Behind Royal Doors: The Finest Georgian Interiors in the World

I'm so excited to be here at this magnificent historic house, Constable Burton, here in Yorkshire. And I'm just about to meet my really good friends, Darcy and Imogen Weibel. During my visit, I am spellbound by the Georgian-inspired interior decoration. There are 11 paint colors in this room. 11? 11. So you can see, you know, the beading and the framework. So it's quite amazing. I visit a beautiful area of the estate where Darcy and Imogen are following their dreams. So what we're trying to do here is we're trying to create a destination so that people can come here from, you know, generally all around the world. When I married into the British aristocracy, it was the start of a wonderfully exciting journey. But it was also a little daunting. I became a Viscountess. And for an American girl from a small town outside Chicago, that was quite a shock. I live with my husband Luke, heir to the Earl of Sandwich, and our family at Mapperton House in Dorset. Living in a place like this is a joy, but also a challenge. And every day, we're aware that we're preserving a very special part of Britain's heritage. Mapperton has opened up an extraordinary new world for me, and I can't wait to share it with you all. So if you love castles and manors and stately homes as much as I do, please join this American Viscountess as I journey into the British countryside in search of some of Britain's finest historic houses. Welcome to the drawing room here at Mapperton. Although this room is part of the Tudor wing of the house, it does have the character of the 18th century with paneling and furniture of the Georgian period. So many historic homes that I visit are remodeled as fashions and architectural styles change over the generations. Recently, I visited the most beautiful Georgian country house in North Yorkshire, Constable Burton Hall. Home to the Weibull family since the 16th century, it was once an Elizabethan house, but reimagined in 1768. It's so wonderful to be here. And who's that? That's our welcome committee. That's Minna. So nice to see you. Nice to see you. Nice to see you too. Welcome. A lovely, lovely day. Thank you for bringing the sun just for you. It's amazing. Yeah, it's a proper Yorkshire day today. Welcome. Gosh, it's so wonderful to finally actually be here. I know we've always had this plan, like, I'm going to come and see you. And finally, I'm in Yorkshire, which is brilliant with the sun and Minna. What a joy. It's so beautiful. She's the star of the show. The matriarch. And look at, wow, I've got more of a welcoming committee right there. That's Luna and that's Stella at the back, mother and daughter. Yes, Luna is the mother, Stella's the daughter. And there's a Whippet running around somewhere. And three children. And three children, yeah. Three children, four dogs and one old house. And one old house. So tell me about this wonderful old house. Originally, it was a, we think, a medieval hunting lodge. And this house passed through from generations from the 1590s. The first big house was built here, which was Elizabethan in style. The family story goes that one of my descendants wanted to get some reparations made to that house. They went away to go and do a job in Scotland. They left plans with a young architect called John Carr of York. He's probably now, you know, one of Yorkshire's most famous architects. To get some reparations done on the house. And he came back a year and a half later and he was on his horse, being followed by his servants. And he said, where's my house? And they came back and had been demolished to the ground floor. No. So it was rebuilt. A little miscommunication. To put it mildly. Can you imagine that moment? Right. And do you have a picture of the original house? We do actually, yeah. This is the Kip drawing here. So we think original house sits pretty much on the footprint of the old house. OK. The lawn out there on the left hand side is the large lawn out there. There were some formal gardens running down to the little stream, which is all back there. The lakes are behind the house here. Right. And you still have the lakes. They are there. They're not octagons like that. But there is a lake there. So there's always a bit of artistic license in these drawings because they're trying to get everything into the landscape. So the topography is not spot on. However, the Lyme Avenue, which is going up there, is still here. So that's what it looked like. So then this was flattened or pulled down. Yeah, basically. And when he arrived... I think literally the ground level foundation was here and that was it. That was it. So they decided to go around a major redesign on it. We're talking in the Georgian era. OK. And of course, the style, which was the Palladian style. Of course. Because the aristocracy of the time were going off to do the Grand Tour and all these European influences were coming back to the UK and so was the architectural side of that as well. So this house was then rebuilt in