Whenever I visit a stately home I inevitably end up with an emotional summary of my adventure. Sometimes, like at Byron’s Newstead Abbey, I feel strangely elated and happy. Sometimes I feel sad or creeped out. Sometimes, like on Saturday when I visted Calke Abbey, I feel depressed. “Calke Abbey,” as the National Trust brochure reads, “is a Baroque house built on the site of a former priory and completed in 1704 for Sir John Harpur. The family name changed to Crewe and then to Harpur Crewe and the family wealth was accumulated through clever marriage and the proceeds of land ownership. Throughout the generations the family displayed a range of eccentric characteristics from being strangely reclusive to fanatical collectors. The National Trust has decided to show Calke, as far as possible, as we found it in 1984 as a graphic example of the decline of the great country house that occured during the early to mid 20th century.” What the brochure doesn’t mention is that this decline has been heavily influenced by the sucession of crippling inheritance taxes that has brought most of these families financially to their knees and their houses and lands into the Trust’s posession in lieu of taxes they can’t afford to pay. (The trust is a seperate body of government design – call me a cynic but I’m sure that’s no coincidence). [Read more…] about Calke Abbey…the spell is unbroken…
