The Story Of The Real Downtown Abbey | High Stakes At Highclere | Timeline

bid for an hour cost at two hundred thousand two twenty two twenty two four at three hundred thousand and against you in front at three hundred thousand giddy's bid for an hour any more on top or below at three three twenty high clear castle in hampshire family seat of the earls of carnarvon for more than 300 years on the rail in front at four hundred tattersall's auctions new market a tenth lord carnarvon is hoping for a top price for his prize philly thank you jack and also thank you very much four hundred thousand pounds but a drop in the ocean to a man who needs to find a million pounds a year to run his house in the present market i think it's a good price what now what happens now what happens now well tattersall's in due course will send me some money and it'll go right the overdraft off thank you very much for coming down nobody with their own castle a six thousand acre estate a loyal staff of 85 and a string of thoroughbred racehorses could gracefully complain of want but in the 1990s those whose ancestors despised trade must learn the jargon of the marketplace assets must be managed profits maximized the men in suits not the coronets call the shots high clear and impressive victorian gothic pile is at the heart of lord carnarvon's problems the castle was um was built in 1840 it was the the third earl who's over there with the castle painted behind him who was the earl that commissioned um charles barry to design the castle at the time it was called highclere house and it was a very beautiful georgian house and along came the victorians as only the victorians could do and wanted something bigger and grander and they didn't want to call it highclere house it had to be highclere castle which meant you had to castellate it so huge big central tower and and charles barry refaced the entire georgian house with bath stone and as he was also responsible for designing the house of parliament you can you can see the similarities as you drive up to the castle over time the bath stone crumbled so did the family fortunes in 1923 the estate passed into the hands of harry's grandfather he should never have been painted like this he looks frightfully stern doesn't he and he's painted in his army uniform but his was an amazing life as he described himself as the last of the mohicans and he was then at edwardian era that they just lived life to the full life was one long party wine women and song and there were people in highclere all the time and i think that generation just didn't really think about the not all the money went on high living before that the fifth earl bankrolled the search for tutankhamen's treasure perhaps the fabled curse of the egyptian king was visited on the family as the years rolled on a hammer horror atmosphere of neglect and ruin descended on the castle when the sixth earl died the present lord carnarvon was left with huge debts and a castle much in need of repair when my grandfather in the last few years of his life as he began to get more and more aged and so the house died with him and the last few years were ghastly and it was appalling and and you thought gosh i don't really care what happens to the castle and then as soon as my parents took it over and put the love and the effort and the enthusiasm back into the house and so you know it began to come alive again high clear has up to now been able to steer clear of the well-trodden path from ancestral home to heritage theme park the castle is open to the public only in the summer months thank you liam eddie what do you think this fell you wish they were all the same i think he's got possibilities yes i mean and not every visitor to the estate is expected to pay their five pounds and buy a souvenir pencil just like mr charlton this morning when you said have you got any nice well i don't know whether they've got any nice horses the queen is a frequent visitor to the high clear stables lord carnavon is her racing manager what's the jockey right steve raymond ride a two-year-old alongside a three-year-old that never went this is mr muir ma'am the one she's she's got a very nice one i thought of by that's right yeah and she's got a very nice three-year-old with um chapel hyam belongs to shaykh muhammad there's a good walker this fell he was this is my royal academy tree man all right it's very depressing i mean he's got hasn't he got all his bells it's a cozy chummy world of privilege and class the sovereign her faithful lord and several stout pairs of wellies tradition bonds the carnavon family and their staff too as benevolent masters and loyal retainers rather than employers and employees but the castle is losing money on a grand scale and there's a feeling that this must change your father guards the estate quite jealously harry um well he he does in one respect i mean he's he's very protective of um not just the family i think but but you know everyone who who works on the estate and he's always been like that and he's fiercely protective of the estate maybe protective is better than possessive um it's a it's a worry about what will happen in the future um but everyone who lives here on the estate as i say not just the family you know all the so many people's livelihoods are affected by um by this and there's a you know an incredible love of the place from from all of us oh dear maureen cummins has been with the family for 27 years she knows and has cleaned every nook and