Many young girls dream of growing up in a palace, but this was reality for Lady Henrietta Spencer-Churchill. At the age of 12, she and her brother, James, moved into Blenheim Palace after her father became the 11th Duke of Marlborough.

“When my brother and I moved into Blenheim, my father said we could each choose a room in the house,” she recalls. “James chose two low-ceilinged rooms between the main and second floors. It was like a little den, and there was a secret staircase that led up to the nursery floor.

“I picked a light south-facing sunny room that overlooked the village of Bladon. I chose blue wallpaper from Colefax and Fowler and blue and pink floral curtains, which are still there.”

It was her first stab at interior design, but not her first encounter with Britain’s most important pieces of baroque architecture. Spencer-Churchill, 47, and her brother, the Marquess of Blandford, 50, a reformed drug addict, lived first at Lee Place, a Georgian manor house in Charlbury, seven miles away, but were always up at the big house.

“When my grandfather was alive, my father was running the Blenheim estate, so James and I spent a lot of our early years there. The park is 2,000 acres, so there was always a lot to explore, although we had to share it with tourists in the summer.”

She still shares it with the legacy of her privileged, but often unhappy ancestors. Built to celebrate John Churchill’s victory over Louis XIV at the Battle of Blenheim in 1704, the palace has been inhabited by a colourful cast of characters during the past 300 years. Consuelo Vanderbilt, the American heiress, unwillingly married off by her mother to the ninth duke — who needed her millions to maintain Blenheim — arrived in 1895, eventually obtaining a divorce in 1920. Sir Winston Churchill, a first cousin of the ninth duke, was both born and buried there.

Spencer-Churchill’s ancestors suffered scandals, debts and marriage disasters, and her own childhood was filled with larger-than-life figures. Due to Blandford’s drug abuse, their father has ensured Blandford will inherit only the title of duke of Marlborough — Blenheim will pass to his son. The palace, and its estate, has in many ways been the only constant in Spencer-Churchill’s “pretty disruptive childhood” and adult life. The family motto, “ Faithful but Unfortunate,” seems particularly apt.

Her parents divorced when she was one, and in 1961 her father married Tina Livanos, former wife of the Greek billionaire shipping tycoon Aristotle Onassis. Suddenly, Spencer-Churchill had an older stepsister, Christina, who became the world’s richest woman at 24, and a stepbrother, Alexander. “Initially, we saw little of them, but then Christina came to live with us. There was a 10-year gap between us, and Christina was like a big sister to me. I hero-worshipped her although she was off-the-wall, and quite an unruly teenager.”

According to Spencer-Churchill, Christina enjoyed a relatively normal childhood at Blenheim for the first time in her life, attending a local school, riding her horse in the country, and escaping the pressures of the Onassis dynasty. “We did girlie things together like riding and swimming. Christina had an addiction to Mars Bars and Coca-Cola, so we always had to stop off at the sweet shop. She called me Hennywetta, and although she was supposed to call her new stepfather Uncle Sunny, she addressed him as Sun Bun!”

Spencer-Churchill’s father and Tina divorced in 1971, but she stayed in touch with Christina, spending many summers with her in Greece. “In the evenings, we’d go on boat trips together, and she’d reminisce about her happy times at Blenheim and Lee Place.”

Spencer-Churchill lost both her step-siblings young: Alexander died in 1973 in a plane crash at 24, and Christina died in Buenos Aires in 1988, at 37, after suffering a heart attack when her daughter, Athina, was three.

The children’s nanny, Audrey, who later married her father’s valet, Ray, was a huge influence and continues to live on the estate today. “My parents divorced when I was young, which wasn’t so normal in those days. Nanny was always there for us. Christina adored Nanny, and when I used to see her in Greece she always wanted to know how she was.”

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