TIME TO START LISTING FAMILIES

Hugh Massingberd laments the

plight of our stately homeless, and suggests a remedy

SCENE ONE: The Tree House (a Gothick structure perched up a Tilia platyphyllos) in the grounds of Pitchford Hall, Shropshire, a bewitchingly romantic half-timber- framed house beside the Row Brook, on a sultry summer day a few years ago.

The owner, Caroline Colthurst, who has inherited this magical family seat through a line of descent stretching back to the 15th century, is regaling me with anecdotes about her eccentric predecessor, Lady Sybil Grant, who — disliking the sound of running water near the main house divided her time between the Orangery and the Tree House. The butler would Convey Lady Sybil's repasts on a silver salver from the Hall. Her husband, Gener- al Sir Charles Grant, ensconced in the west Wing surrounded by his sporting library, would communicate by battery telephone; in good weather they might meet for cof- fee on the lawn. The General would sug- gest to his guests after luncheon, in tones reminiscent of a field day, 'Like to take a look at old Sybil, what?' Scene Two: The kitchen of Brympton d'Evercy in Somerset, a Tudor house with a classical garden front in honey-coloured stone which forms a ravishingly pic- turesque group with a church and a medi- aeval chantry house — a setting, as Christopher Hussey wrote, 'that summaris- es so exquisitely English country life'. The owner, Charles Clive-Ponsonby-Fane, whose family have owned Brympton since the 1730s, is cheerfully reminiscing about his redoubtable grandmother — 'the worst-dressed woman I have ever known'.

Scene Three: A few years later (this year actually). Oliver Colthurst telephones me to say that they are having to sell up lock, stock and barrel at Pitchford.

Scene Four: I receive a letter from Charles Clive-Ponsonby-Fane in which he says, 'With great sadness . . . I have decid- ed to part with Brympton. As my accoun- tant said, "The money is going out faster than it is ever going to come in."' Curtain ...

Yes, curtains, in my view, for the English squirearchical way of life; for long- established small landowners presiding benevolently over rural communities and preserving for the benefit of the nation but at their own expense, that precious exem- plar of the so-called 'heritage', the English country house — 'our chief national artis- tic achievement', as Evelyn Waugh put it in his preface to the revised edition of Brideshead Revisited. Of course, many of us are vaguely aware of the crisis in country houses. How the decline in agriculture has rendered the 1,000-acre estate (traditional squirearchical landholding) quite inadequate to support the running of an historic building. How grants for repairs from English Heritage were virtually halved overnight (presum- ably to satisfy some half-baked egalitarian zeal). How, in spite of persistent lobbying from the Historic Houses Association, VAT is still payable on such repairs. How maintenance funds (the Treasury's sup- posed panacea for preservation) are still subject to income and capital gains taxes. How — despite promises made before it came to power in 1979 — the Conservative Government has never introduced listed- building repair allowances in taxation, which is a standard practice in the rest of Europe, even the notoriously 'heritage- unconscious' Republic of Ireland.

But nothing brought it all home to me so conclusively as the news that two of my most favourite houses, Pitchford (which members of my family rented from the Grants in the 1920s) and Brympton (which Charles and Judy Clive-Ponsonby-Fane have done so much to revitalise after it was let to a school), are to be alienated from their families. Heritage lobbyists always take pains to stress that they are campaign- ing to conserve the buildings not (perish the thought) their owners, but I passionately believe it is the families who give these places their special atmosphere. Once they and the idiosyncratic contents they have accumulated over the centuries disappear, what is left?

The fortunate few taken up as causes celebres — Calke, Belton, Kedleston, Fyvie, Chastleton — are rescued by the National Heritage Memorial Fund and then pre- served in aspic by 'Nanny' National Trust as museums. But the great majority of `illustrious obscure' family seats slip away unnoticed, unmourned, while the fabric of the countryside gradually collapses. There is admittedly nothing new in the sad spectacle of old families coming to the end of the line. I remember Michael Hes- eltine, in his first stint at the Department of Environment, telling me that he could not see any justification for 'subsidising' such families to live in surroundings which they could not afford. And Nicholas Rid- ley, another one-time environment secre- tary, in a speech to the membership of the Historic Houses Association, declared, 'There have to be some opportunities for today's nouveaux riches, so I am not impressed by the case of the anciens pau- vres.'

In short, the current 'Conservative' line is 'Good riddance to old rubbish and bring on the noovs.' But, as so often, it is the modernists who are way out of date. Up until 1914 and, at a pinch, even the early 1950s, there might well have been poten- tial new squirearchical dynasties ready to fill the shoes of the anciens pauvres in draughty country houses. Not any longer. As James Lees-Milne observed in an essay in The Landed Gentry in the 1960s: 'For the first time in our history their depleted ranks do not attract recruits from the new rich, who prefer a suburban villa with every "mod-con", limitless Jaguars and mink to the cold rewards of territorial aggrandisement.' How much more glam- orous for these 'movers and shakers' are the 'lifestyles' of 'showbiz' and the 'jet set' than the squirearchical responsibilities, with all their overtones of feudalism, paternalism, noblesse oblige and other now sadly unfashionable concepts.

The Earl of Shelburne, the persuasive president of the Historic Houses Associa- tion ('trade union' of the private owner), warns that there are 'potentially many hundreds of owners who cannot hold on financially much longer ... When they admit defeat, beaten by the challenge, will there be queues of nouveaux riches to step forward and take on where they left off? Of course not! Most successful entrepreneurs have more sense!'