cranny of the castle the american-born wife of the present lord carnavon came to highclere 40 years ago hers is a never-ending struggle against escalating repair costs well we'll just have to see whether it's this year or next year how could i have to win the lottery i think he will release it family conference do the lottery well we'll have to encourage you he does he does he's never got more than two numbers so far he's gonna need a few more than that the family's great hope for the coming flat season is lake coniston a four-year-old cult bought for 20 000 pounds and jointly owned by lord carnavon and a syndicate headed by harry look at this look at this jeff yeah he's feel that action he's in great form if the horse does well he'll win a few thousands in prize money but more importantly by the end of the season they may be able to sell him for perhaps as much as a hundred times their original outlay two million pounds he definitely was in front earlier than i wanted him to be these then are the resources a castle a park a loyal staff title tradition dignity and enthusiasm but in the britain of the 90s can the carnavons combine all these elements into a profit-making package and keep the flag flying harry's wife chica runs a private catering business high clear catering title opens doors cheam prince charles's old prep school is celebrating its 300th birthday with a dinner for more than 600 people chica and harry with their friend tim howland are pitching for the catering we're very very close and actually you came to our ball five years ago the contract will be made far more lucrative if they can negotiate to supply wine as well as food after dinner do you want to have to have i mean if the school are definitely you're providing the wine are you yes we are definitely right some wine an aristocratic background means a foot in the door but makes the arthur daily hard sell inappropriate softly softly did you ever cover champagne imagine champagne may be coming with the wine i've also still got to negotiate that perhaps you could mention that in your yes well could you we can give you quite a good price on this yes maybe i have to give it to you for more for less less than yes you would be able to get it all harry and chica failed to clinch the champagne deal it's like the labors of hercules my like the fourth bridge um on and off 20 i'm in my 27th year i've done a good 25 years actually in the castle and i had a year's break when the lord was rather senile the sixth earl and then i came back again to work in the castle robert taylor the old butler asked me to come back and help mrs reid the housekeeper so i was quite pleased because i missed the castle for a couple of years so do you remember what it was like when it was lived in permanently when you first came here oh yes it was entirely different to what it is now i mean it was all more of a upstairs and downstairs type of thing it's the place is much more alive and used to what it should be and its capabilities have widened to take full advantage of these capabilities harry and chica are hosting their first medieval banquet complete with serving wenches minstrels and court jester it's to be an office outing for 50 computer salespeople from basingstoke not an undertaking for the squeamish or inexperienced i wish there was a lot more days like this it's certainly these these are the days that um really make a big difference to the castle and uh you know that's what we've got to try and try and achieve hopefully over the next year or so getting more and more days which are this much turnover all right nice smart girls well many years ago it used to be the dining room yeah i think but um he wouldn't have this wouldn't have been his for him at all no highclere was a was a family home and only for his friends and he loved entertaining gosh i mean if he probably knew if he'd known that you could have a banquet here that looked like this he probably would have had them all the time it's doubtful whether the sixth earl knew many people from basingstoke the firm is celebrating last year's turnover of 60 million pounds in the only way possible normally this noisy no this is something i've never experienced at highclere it just isn't no it's something completely different yeah they do yeah i suppose that's what it's all about isn't it you just do it it's just me i know i don't want to go back out there i really don't why what happened well there's rather a lot of fruit food on the floor rather a lot which is squash grapes squash bananas squash everything i'm glad i don't have to do the cleaning um they are very rowdy as you can hear probably i've had many offers tonight but what i'm doing later i think if they weren't so drunk that's it no great problems i hope so you think this might be a regular occurrence i don't know really it's not really suitable for this kind of place not this kind of effort news must when the devil drives there's somebody's thrown something at it what is it potato it looks like some fruit the banquet brought in a mere 5 000 pounds and left everyone feeling there must be more dignified ways of paying for new curtains new market the opening day of the flat racing season when he bought lake coniston harry was risking other people's money on a hunch today lake coniston's first outing he'll find out whether he has a winning thoroughbred or a pig in a poke the 12 000 pound prize is mere oats and vets money lake coniston must show well throughout the season if