Keeping the roofs in order – all two acres of them – and maintaining and restoring the rooms below is possible only through enlightened exploitation of the estate and its resources. Quite a lot of the weekend is devoted to learning about the business of running an aristocratic estate of 8,000 acres. Your hostess is Emma, Duchess of Rutland, who has made a name for herself for the energy, imagination and business sense she has brought to the management of a great estate and the maintenance of a stately home. The exterior is more picturesque than defensive, and the interiors are a mix of splendid Gothic Revival and lavish late Georgian, with a strong flavour of ancien régime France.įor three nights you live here as guests.
The Manners family arrived in the sixteenth century, and this martial heritage was acknowledged during rebuilding at the beginning of the nineteenth century. In fact it is not a castle proper, though the first of four dwellings on the site was, built by William the Conqueror’s standard bearer at Hastings (hence it’s name, now pronounced ‘beever’). The home straight – a challenging haul before motorised transport – confirms the vastness of the edifice, the variety of its massing, and the regal scale of its windows and ornaments.
Towers and turrets and bastions rise from the top of a hill which dominates the otherwise rolling lowlands of rural Leicestershire. Belvoir Castle presents to the approaching traveller a sight as dramatic as any country house in England.
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