‘Our energy bills are absolutely eye-watering’

Great Estates

children, and their blended family includes Julie’s two older children.

They took over running Mapperton in 2016, but it was a soft handover, and Lord Hinchingbrooke’s mother Caroline still oversees the gardens.

Lord Hinchingbrooke, the eldest of his parents’ three children, had long known that Mapperton was his destiny. “I knew it would need propping up, and that’s partly why I became an entrepreneur before taking it on. I didn’t want to go into the City, but it was important to make some money.”

There is a residual family sadness about the loss of Hinchingbrooke. “We all feel sorry that Hinchingbrooke went because there is a family link with that house that there isn’t with Mapperton,” he says.

The two houses are utterly distinct from one another. While Hinchingbrooke can be seen in detail from the east coast mainline, Mapperton is 45 miles from Exeter and almost 60 to Bristol. “If you chose a spot in England that is as far away from any large town or city as possible, it’s pretty much Mapperton,” he says.

This makes it a difficult estate to make work commercially. “One of our great challenges is attracting enough local people to come and visit,” he says. “We simply don’t have the population density.” Hence the digital footprint and the myriad commercial ventures: weddings, holiday cottages, a rewilding project, glamping and, just launched, exclusive overnight stays in the house for the first time.

Another of their focuses is on wellbeing, and a nascent project that will see local primary care networks and surgeries able to refer patients to nature-based programmes at Mapperton. The Hinchingbrookes have called this “social wilding”.

“For these places to be relevant, they need to connect with their communities and they need to be places that communities benefit from,” says Lord Hinchingbrooke.

Is now a good time to be an estate owner? “There are many headwinds, particularly following the pandemic,” he says. “For many of us it continues to be an almighty struggle.”

His insurance bill has tripled in the past five years to an almost six-figure sum, while utility costs are “absolutely eye- watering” but non- negotiable, since for conservation the house must be kept at a steady temperature.

In due course, he will become 12th Earl of Sandwich, about which he has mixed feelings. “I shall probably take it on,” he says, “but I will wear it lightly.”