harry's hunch is to be turned into the hoped for millions i don't think we wouldn't be normal if we weren't a little nervous everybody a lot of anticipation first run of the year horse looks great but um it's very infectious you know we travel around all the all the owners always in the first race you've just got to hope that he's um you know he's he's really fit and tight and well and you know we think he is but there's always you know just got to wait and see his favorite he was favorite on radio four he is favorite and he should be favorite on his form and and if things go well one likes to think he should win but it doesn't racing doesn't work like that despite success on the race course it was clear that radical changes had to be made at high clear a stately home country park and medieval banquet business is no place for amateurs however enthusiastic the caravans are bringing in a professional manager a man in a suit there just wait and see how the land lies and hopefully we'll have him trained within a few months it's just one of these things you've just got to go with the flow basically i'm very adaptable it's just if i feel like he's doing anything major to affect things with the workings in the castle i'll just you know put him right basically a clay pigeon shoot between the british and the french is being held at the castle and the guns are out and for the staff the word is the new manager has just arrived and there's going to be sweeping changes adrian wiley's first port of call is the castle's guides personally welcome everyone who manages to get to high cleaver because i don't think we've at all been consistent and where we open um and how we open and i think that anybody who actually arrives on an open day must be congratulated things are going to change in my opinion they're going to change for the better we're obviously looking towards based on last year's performance 25 000 i'd be very disappointed if we can't make that 35 to 40 000 in the first year we should be having 140 to 160 000 visitors a year of which 50 000 of those are going to be going around the house and that is my personal objective and an objective that you need to be aware of i think that i have a daughter who's married to a frenchman i can't believe it i can't speak a word of the language for maureen the housekeeper this is the first time she's had to take direct orders from anyone outside the carnarvon family if you could remove those what i want to do is remove anything that makes people's vision focus on the wrong things and therefore if there's something that's carpet that's worn or a book that's tatty unless it's a particular book that has a relevance if we could actually remove this i think that book is certainly something which detracts from the overall experience now look at those views absolutely stunning now i have learned maureen that the temple up there is called heavenscape yes it's a folding right again i think those baskets unless there is historical significance they look tatty again the relevance in this room so we'll close this room in other words unless there's relevance so if one's doing the guided tour even i would have difficulty saying well look here's a lovely bathroom but that room you can say the queen used or or whatever we've got some basic good ideas they come into practice well then we should all benefit he's supposed to be putting me into a role of house manager whether that will work or not i don't really know it's a promotion change of title i'd call it the sales side of life at highclere has been on taken on a very sort of passive role and everything has been done through the old boy network rather than a competent marketing strategy when they haven't had anybody who single-handedly has just set his objectives and gone for it so it's the difference between employing the family to have a go at something against actually having someone who's totally accountable and responsible who quite clearly if he doesn't achieve what he sets out to achieve then you can hack him off which you actually can't do and of course harry would be most upset if one said right harry well i'm saying i'm cutting you off from the family because you haven't succeeded whereas quite clearly um i'm in there my neck's in the noose and if i don't produce the goods then they just merely boot me out and i think it's as simple as uh have you talked to the guides about revising the opening hours and yes i have done a guided tour yes i have done i want to actually talk through with you the implications of that and hopefully could you give us a bit of information with your approval i'm i am now convinced that this is in fact the correct way forward and what i'd like to recommend therefore is we reverse the route so the arrival story will be guests arriving in castle peace in the normal way and they will all trundle off down to the back door which in fact would be the visitor arrival area and they're then welcomed into to into the um downstairs area where they would of course the first thing they hit them is that wonderful smell of cooking and the tea and we would then go upstairs um on a tour that would take perhaps three or four of the rooms out of yes um they then go downstairs and then the product each step the visitors take becomes better and better and better whereas before it was arriving to the front door going to the tradesman's door and therefore everywhere they go each step becomes more and more uh enchanting that sounds very very interesting