the Georgian style, finished in 1768. And we've been here as a family, you know, before and ever since. Oh my goodness. Constable Burton has the most intimate and relaxed atmosphere of almost any historic house I've visited. As soon as you arrive, you feel you're being invited into a loving family home. Its beautifully decorated and preserved interior is the result of years of hard work by Darcy and Imogen and Darcy's parents during their tenure at the Hall. This house is in pretty good nick. Yeah. When my parents took it over, it was not in good nick. They were fairly young when they came up here. There'd been a lady who'd been living in the house as a sitting tenancy between my grandfather's death and my father taking over. Right. And so apparently the roof had holes in it and there was water damage in most of the room. She'd actually was just living in the drawing room, which she'd made into her apartment. And a lot of the works of art had been taken out. They'd been stored in the stables, badly stored in the stables. And so when my parents decided that they were going to come up and make a go of this, they had to set around doing a large renovation of the place. Right. Oh, my goodness. When Imogen and Darcy moved into the Hall in 2016, much of the major renovation work had been completed, but they were faced with modernizing this impressive Georgian building. You know, the sort of plumbing and the heating and the, you know, all that kind of stuff. And the ones that nobody knows too much about, which is why it's always nice to say, we did this, we did that, but it was invisible. Right. So we took over Mapperton about the same time as you. So 2016, the two of you. And one of the first things we did that nobody sees is the copper piping. Right. So we got rid of all the lead piping and did the copper piping, but nobody sees that. And then we ended up doing a sort of a biomass boiler to heat it. You know, it's all the stuff that people don't see. Right. Yeah, exactly. So we run the house off a biomass boiler. We get the wood off the estate. And so sort of innovation of that kind of things is really important, actually. And back in the day, these houses were completely self-sufficient in their own right anyway. Exactly. So we feel like we've gone on a bit of a journey. And we're doing the same with our water. We've got boreholes here. So we've got our own heat. We've got our own water. You know, at some stage, the technology is moving, and I'm sure we'll be able to do something with the electricity side of things as well. As homeowners, we must innovate and do all that we can to make these historic houses adaptable and sustainable for life today and beyond. And I couldn't wait to explore and see how Imogen and Darcy have updated the Georgian interiors. So this is the library in its modern guise. This is what this is. It's an after-dinner relaxing room. Originally being the library, it would have been obviously for working and reading in. Now, this was the only room that when we renovated it, we changed the paint scheme in here because it would have been white. White as possible to lend lots of light so you could read via the natural light that was coming in. Funny story, the wallpaper's original. Is it? Victorian original. Right, right. I think it's called Strawberry Hill. Strawberry Hill, yeah. It's also found in the Houses of Parliament. Well, Imogen came in with this paint palette, and I brought my parents up here. It had been a very white room beforehand, and we walked in, and I came in here with my mum and dad, and I said, so what do you think? And they said, well, Darcy, it's very sex, drugs, and rock and roll, isn't it? It's perfect. Yeah. It's the perfect colour scheme for this room. So this room we're going to go into next is called the Morning Room. And in its current guise, it's actually my study. Fantastic. Which I share. Do you share it with your husband? I don't know. You share it with my husband. I'm about the only person who's not allowed in here. When we moved in, I did think that we might have what they call a partner desk. Well, this is a partner desk. And I did wonder whether we might sit opposite one another, and then I quickly realised that was a terrible idea. Right, right. And that we might not be still here today if that was the case. But no, so this is where I sit and manage things. And ever since COVID, I share the space with my son, this was his little homeschooling area, and he's retained it. But also, it's really comfortable. It's a beautiful room. It's beautiful. And this colour then, do you have consulting around that? All of these rooms that we're going to walk through now are all in the exact colour scheme. 