It’s not easy running a stately home: Duchess podcast reviewed

The Duchess of Rutland, Emma Manners (née Watkins), grew up on a farm in the Welsh Borders before becoming proprietress of Belvoir Castle in Leicestershire. ‘On so many levels I was ill-equipped for the job,’ she reflects in her new podcast, Duchess. ‘I so remember opening a door and hearing the butlers downstairs saying: “Have we broken her yet?”… I felt like a ball they were bouncing.’

Thirty years after coming to Belvoir — pronounced ‘Beaver’ — the Duchess is ready to talk candidly about the difficulties she and other women have faced as custodians of stately homes. Following in the footsteps of Lady Carnarvon, who launched a podcast of her own from Highclere last spring, the Duchess dotes on the Downton and Bridgerton brigade, while highlighting the real existential threat faced by many historic estates.

The first episode takes her to Hedingham Castle, a magnificent Norman keep near Braintree in Essex, to meet its chatelaine, Demetra Lindsay. Built on land bequeathed to Aubrey de Vere, a baron of William the Conqueror, the castle was home to the Earls of Oxford and visited by Henry VIII before being inherited by the Lindsays via the Majendie family, the last of whom died without issue.

Apparently on better terms with the ghosts than the staff upon arriving at Hedingham 17 years ago, Demetra, a trained architect, had little choice but to develop a thick skin. ‘You have to be assertive,’ she said, reflecting on the troubles she experienced in persuading male employees to follow her instructions. Nicknamed ‘Treacle’ in her professional life, in which she was vastly outnumbered by men, she was clearly shocked to find herself subject to similar prejudice in her own home.

The Duchess of Rutland enjoys telling her own story, which tends to creep in, perhaps unconsciously, at vital junctures in the podcast.