and well worth attention etc my idea for the press day focuses very much on on as you know press need motivating and the most wonderful opportunity i felt was available to us which would be if my lord you'd be agreeable to presenting yourself on a horse on a horse um i don't think i'd be on a horse now harry said that you were an excellent rider but you hadn't ridden for a year and i just i think i think that'd be that'd be going beyond the itself would be such a wonderful photo opportunity honestly a fair of me to just drop it in your lap immediately but if it's if you felt it was quite out of the question that i'd work on something ladies day at royal ascot having won on its last two outings harry's horse lake coniston is going for his third win in a row and a top prize of 33 000 pounds outside the classic races i think trying to win races at royal ascot is the um is the ultimate having a horse i like honestly is you know the biggest biggest thrill of all but it's very nerve-wracking he's odds-on favorite today and we all know anything can happen there's no such thing as a racing certainty but we're all a bit nervous but hopefully he'll come through whatever in one piece because the ground is a bit fast but we won't use that as an excuse yet what i'd like to do in the the purpose of this meeting is to go through all the various events that we've actually got for the next month back at high clear there's only a month before the castle opens for the summer season adrian has assembled his newly created management team for the first time there are problems of communication and this then will become a monthly ritual last tuesday of every month nightclub meeting um in in the castle means we're bringing everyone in specially couldn't be better for the last wednesday because you're not open on tuesday i think it's probably worth it because i think it'd be quite a useful opportunity to actually it's very useful thing i was just thinking if it was a wednesday it would say they're coming in specially that was all they'd be here ready then to open up and go i take your point it's up it's up to you well the only comment i have on the wednesday is i've got to lay the table ready for the opening on the wednesday unless you're having it somewhere else this would be a mobile location keep it keep it with the tuesday if it's a problem i'm very keen that we use uh to communicate with each other a radio um into interway system so that each of us can relate to each other very easily very quickly and i was delighted to gather that i gather we have got a radio communication system so the system that you have is is what oh right i understood that speaking of canada that it was that it would provide the sort of radio communication system that that did exist but if we can buy it or acquire it yes at the moment it's not ours i thought it was our property um possibly not yet acquired at the moment it's not ours and it's not available to us in that particular circumstance right but one way or the other whether we buy this mystery piece of equipment or whether we don't buy this mystery piece of equipment there will be a radio communication system because although this year again we're going to be reasonably under in terms of numbers in the future there will always be uh uh communications between the two because in the future all the events that we do put on we will be taking care for example of the car parking first number seven so factual second number one lake coniston third number 12 narita and the fourth horse number eight western fritz i'm coming have a good rest of your day all right bye bye hurry we're going well it's easy in the traffic that's true never mind it's a minor setback it's a minor it's a very minor setback it's lord caravan is up early from today the castle will be open to the public for three months and the crucial test of adrian wiley's new reforms that's a new venture for you welcome i'm giving a sort of professional stately home marketing yes i think he's he he's done he's looked after harwood and uh he's been in charge of a big hospital and he's uh been in charge of a big hotel and his ideas are well worth trying i'm sure the signing is much better than it was before and we're going to hopefully people might leave their television and get a bit of fresh air today and uh miss wimbledon one of the one of the things that we were going to do here yesterday again in last preparations was more than anything to create a bit of color in the courtyard because i think that is important um and i was thinking more in terms of the traditional hanging baskets which his lordship felt was really quite unacceptable apart from the fact he hates hanging baskets not that i was to be aware of that so within moments he had disappeared with some in the van leslie and the troops and we've come back with this creation and um my anxiety of course is the fact that it's here and the fact that um we're going to leave it out here on the basis that absolutely nobody will dream of pinching anything so um from my point of view looking at the bottom line um it's the turnover that matters not the fact that one's gone through half the stock half have you managed to get hold of your radios no i haven't actually on that one there leslie's leslie's um uh failed me he's given me a long list of excuses he said the home office has given him strict instructions not to be issued and given to anyone although quite clearly in the past we have used it for house opening