1768 colour scheme, yeah. Oh, wow. So this is my kind of colour. Yeah, so this is a very beautiful colour that was actually mixed specifically for this house. And it's called Melori Blue. And it's actually a sort of very pale blue undercoat. Right. And then stippled on with a wire brush into this sort of dark. And you can see the kind of variation in the colour. So as the natural light fades, the beautiful sort of evening glow of the lamps and the chandelier, there's actually a real warmth into this blue, which you wouldn't necessarily expect. And it really makes the gilding of the frames pop. Of course. One of the John Carr architectural designs was to have a thin line above the frieze and the ceiling. So that's meant to draw your eyes up, up to the ceiling. Wonderful. And I can see, of course, you use this room dotted all around as sort of photographs, family, children. It's wonderful. And that's what's, I think, so fascinating about these historic houses that are privately owned, lived in. But of course, you know, open to the public when they need to be or for events. I can see you're having an event here. There's a big marquee outside. But that they're lived in. And so the living history continues with us so that the next generation can tell stories about you. And that's what's so wonderful. It continues. It doesn't stop. Yeah. So often, as we get older, we really start to appreciate the history of our surroundings. So I asked Darcy, was he always aware of the historical value of his childhood home? Even when you're kind of growing up in these places, you're not necessarily paying much attention to everything. And certainly, that was in my case. And then when I came back from my job in London and I was starting to think about moving in here and living in here, and my father would do the house tours. And he's the sort of living, breathing historian of the family. And suddenly, I realized that I had to get up to speed quickly, smarten up. And then, of course, from that, then the interest starts to come in the furniture and the paintings. And we all say that we're just in these houses just to hold onto them or hand them onto the next generation. We're custodians of our time. One would like to think that you are going to move these houses onto the next generation. That's the goal. That's the dream. And we're lucky. This house, even though like lots of other houses, there have been moments of where it's been hanging on a thread. And we've had to marry a cousin or two or done something like that in order to keep it together. It is still here. And they need to sing for their supper. They need to work. They have to put money into the coffers. The trade-off of living in one of these beautiful houses is that there is a second side of that, which is we have to make it work. We have to monetize that. And that's just part of the deal. That's how these historic houses are. I mean, they are survivors. But we've come into an era where gone are the days of they were surviving because there was a lot of staff here. And the people who are living on the estate sort of worked here. And this was, in one sense, their village. That was it. We've completely evolved. Times have changed. And in order to preserve these historic houses, we do need to have events. We do need to open up occasionally or all of the time, just depending, and weddings, whatever it is, to continue to fix the roof or to look at the color palette, the color way. It is a great house for entertaining. We have a lot of private clients staying in the house. And I think that's one of the lovely things about this house is the scale of it dictates the size of the party staying. So we don't do vast weddings for hundreds. But the house is a really wonderful entertaining space. The dining room next door, you'll get another feel for that. We use, not like this, but we do use for breakfast, lunch, and dinner as a family. Sunday lunch, we'll have lunch in here. If it's just us as a small family, we'll sit at the table in the window. But this is where we have Christmas. This is where we have all of our family occasions. But again, these are the original Jordan colors. So actually, there are 11 paint colors in this room. 11? 11. So you can see the beading and the framework. So it's quite amazing. And actually, my father-in-law was the first one to go down this route in this room. And he wasn't convinced when he got presented with the colors. He thought it was a bit outrageous, the dark paint ceiling. And so he actually painted up a full panel before he committed, just to be sure. And actually, it's such a success. Again, as the light dims, it's really, really atmospheric in the evening with the candles and the crystals and the silverware. So it's really magical. And the furniture in here is original. This is a Gillo Imperial table. Gillo of Lancaster was one of the great furniture makers, used the same sort of type at the time as Chippendale. We've got a lovely Gillo sideboard at the top here. These urns were actually, they're lead-lined, and they're wine coolers. It's very, very nice to have the original furniture here. And that's part of the journey of owning these houses. You pick up these nuggets, and you speak to other people. And sometimes, you just look at a table and you think it's a table. Actually, once you get to the history of it all and stuff, it becomes part of the fabric