‘You can have the house or be rich – but rarely both’

Hutton-in-the-Forest has been home to Richard Fletcher-Vane, 2nd Baron Inglewood, for the past 74 years. The arrangement was made formal in 1989 when he inherited it from his father, the former Conservative politician William Fletcher-Vane, created 1st Baron Inglewood by Sir Alec Douglas-Home in 1964.

It isn’t a palace, but it is plenty for the Inglewoods and their three grown-up children and grandchildren. During Lord Inglewood and his wife Cressida’s tenure, major works have been limited to changes in the garden and a reconfiguration of the house inside.

“People now say it’s really quite liveable – a smaller house attached to a bigger one,” he says.

Hutton, seven miles from Penrith, is open April to October, and is deliberately low-key. “We have neither the inclination nor capability of turning it into a huge attraction,” says Lord Inglewood. “Part of the magic of these places is not being overwhelmed by crowds. I am delighted that visitors come and enjoy it for what it really is, as opposed to an ersatz contrivance.”

The history of how Lord Inglewood came to own Hutton goes back hundreds of years. With a choice of family names with which to feel a link, Lord Inglewood most identifies as a Vane – a scion of that old family that started as Kentish gentry “and then rose”.

Sir Henry Vane the Elder, Lord Inglewood’s eight-times great-grandfather, was Charles I’s secretary of state and bought Raby Castle in County Durham in 1626. By the 1830s, William Vane, 1st Duke of Cleveland, was in possession of more than 100,000 acres.

Today, the Vane patriarch at Raby, with 61,000 acres, is Harry Vane, 12th Baron Barnard – and Lord Inglewood’s second cousin once removed.

Having made their money in 16th-century West Cumbria as merchants, the Fletchers bought their baronetcy in 1641. After Sir Henry Fletcher, 3rd baronet, died in Douai in 1712, the title went extinct and Hutton was inherited by Sir Henry Vane the Younger’s great-nephew, Henry Vane-Fletcher, for which line a new baronetcy was created.

When this branch died out in 1934, it left the future William Inglewood – nephew of Harry Vane, 9th Baron Barnard – the “last man standing” for Hutton.

‘There’s no middle way when you inherit an estate like this’

The estate was not in prime condition. The previous owners, Sir Henry Fletcher-Vane, 4th baronet and his wife, had “lived beyond their means and the whole place was heavily indebted,” says Lord Inglewood.

His father’s life was undoubtedly changed by his inheritance. “You either have to take it on board or jettison it entirely. There isn’t much of a middle way unless you’re a great duke and have a flotilla of people who do it all for you.”

No flotilla was forthcoming – indeed, William Inglewood was advised to sell Hutton since there was no money and the roof leaked. Post-war – after Dunkirk, El Alamein and a stint in Syria with the French army – William Inglewood, with his wife Mary Proby, saved Hutton.

“It was perhaps his greatest achievement,” says Lord Inglewood. “I think he must have been excited about the challenge, having been brought up in the shadow of these great estates. Instead of being a ‘show and tell relation’, he was then on the same level, even if he wasn’t a grandee.”

As well as managing Hutton, William Inglewood was a Conservative MP for 19 years, which is what had earned him his peerage. “In those days, being a peer was considered quite something,” he says. “Now, I don’t think being a lord is perceived as being much more than a kind of national alderman.”

‘Up ’ere you’re still Mr, not Lord, Vane’

He might have become Lord Inglewood, but the former MP for Westmorland was not received universally as such. One day, he fondly remembered, “he was talking to one of his old constituents who said, ‘Eh Mr Vane, glad to see ya. I gather they call you something different down in London. Up ’ere, you’re still Mr Vane’.”

Lord Inglewood both loved and liked his father. “Everybody has difficulties with their parents, but I was extremely fortunate with both of mine.” When William Inglewood died aged 80, in 1989, Richard, his elder son, became Lord Inglewood on almost the same day as he was elected to the European Parliament.

“I was thinking how much of my life I have been Richard Inglewood and how much of my life I was Richard Vane – it’s nearly 50-50,” he says. “Certainly, though, if you’re in the business of showing your house to visitors, to be a lord is better than not. People don’t come to see what they get at home.”

‘Reforming the House of Lords hasn’t been well thought-out’

He is not just a lord at home but in the House of Lords too, where he has sat since 1989 – first as a Conservative and now as a crossbencher. He regrets the way the legislation to remove the remaining hereditary peers from the Lords has been proceeding. “We’re being sacked and haven’t done anything wrong,” he says.

“I believe the British political establishment has made a mistake over this. Not enough attention has been given to the distinction between the way that people get into the House of Lords and how their term of office comes to an end.”

A slippery slope may be emerging. “Once you start the process of eliminating individuals at the whim of the Government of the day, you’re getting into dangerous territory.”

This includes the logical consequence of the idea being floated that an age limit of 80 might be introduced. “If you do that now, half of the Lords might go at one stroke! That may not matter, but how are they going to be replaced? You don’t want the Government – whatever it might be – putting in 400 of its own supporters. Under the present rules there isn’t really anything to stop that.”

Like many of his fellow “hereds”, his concerns are not over his own position – “I’m not going to throw myself under a horse in the Derby” – but about the overall consequences.

“I believe in a bicameral parliament – you can’t have the second chamber simply as a sub-committee of the first. I don’t think the political establishment has been very clever about what is currently going on. I wish there was a bit more wisdom in evidence on all sides.”

Hutton has always been there in the background throughout Lord Inglewood’s time in the Lords. What does he make of the situation facing the “big house” today?

“We’re in a state of flux,” he says. “A large number of country houses are fragile, and I don’t sense that there is an enormous collective sympathy [towards them]. If you are on what used to be known as ‘the Left’ you’re not going to be convinced by people perceived to be on the Right – not all owners of historic houses fall into that camp, but there’s a stereotype.”

The “Right”, he says, has changed. “The modern Conservative Party is very different from that which my father was a member. A lot of their intellectual and moral values are different – and the concept of ‘culture’ now is different to a generation ago.”

This is linked to the role and status of the country house in the wider community. “I’ve always said that owners of such places have got to decide whether they want to have their house or to be rich – only a few lucky people have both.”

Heirs and Graces: A History of the Modern British Aristocracy by Eleanor Doughty is published by Hutchinson.

[Source: Daily Telegraph]