um he's fraught it with with with reasons why it can't be available for police radio links and so on and so forth so what we're actually have agreed is he's going to get rid of his radios and i'm going to get a new set um and that's where we are at the present but he's failed to give me the actual telephone number um so that i can actually speak to the so-called people that he has who's issued with these radios but um like everything else i took counsel from albert who informs me that the radio is really no good at all that they're about 100 years old and quite frankly fit for the dustbin so we shall then return the compliment by when he wants to use them for the shooting season by saying i'm sorry these have been allocated on a strictly controlled basis sports race down the years they've always had the same motto and it's old norman french means one only will i serve it's the view that we have here we have to work extra hard so means one only will i serve now when the present tell ask his father what does it mean he said so the servants know who's the bloody boss thank you very much not at all lovely having you with us how's it been going fantastic come and see what they're for he's the old stables yeah a lot of it's gone already you see but all this has been left behind by people who've gone to do something else go and have tea or go around the garden they didn't want to they saw them when they arrived and they didn't want someone else to have them before they come back so they buy them first and leave them here in the cool so it works quite well you know i mean for our first day we're very very pleased excellent i suppose looking at what we've done today various areas have sparkled but what we've got to do is get in place a system whereby if you looked at say for example the tea rooms today for all intents and purposes if you said to ann and what do you think today great it's been wonderful we've been working at capacity we've taken 520 pounds isn't that brilliant um quite frankly no it isn't brilliant because it's taken us seven staff to do it it's taken us almost a capacity of working flat out the figures that i have today are punitive and what we've got to gear ourself up for is next year in the future where quite frankly this will represent a tenth of the visitors that we are expecting to do the system therefore is not in place the team is therefore not in place and we're going to get a situation whereby you know another hundred people on today's performance quite frankly and they'll all be keeling over and the entire staff will go off on sick leave and start developing back pains and and and and we will be back to back to square one besides looking after his estate the earl of carnarvon regularly sits in the house of lords with over 600 other hereditary peers aware that the a34 for three and a half miles between tot hill and newbury is the only single carriageway between the south of spain and scotland he has a long-standing commitment to transport and planning issues and is a supporter of the proposed extension of the a34 newbury bypass which will run near high not everyone approves i think one of the advantages that lord carnarvon has is that obviously his loyal and devoted staff will summons and he will have gamekeepers and literally villages with their pitchforks ready to do battle if necessary i don't envisage that that will happen i think it is just an unnecessary anxiety but there are so many lunatic fringes more friends of the earth have planned a protest against the road on the same afternoon as adrian's first celebrity wedding he's taken extra precautions by closing the castle early and doubling security his next plan of action is to infiltrate the enemy have you just arrived yeah right we've just headed off for the stunt right and uh it's just five minutes walk up that way what's the stunt we're all forming a giant circle as a no entry sign with red card and we're going to get a visual um picture of that from a helicopter who are you with carlton great hi hello start getting your position in the circle red to the bottom of the top and the whites in the middle then when we see the helicopter we'll try and get the all the pieces of paper above your completed one thing about this afternoon there's been two of us here representing our delight and pleasure at the thought of the a34 um the other gentleman i don't know who where he's gone but he seemed to me to be a very brave man because the last words he said to me was come on then let's ann collins and her tea room staff are unhappy adrian has cut their overtime it is completely different now whereas before i could go away and i could talk to you could put something to her we'd think about it if we discussed now you feel as though it's very difficult to make a decision for yourself you know you've got to go to adrian you know you've got to go in and sort things out although he's saying to me you are the manager and you are to do this you are to do that you are to get it to how it how you want it but you know there's always that feeling that he's there now adrian wants to cut staff and is threatening to introduce self-service in place of the waitresses an analysis which quite clearly has shown us that the amount of drinks we're selling is is absolutely marginal um what we're actually charging for drinks is a complete and utter nonsense again no system is in place so a pint of beer anywhere else in the empire is costing one pound eighty to two pounds up at