of the house. Exactly, and the craftsmanship that goes into these pieces. This is our inner hall and obviously the most wonderful cantilever staircase in here. And that job is to lead your eyes up to the roof. And so we've got these lovely demi-lunette windows that let in different angles of light during the day and leading up to some of the bigger pictures in the house. These are big Reformation pieces, the 1540s, that kind of era. Wow, how wonderful. But then, of course, you've got, you are living here. And what was wonderful to hear is that, and I can see that you use all of these rooms, which is how these houses should be used. It's really nice. I mean, obviously, some of the rooms where we've got some of the nicer pieces of furniture and things, we've had to put Blu-Tack underneath things to stop balloons and bouncy balls and scooters. No ball games in the house, darling. No ball games in the house. But generally, you can't live in a house like this and be too fussy about kids and dogs and all that kind of wear and tear. It's just part of the fabric. It's part of the fabric. And once in a while, you can get in, you can give your place a lick of paint and off you go again. So we are very conscious that we don't want our children to be constrained by feeling like they're living in a monument. Right, they really don't. They're at home. I don't think they do. I don't get that feeling. No, I don't think they do either. Brilliant. Well, thank you so much for this sort of whistle-stop circuit tour. I think it's, I mean, really wonderful. Darcy and Imogen have combined comfortable modern family life with Georgian splendor at Constable Burton. And that extends out into the park as well. Well, we're now leaving your beautiful house. Tell me where we're going. So this is the Lime Avenue. This is one of my favorite places in the gardens. This was actually on the original Kip drawing and led away to the, now leads up to our kitchen gardens. And the trees in here are over 400 years old. They're European limes. And this is a really magical time of year to come and visit them because it's like a sort of cathedral. They all meet in the middle. Obviously, avenues are very much part of the British landscape. Yes. And we're very lucky to have one. And, you know, it just brings its own vibe, this place. You walk into it, everything dulls down. You get this wonderful dappled light coming through at this time of year. In the spring, this is all full of daffodils. And then we just let it go. So it's full of cow parsley and dock leaves and wild garlic and bluebells and cyclamen. The smell is amazing. And you walk in here and everything kind of just... It's a very sort of very cool part of the gardens. This was the start of the pleasure gardens. And when you get up to the top here, you are dropping into the forest and the trees and the really wild parts of the estate. So it's kind of formal and functional meets wild. Yes, exactly. And it's just a really lovely part of it. It's extraordinary, though, when this... Because these are, you said, what, 400 years old? But look at how they're perfectly spaced. Yeah, we're very, very lucky to have them. And the forethought, the planting here. I mean, you can imagine you're going to plant this avenue. You're never going to see it. You know, when you plant it, it's going to be, I don't know, like it's going to get to like 10 meters in 50, 60 years. And here it is now, 400 years later. And it's probably now at its very, very best. So thank you to those that came before us. We are undertaking a big planting scheme on the estate. We've planted over 20,000 trees here over the last four years. And yeah, so we're, you know, as we know, the trees are the lungs of the planet. And we all need to be planting more of them. But they are very rare to find veteran trees. And these are a great example of that. Yeah, great sun. Oh my goodness. So this is another area here, which is our pond. So there's the ice house over here. So they dug these ponds to create the ice, to put in the ice house, to chill the food, to keep it fresh. So this is a beautiful area. Still got the ice house, yeah. You can see it. Oh my gosh. It's perfectly in condition now. It's in pretty good condition. They always had a... What am I looking at down here? What's this? These are two ponds side by side. Oh my, I see. And actually there's some beautiful rhododendrons here. It's another gorgeous little area of the garden. You don't necessarily expect these beautiful buttress walls here, which are normally covered in roses. I feel like I'm in the secret garden right now. Oh my goodness. Amazing. When I was just viewing that from the top, that's why I thought it was just sort of growing from the earth, but it's clearly coming up from the pond here. This is sensational. Yeah, it is. So these ponds were meant to be very shallow. So the idea is that they would take off the ice and they would take it into the chamber there. That doorway there facing there is always north facing. So it gets the cold air straight