Saving Country Houses With Penelope Keith
Most teenagers want a bedroom of their own, somewhere to have a few posters, a PlayStation and some privacy.
George Lowsley-Williams had to share his with the resident ghosts. ‘I spent the first 17 years of my life living in a room that had to be exorcised twice,’ he grumbled, on Saving Country Houses (More4).
Ghosts, of course, are what a stately home needs most. But the castellans of Chavenage in the Cotswolds, a couple of miles from King Charles’s country pile at Highgrove, don’t seem to appreciate theirs.
George’s son James manages the house with his wife, Emma, and their plan for attracting droves of visitors is to open a yoga studio in one of the barns.
Running costs at Chavenage are close to £400,000 a year. Good job they’re keen on yoga, because you could tie yourself in knots trying to generate that sort of income.
The answer is dead obvious. Monetise the spooks.
Haunted country houses are in vogue, especially with Americans, who loved the BBC sitcom Ghosts so much that they’ve made more than 80 episodes of their own (and, in the process, done it to death).
Daisy May Cooper and her brother, Charlie, enjoyed their own ghost-hunting show last year, Nightwatch, and Yvette Fielding’s series Most Haunted has been going for nearly 25 years, now airing on YouTube.
But James and Emma L-W didn’t appear to see the potential. They were almost apologetic as they showed cameras around ‘the ghostly part of the house’.
Leading us into a room with hideous faded tapestries cladding the walls, James announced, ‘No one has slept in here for 200 years.’
That’s better than money in the bank. List it on Airbnb — amateur paranormalists will beg to lie awake all night, staring in horror at the woven figures surrounding the carved wooden bedstead. I glimpsed four Greek goddesses without faces, and a hooded monk . . . unless those were not part of the tapestry but actual ghosts.
A second room was piled high with chairs, as if a poltergeist had gone berserk. And, up a creaking flight of wooden stairs, Emma introduced us to her ‘worst nightmare’ — a lanky, painted straw doll, with a hole where its nose should be, lying in a cradle.
The episode touched on other houses, including Ashby Manor in Northamptonshire, where the Gunpowder Plot of 1605 was hatched. Penelope Keith provided the voiceover, earning a presenter’s fee with a few links to camera.
But she wisely stayed away from Chavenage, where Emma and James ended the tour by taking us into the attic. A dusty and decaying model train layout zigzagged through the rafters, and the couple toyed with the idea of restoring it as a visitor attraction.
As they brushed away cobwebs, bats flitted past. For heaven’s sake, don’t renovate Chavenage. To raise more cash, just raise the dead.