the north of course a lot full of pigeons we're only paying 150 but here we are highclere castle pints of bitter a pound what an excellent what an excellent opportunity that is fortunately we've done nothing to promote that we have a full license and therefore very few people have actually taken up our our drink license one of the best outfits in the air that is what you need on film you need people like that to say this is the best in the area this is what we've got is is unique which is wonderful the customers love it now he wants to take it all away from me which i find very very sad very sad the family are also unhappy they're having second thoughts about the back door we are very worried about not opening the front of the house to the public when they arrive this seems to be a problem for us uh we don't like the idea of of the public not coming through the front door i mean both lady canal and i feel strongly that we must go back to going through the front doors there's something unattractive about the house with the front door shut when people arrive when you come to the castle you want to welcome i'll be welcomed and there's no welcoming system uh it doesn't it doesn't work obviously the welcoming system at the back door obviously i would i would i would like to persuade you otherwise if it is your wish then obviously that's something we will do but if i can in my defense there has been the occasional problem created simply by the fact that there are key odd members of staff who are still not supportive of the new system and they're just about to be weeded out the last month's been a nightmare and as much as what i'm supposed to be doing i haven't been able to do because of the recognition that i've come to recognize is that that staff given an instruction for example i've asked albert to make sure that there is a man on visitor reception until six uh a quarter to six he actually closes up visitor reception and moves down to close the gate in the garden so that the deer don't um in reality after a week of this i discover that oh well of course uh colin likes to get home have his mint julep or what have you it's been a very taxing day for him and uh albert sort of stepped in oh dear boy i'll do uh i'll do that for you leave it to me i'll close the gates and you know you buzz off as usual in many ways it's very charming but how the hell are you supposed if in reality they do exactly what they want to do because they've always done it this way new market the july cup a hundred thousand pounds to the winner if lake coniston triumphs the twenty thousand pound investment in him could be worth millions lake coniston lake clear now to millstream in second place as they race them down with just under two and a half so long left to go it's lake coniston still going well in the lead here from millstream on the far side great what i wanted to do perhaps at this is to really have one final look at what was actually achieved in terms of the tea rooms um this year and i think that quite clearly you have at times been at capacity um and we therefore need to be looking at what we're going to be doing that we can accommodate the 70 000 visitors that we're going to be having next year now from my point of view i don't think we can continue with the system that we are doing on the basis that we're having um and your forms quite clearly show that the number of staff that that are on it is staff it is is staff consuming i agree with that you do have to have the staff to be able to maintain a standard but then not actually knowing how many people you are going to get in like if you've got a coach coming in you can actually staff or you've got three coaches coming in you can staff up to that but sometimes it's hit and miss whether you've got the right amount but i think the point that i'm saying is you can't employ nine staff at the end of my opinion to lose something that is unique that is that it is so different but again it's it's there is always an alternative that will work and be as equally as impressive to the visitors and at the end of the day um that's the decision that we've we've we've had to sort of make and i think that these figures quite clearly show the system at the present just simply apart from being very costly would just literally um not work at all high clear is closed for the season lake coniston has been sold for over two million pounds the next time the tea room opens there will be self-service as family and castler nudge towards profit in the next century it remains to be seen how many of the staff and how much of their loyalty will be going with them i think we have a staff here that are so wonderfully loyal to my my my power and that i hope that the changes aren't going to be so dramatic that they're going to affect too many people on the on the who are involved with the castle i think that if adrian can show in the next six months to a to a year can really show some dramatic changes as i'm sure he will then it'll give them the the enthusiasm and the confidence to go on and to hopefully see in a couple of years time the castle having turned the corner and making a profit the most important thing and what will happen at highgate castle is it will become successful it will be financially profitable and i think that's in everybody's interest and i don't see anybody who doesn't have that philosophy wishing to be part of it and if it doesn't become successful i should probably go down to the lake and throw myself in