into it. When you go into the little channel, there's a big bowl behind it and then it drops down about 30 feet into that. And what they would do is take layer after layer of ice off. They'd stack it up all the way up to the top and then over the winter and through the summer, the ice would gradually melt. And basically it's a Georgian fridge. Right, it's a Georgian fridge. Yeah. This is genius. Imogen and Darcy have big plans for Constable Burton. They are literally following their dreams. This part of the Yorkshire Dales is one of the great tourist attractions anyway. When I was growing up here as a little boy, the road that goes at the bottom of the drive there, you just have no traffic on it at all. Now it's busy. My father in 1975 started a caravan park, which has been a great little business. And when we came up and we started looking at the estate and seeing what we could do and where we could make our mark, that was a natural place to look towards. Okay. Because there was already a business there. We knew that there was enough through fare, enough business coming up into the area, which we're very lucky about. Although we are still remote, there's still a lot of people who come on their holidays in Yorkshire. It is a national park. Yes. And so we've been in development for the last four years on a new tourism business. And we're very excited that it seems to be going in the right direction. We're developing 53 lodges. Can I see this area? Yeah, we'll take you up there to go and have a look at it. Oh, it's really exciting. Yeah. Okay. Lovely. Oh my goodness. Let's head there. Okay, perfect. So you were mentioning your legacy project. And is this where we're heading to right now? This is where we're heading. Yeah. This is super exciting for us. It's been a long journey of discovery. And when we first left London and came up to Yorkshire, so aware of the beauty of where we lived. And we are in this exceptional situation. We're literally on the edge of the Yorkshire Dales National Park. So it's an incredible opportunity as a launch pad for visitors to come and experience this amazing wilderness. And here we are. This is it. This is what we've got our hearts set on. So what we're trying to do here is we're trying to create a destination so that people can come here from, you know, generally all around the world. We're not buying lodges off the shelf. We've designed these things from the ground up. They are based on the field barns that are up in the Yorkshire Dales. So they're one, two and three bedroom units. Okay. And they're going to be really, really spaced out. And this is a big, big site here. Our caravan park next door, which has got 120 pitches on, is a third smaller than this. So we're actually going to put 53 lodges on that if we get planning permission. We're going to have a lake in here. There's a natural water course that goes underneath the ground. We're going to open it up. We're going to have a wild swimming lake. We want to have a yoga space. We want to have various different other catering options up here that we can move around. You know, on an evening like this, you can just feel what it would be like to be up here. Yeah. Doing some yoga, doing a swim. And then I might have sort of my first retreat for me. Oh, I would love that. Okay, done. I mean, yes, I could sort of rent out the entire sort of 53 lodges. How many people I could get? A lot. Yeah. This will be a sort of groundbreaking development for this part of the world. And we want to make sure that when we do it, it's, you know, we've done it to our very best ability. Right. And it's also, it sounds like it's sympathetic to the landscape. A hundred percent. So, you know. A lot of natural assets, which we're making the most of, you know, in our plans. Right. And these modular buildings, they will be bought on site, assembled. Right. With a very, you know, light touch on the natural environment. You know, we've gone to the utmost lengths to honour and respect this magical place that we live in. Yeah. And it is magical. I mean, it's beautiful. I suspect I'm one of the sort of first visitors. Yes. To be able to... You've had an inside look. You've got exclusive access. To see the dream. Brilliant. Now, I'm just going to ask, we are kind of, there's a nice walk. Is that right back to the house? Yeah, there is. I mean, we're literally, the house is just on the other side of those trees. We just go up the walk here. This was the original entrance to Constable Burton. So the caravan park gates were the original entrance. This track was part of the driveway and we will now snake down, wander through the parkland and approach Constable Burton Hall as you would have missed it. As you would have missed it. From that picture that we saw. Yes, exactly. Right here. Yeah. How brilliant. We don't have the horse and cart. We can pretend. We'll pretend. I'm going to just imagine. Yeah. I'm going to go back 300 years. Yeah. And imagine walking back. Yeah. Brilliant. Yeah, exactly. And look at this. I know. It's amazing.