroduced beehives into the Longleat orchards and have planted 4,000 vines in the walled kitchen garden – which is itself in the process of restoration. They’re even planning a revival of that very Victorian obsession with growing your own pineapples. In 2017, Lady Weymouth launched a food festival that will take place again in the grounds this year.
It’s a massive amount of work made trickier by the size of the estate. ‘Everything at Longleat is done on a vast scale,’ says Lady Weymouth. Five years in, she still finds ‘little cupboards and doors I’ve never seen before, so I don’t want to rush into anything. I take it slowly and live by The List.’ The List, it transpires, is an ever-expanding record of stuff she needs to do, ranging from unpacking lamps and replacing plugs, to taking part in a Dolce & Gabbana catwalk show, masterminding the food festival and, today, thinking about Easter.
For Lady Weymouth, Easter is a ‘bit like Christmas – with comforting nostalgic recipes. I’m a feeder. I love to entertain, so I want to produce delicious food that doesn’t take hours to make.’ For a bank holiday lunch she suggests duck breast (‘Ceawlin loves duck – he always goes for duck when we go shopping’) and berry sauce with a cream-free potato gratin. ‘I didn’t want the cream to clash with the berries,’ she says. ‘The potatoes are crispy, yummy and easy to do.’ For pudding she might make ‘some pretty meringue roses with red piping. I love a piping bag.’ There’ll be flowers from the gardens on the table and, later, an Easter egg hunt. Son John, taking time out from a recently conceived passion for Bruno Mars and/or being a pirate, ‘just loves a bucket of Easter eggs’.
‘Longleat used to grow and create so much of its own food. I’m determined to bring that back’
Serves 2
— 100g cucumber, deseeded and sliced finely
— 120ml good-quality gin (I love Hendrick’s or Sipsmith)
— 6-8 fresh mint leaves (optional), plus sprigs to garnish
— 2-3 tsp sugar syrup — 10ml fresh lime juice — 2-3 dashes mint bitters
(optional)
— ice cubes —soda water, to top up Chill two highball glasses.
Reserve a couple of cucumber slices for a garnish and place the rest in a blender with the gin. Blitz to a purée (you can add the mint leaves here, if you like, for a stronger green colour).
Pour the liquid through a fine strainer into a cocktail shaker, mashing the solids with a spoon to extract as much liquid as possible. You should end up with around 200ml liquid.
Add the sugar syrup, lime juice and a few dashes of mint bitters, if using. Shake well.
Half-fill the glasses with ice then pour over the cucumber gin and top up with soda water. Give the drinks a good stir then garnish with the reserved cucumber slices and mint sprigs.