INHERITING a thousand acres of Cornwall and the responsibility for looking after an historic house that has been in your family since 1427 is a prospect that would arouse a mixture of awe and dread in most people. But it happened to Sir Ferrers Vyvyan when in 1995 he was landed the job of looking after Trelowarren on the Lizard — and he is thriving on it.
Trelowarren’s main house was a tired Gothic pile surrounded by gardens from various eras. The remaining land was divided between woods and fields with a clutch of estate buildings all under traditional tenancy agreements and in degrees of disrepair.
It was all in such a parlous state that Sir Ferrers’s siblings were happy to let him take responsibility. “They were very cheerful about it,” he says. “Not surprising, as it was a huge liability, almost bankrupt and overdrawn at the bank.”
It took two years before the estate was fully under his control and he began the massive undertaking of trying to put the whole thing on a secure footing. “I had to have tunnel vision in the early days and just walk round ignoring great chunks of dilapidation in order to concentrate on one task at a time,” he explains. His darkest hour came when he was chopping firewood and delivering it to the local post office just for daily cash flow.
He had to find a plan that could unlock the potential of the place. He could maybe have shipped in some big cats and gone down the safari route. Or he could perhaps have gone for coach parties and cream teas, as so many other historic houses have done. Instead he plumped for upmarket, environmentally sound tourism.
Obviously Cornwall was the big draw, and the Lizard in particular. Described by some as the forgotten bit of Cornwall, it is designated an area of outstanding natural beauty and promises the kind of fishing net and rock pool family holiday most of us have as a distant memory from a pre-computer era.
“There are very few historic houses left in private ownership,” he says. “We wanted to conserve the place as a living community.”
Phase 1 of the masterplan involved the renovation of the traditional estate buildings as the existing tenancies expired or the occupants moved on. Refurbishment allowed a new use for the buildings as self-catering holiday lets, with several weeks sold off as timeshare ownership to provide all-year occupancy. Victoria, his wife, who teaches in the local school, was put in charge of all the interiors. “Having had experience of all sorts of self-catering holidays, we had a pretty clear idea of what we didn’t want the interiors to look like,” they explain.
Furnished with stylish Conran and Heal’s furniture, they have a clean, modern, minimalist look and use locally sourced materials wherever possible. “We have a lot of ash in the forest, so that has been our preferred wood,” says Sir Ferrers. Perhaps the ultimate in eco-chic is the recycling of architectural details. “It’s called Trelowarren Gothic. Basically we borrow design details from the main house and use them for cupboard doors and so on.”
The most recently completed restoration project was to turn the Grade II listed estate office building into four family houses. Already there is a waiting list for available time, and those lucky enough to get in early are not only enjoying the continuing transformation of Trelowarren, but are returning armed with one of those Scrabble words that gives you the winning score. The word is “fogou” and there’s one at Trelowarren. It’s an underground cavern, was probably built in the Iron Age and can house up to 90 people, but is shrouded in mystery because no one has quite explained what it was for.
For history lovers, an estate that has been in the same family since 1427 will obviously be fascinating, but even Sir Ferrers was surprised by his own researches. “I had signed up for a postgraduate course in the conservation of historic landscape, and my dissertation was on the gardens at Trelowarren.”
Rummaging in the family archives gave him a much greater understanding of his ancestors. “I spent a lot of time cursing a lot of them for incompetence” he says cheerfully. “It was basically a history of blood, gore and bankruptcy.”
There were Royalist forefathers running the Mint during the English Civil War, Vyvyans were locked in the Tower of London and others were excommunicated. Some adventured overseas, some wreaked havoc locally. And some took to gentler pursuits and commissioned fine gardens that Sir Ferrers is keen to restore.
He is re-laying the early 18th-century pleasure grounds and restoring the Victorian botanic garden. He is also reviving the walled garden to serve the estate’s thriving restaurant with organic produce. With the transformation of existing buildings under way, it was a chance to start on Phase 2: the construction of houses in the old orchard. The first six have been built and a further twenty are planned.
These are high-spec eco-houses, not your standard holiday chalets (Sir Ferrers shudders at the word). Built in traditional and allergen-free materials, they are heftily insulated and heated by a 350-kWh Austrian wood chip boiler, which is fired up with chippings from the estate’s own coppiced woodland.
As you swim in the pool, lined with estuary pebbles and heated by the same boiler, eat in the estate restaurant and stroll in the landscaped park, you may contemplate vanishing Cornwall. Daphne du Maurier’s Frenchman’s Creek is set at Trelowarren. “I simply hated leaving Trelowarren,” she wrote in a diary, “few places have made such a profound impression on me”.
“The silence is deafening” says Sir Ferrers. “All you can hear is the birdsong.” If you happen to inherit your own large family pile, you have an inspiring role model in Trelowarren.
Trelowarren bookings, www.trelowarren.com, 01326 222105; New Yard restaurant, Trelowarren, 01326 221595
- Godolphin house and gardens, www.godolphinhouse.com, 01736 763194
FAMILY CONCERN
COUNTRY house owners who inherit the family pile are used to being inventive when it comes to keeping a roof over their heads. Cream teas, battle re-enactments, weddings and zoos have all been deployed by families reluctant to sell off the east wing to developers. Using the house as a film location can also be very lucrative — Stokesay Court in Shropshire, pictured, is being used as the setting for the film version of the Ian McEwan film Atonement, starring Keira Knightley.
“Owners are really adventurous when it comes to thinking of fundraising schemes”, says Richard Jukes, of the Historic Houses Association. “It used to be a case of just opening the doors and letting people wander around for a small fee, but they have to do better than that now because the competition for days out now is so stiff. Most of these houses would not survive if the owners didn’t
do something, because repairs are so expensive. We reckon that 25 per cent of the annual repair bill for these properties is funded by selling works of art, and you can’t keep that up for long.”
MARY GOLD www.hha.org.uk
