Selling a 450-year-old family inheritance is never going to be an easy decision. But Richard Davies-Cooke, 61, the owner of the Grade II* listed Gwysaney Hall in north Wales, has taken the difficult decision to sell the home which has been in his family for almost five centuries.
The Jacobean building dates back to 1603, with its front door is believed to have been damaged by a canon ball in the English Civil War. The mansion, together with cottages and 26 acres of grounds are for sale at a guide price of £2.5m with Savills.
Davies-Cooke said: “Every generation sees themselves as a custodian, and no-one wants things to go wrong on their watch. It has weighed very heavily on my mind but I felt that it was unfair to leave the building to my son. I felt it was better to try and secure a future for him and for my grandson.”
The sheer size of the mansion means it is expensive to heat. First put on the market in 2018, it was taken off briefly as a buyer was interested in turning the home into a five-star hotel. This idea was then thwarted by the pandemic.
Davies-Cooke is planning to move to another property on the estate so will still be living on his ancestral seat.
“It is an important building historically but you have to move forward and you have to keep looking ahead. I think it’s important Gwysaney Hall has a future.”
Davies-Cooke’s plight will be familiar to a new generation of young French heirs who are deciding to sell up their family seats and head for the cities.
With record numbers of stately homes for sale, now could be a good chance to grab a bargain abroad such as a 1000-year old farmhouse three hours south of Paris, currently on the market for £539,638.
The mass exodus has been triggered by high running costs of running an estate and bureaucratic rules, problems younger heirs are just not prepared to take on, according to newspaper Le Figaro.
It’s not just the French feeling the heat. The challenge of upkeep and maintenance has ground down many UK owners too, and forced families to give up homes handed down through the generations.
In Scotland, the spectacular Brechin Castle in north east Scotland was put up for sale in 2019 by Lord and Lady Dalhousie because of the high upkeep costs of the estate. On the market for £3 million, the main castle has 8 reception rooms, 16 bedrooms and 10 bathrooms.
“In a good year, the estates run a deficit of about £250,000; in a bad year it’s as much as £350,000. You can’t go on spending that kind of money year after year,” Lord Dalhousie told the Telegraph at the time.
Matthew Hodder-Williams, an agent for Knight Frank who worked in France for eight years selling chateaux and now markets country houses in Kent, says tax on large properties is an issue over the channel, making ownership “less attractive to the next generation”.
In the UK, Hodder-Williams says last year was the busiest year for country houses for a decade as the pandemic sparked a rush away from the cities. “There are more owners of nice houses wanting to sell than you might realise.”
But other stately home owners are clinging on. They have weathered the pandemic, when visitor centres closures meant they lost their only income stream, and looking at new ways to raise cash.
Historic Houses, an association which works to protect heritage of the UK’s stately homes, says its 1,500 members are an ‘enterprising group’.
The association has around 300 in a “next generation” of young owners seeking new ways to make money. Instead of tea rooms and gardens, entrepreneurial owners are diversifying, holding music festivals, turning disused farm buildings into venues for weddings or film locations.
Ben Cowell, director general at Historic Houses says: “The challenge, always, is managing the cost of doing business. Inflation is currently running high. Planning restrictions can add to these costs and limit new businesses coming on stream.
‘With the requirement to bring historic buildings into the 21st century, it is frustrating when local planning officers so often refuse owners permission to install double gazing in listed building for example.’
Others are looking to find cheaper ways to run the buildings. In a bid to reduce its £7 million operational costs, Yorkshire’s Castle Howard began using renewable energy by installing a heat pump in its lake to serve power to the property, as well as a wood chop biomass system.
Lincolnshire’s Grimsthorpe Castle, a Grade I listed country house with gardens and parkland, has been owned by the de Eresby family since 1516. Last month the trust which manages the estate submitted a planning application seeking permission to add solar panels to the castle’s flat roof, as well as air source heat pumps.
The 59 PV panels would connect to the electricity supply for the entire castle, reducing electricity consumption from the National Grid, as well as the castle’s running costs.
‘Considering the current trend in rising energy costs, it will also provide some shielding for the charitable trust in the long term against future electricity cost increases,’ the planning application said.
The National Trust has installed heat pumps in 83 of its buildings such as Wimpole Estate in Cambridgeshire, where the technology reduced carbon emissions by 47 tonnes per year and saved over £8,000 a year in fuel costs. The trust aims to install 20 more pumps across its portfolio in the next five years.
