Hagley Hall to open to public

Press, 14 April 1979, Page 24

Hagley Hall to open to public

NZPA London Hagley Hall, the house from whence sprang one of the founding fathers of Canterbury and a former Governor-General of New Zealand will be opened to the public.

The ancestral home of the Lytteltons is the latest in a long line of British stately homes to bare all to the paying public in an effort to keep the taxman at bay.

Now run by the eleventh Viscount Cobham, a former pupil of Christ’s college and son of the tenth Viscount Cobham, Governor-General frpm 1957 to 1962, the 2 0 0-year-old sprawling mansion is faced by the mounting debts and maintenance costs afflecting virtually all such homes.

The eleventh Viscount last year sold historic family archives for more than $300,000 to pay capital transfer tax after his father’s death in 1977. Now the imminent opening of Hagley Hall has been launched in the “Sun,” one of the least stately of Britain’s daily newspapers.

To publicise the opening of the west Midlands house in its 200 hectares of grounds, the “Sun” asks its readers to submit “the poshest thing you ever did.”

The winner will spend a week-end with the new Lord and Lady of Hagley Hall — dining off silver

plate and sleeping “in the stately cream and gold Napoleonic bed reserved for special guests.”

Lady Penelope Cobham, aged 25, has been getting the feel of running a public stately home since she launched a gourmet banqueting service 'at Hagley Hall last October. She told the “Sun” that there was little option to soliciting the paying public. The heating costs alone are enormous. The heating system used more than 5000 litres of fuel oil every two weeks and now most of the house is left unheated.

The previous Lord Cobham had tried mixing .ump oil with the heating fuel to cut the bill. “But it did not work and it cost a fortune to clean the pipes afterwards,’ Lady Cobham said.

But the new lady of the manor admitted to feeling nervous about the impending arrival of hordes of tourists.

“I think anyone would feel apprehensive,” she said. “After all, it is still our home.” Viscount Cobham's ancestor — the fourth baron — was one of the founding fathers of the Canterbury Association in the mid-1800s and gave the family name to the South Island port and the name of the ancestral home to Hagley Park in Christchurch.