Indeed the Ridley thesis does not stand up to close examination. Asil Nadir at Burley-on-the-Hill, Alan Bond at Glymp- ton, Peter de Savary at Littlecote and the late mysterious Mr al-Ghazzi at Hevening- ham — all came and went within a few years. It is, in fact, not easy to think of more than a handful of neo-squires who look as if they are putting down genuine roots — Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber at Syd- monton, John Paul Getty at Wormsley and Michael Heseltine himself at Thenford. Incidentally, Mr Heseltine might care to buy back the beleaguered Heveningham: it was he who sold it to Mr al-Ghazzi on behalf of the Government in the first place and I seem to recall him telling me it was his favourite house .. .

Where pleas for continuity of conserva- tion fail, perhaps statistics may succeed. Recently I have been involved in a special research project for the Historic Houses

Association into the alarming seepage of country houses from the private sector. The full report — to be written by myself and Michael Sayer, an historian and Nor- folk landowner — will not be published until next year, but the provisional figures seem to be bearing out one's worst fears. In broad terms, more than 400 — yes, four hundred — family seats have been sold over the last 20 years, and in most cases the contents have been dispersed.

To put this figure into perspective, in the early 1970s there were about 2,000 family estates (that is to say, properties of some 1,000 acres which had been in the family for two or three or more generations) extant in England, Scotland and Wales. Now a mere 1,450 with an historic house remain. The statistics indicate that in the 13 years since Margaret Thatcher came to power more than 250 family estates have been sold — at a fairly steady rate of 20- odd a year.

It is clear that the traditional family seats are simply withering away. Why are these families selling up? The overwhelming quantity of questionnaires returned in our survey cite the drip-drip-drip costs of main- tenance and repair linked to the viability of the estate, the decline of agriculture and the hopelessly inadequate grant offers from English Heritage (which, in any event, tend to be conditional on unfeasibly expensive standards of work). Gerald Harford, who sold the family seat of Little Sodbury Manor in the Cotswolds, pointed out: 'To have a swimming pool zero-rated for VAT while paying 15 per cent [now 17.5 per cent] to repair a crumbling 15th-century oriel window is simply a farce.'

Perhaps the most significant statistics show what has happened to the 400-odd houses since they were sold. Almost a quarter have been converted for commer- cial purposes — 'country house hotels', 'leisure centres' with golf courses, and so forth — many of which are now, in turn,

'We're into nouvelle cuisine.'

suffering acutely in the recession. Some (about 40) have been converted into flats. And, apropos the Ridley thesis, nearly 80 family estates have already been resold, often being further broken up in the pro- cess.

What we are witnessing, then, is the dis- integration of a heritage in the true sense of that maddeningly misused word: 'what is or may be inherited'. One squire, obliged to sell what had been his family's home since the mid-17th century, due to the unequal maintenance struggle, told us: 'I can't see this family voting Conservative again.'

So what is nice Mr Major's administra- tion, with its dream of 'wealth cascading down the generations', going to do to stop the rot? Last week I sought some answers from the 'Minister for Fun' (alias the Department of National Heritage), Mr `Dave' Mellor, but only managed to receive a basic briefing from an 'official' source. To wit, grants are available to out- standing properties from English Heritage (oh yeah?); there is the option of starting a maintenance fund (funny, isn't it, that only about 70 out of 1,450 owners have thought it worth doing so?); the National Heritage Memorial Fund can rescue major casual- ties (you mean with the pitifully underfund- ed resources which its former chairman, the saintly Lord Charteris of Amisfield, has pub- It( ly complained about?). More encourag- ing news, I learnt from the 'Fun'

spokesman, was that Dave is `looking care- fully' at the Historic Houses Association's proposals for tax reform; that he has recently appointed the livewire Viscount- ess Cobham (who has certainly gingered up Hagley Hall) as his 'special adviser on heritage and tourism'; and that the pro- posed National Lottery will yield useful cash for the heritage. Moreover, I was assured, the Government held firmly to the view that the best use for historic houses was for them to be lived in by pri- vate owners.

One only wishes — as the Bishop of Bradford remarked about King Edward VIII — that they would 'give more posi- tive signs of that awareness'. 'A stitch in time,' as Richard Roundel!, squire of Dor- fold in Cheshire, said to me, 'would save nine million' — the sum it eventually cost the National Heritage Memorial Fund to bail out Chastleton (a house of similar style to Dorfold).

The crisis of the country house has not simply been caused by the current reces- sion, or by events at Lloyd's (admittedly behind the sale of Pitchford), but by the fundamental fact that, in Lord Shelburne's words, 'Annual running costs to maintain and repair historic houses are seldom matched by available income.'

The best custodians for these properties are indeed their traditional owners. 'It is in no one's interest,' points out Lord Shel- burne, `not the taxpayer's, the tourist's or

local community's, that they should be forced to sell.' I know, from showing peo- ple round country houses, that the visitors tend to be far more interested in the family than in the finer points of art and architec- ture — and rightly so. What can be done to keep the squires, the true backbone of the countryside and the heritage, in situ? Well, some of them might set up charitable trusts (the National Heritage Memorial Fund has recently endowed one to save Burton Con- stable) and there is a raft of sensible pro- posals from the heritage lobby: tax-free maintenance funds, listed-building tax allowances, the abolition of VAT on repairs, better grants. Speaking personally, I would go further and start 'listing' the families (shades of Japan where they have `Living National Treasures'). This would mean that they would be committing their posterity to the property, rather like the monarchy, but most of them will tell you that, in any event, they regard themselves as stewards for life of a continuing her- itage.

When I suggested such a scheme to Mr `Chris' Patten, then Secretary of State for the Environment, he thought I was joking. But the departure of the likes of the Colthursts from Pitchford and the Clive- Ponsonby-Fanes from Brympton is not a comedy; it is a tragedy.

Hugh Massingberd is on the staff of the Daily Telegraph.