Emma Manners leads a life few of us could imagine. She lives in one tower of a historic, sprawling stately home while her husband, the Duke of Rutland, who repeatedly cheated on her, lives in another. Both have relationships with new partners but an extraordinary accord between each other and remain, legally, married.
Hers is a story in which heartbreak, pragmatism, money, family, love and inheritance are bound like threads in a rope. It is a profoundly modern story of aristocracy. And yet it is not a world of which she was ever born to be part. She was just a pony-mad daughter of a Welsh farmer until she fell in love with a man who was heir to one of the most senior hereditary titles in the land.
She married David Manners in June 1992 and seven years later, on the death of his father, became the Duchess of Rutland and chatelaine of Belvoir Castle, ancestral home of the Dukes of Rutland, one of the UK’s grandest stately homes and a location used as a stand-in for Windsor Castle in the celebrated TV show The Crown.
Throughout their marriage, privilege and heartbreak were bedfellows. Elizabeth Hurley and Hugh Grant would pop up for raucous karaoke nights and the Beckhams would bring their kids up for a weekend in the Leicestershire countryside. But her husband strayed. His affairs over many years culminated in 2009 with the liaison that ended their relationship. Yet even then she did not divorce him, sacrificing a £30m settlement to ensure that it did not force the estate to be broken up.
There's a particularly poignant moment in her new book The Accidental Duchess where Emma describes the devastation of his first "indiscretion". She writes: "Late one night I got a phone call from a friend telling me that David was not where I had been led to believe he was . . . It was as brutal as that, and it hit me for six," she writes.
She remembers breastfeeding her baby son Charles and "just sobbing, tears streaming down my face onto his dear little cheeks". She swung from hurt at his betrayal to guilt about her own responsibility and "castigated" herself for having been too involved with the business. She writes sadly: "I would put on my brightest smile along with my make-up in the morning and do my best not to let it crack before I went to bed. Somehow, I had to swallow my pride for the sake of our four little innocents."
It's virtually impossible to detect any hint of a Welsh accent in Emma's voice, despite her insistence she is Welsh through and through. It is perhaps a sign of just how different her life is now compared to those seemingly carefree days roaming the Welsh countryside on her pony. She was born and raised in Radnorshire on the Welsh/Shropshire border, an area now incorporated into the county of Powys since 1973. The family farm was called Heartsease - a 10 minute walk from the stately Stanage Park and three miles east of Knighton in Powys.
Emma went to school in nearby Bucknell but struggled throughout her studies, in part because she was dyslexic. Her first business venture was as an interior designer founding Eardisley Park Interiors with her friend Janet. It was through her work as an interior designer that led her to meet David Manners at the age of 27. She fell madly in love with this seemingly self-effacing man having absolutely no idea that he was the future Duke of Rutland.
And yet life as a duchess really is not that much different to life as a farmer, she said, even if her home has featured in The Crown TV series. The ups and downs are chronicled in her new book, published this month, called The Accidental Duchess: From farmer's daughter to Belvoir Castle .
Her and David are no longer married - after two decades together, the marriage broke down when the duke embarked on an affair. But there's a quiet determination in Emma - that is evident in both the way she speaks and in her book - and a resoluteness to make things work. Living in private heritage comes with a great responsibility and Emma wasn't going to shake that off lightly.
And so the couple continued to live on the estate, albeit in separate wings, for the sake of their five children. Their eldest daughter, is Lady Violet Manners, 29. The Duchess’s middle daughter, Lady Alice, 27, is a stylist, while her youngest daughter Lady Eliza, 25, works for high-end wallpaper company de Gournay. Her eldest son Charles, 23, has just begun working at an insurance company in the City, while her youngest, Hugo, 19, is starting his first year at Newcastle University.
She and her husband are now the "best of friends" despite his affair with another woman who lived on the Belvoir Castle estate. There's nothing the tabloids like better than a whiff of sex and scandal and back then Emma found herself headline news.
But writing the book has been nothing if cathartic, she said, as she "dipped" into parts of her life. The hardest one to dip into was the marriage breaking down: "When you come from a very religious family, and I was the second to have a marriage that didn't succeed, I felt like I was breaking this institution," she said. "In the end you have to remain honest to yourself and be true to yourself. What's happened is that everyone is at peace now and in harmony and we live a very balanced life." In reality, that means the whole family still gather round the dining table every day for lunch or supper. Emma added: "People find that very odd to get their head round but the great thing about here is we have lots of space."
Emma never planned to marry a duke. Indeed, when she first met David at a dinner party, she had no idea at all of his family background. She might profess to be from "farming stock", but Emma's life growing up was hardly under-privileged. She describes the family farm romantically in her book as "in a hidden valley in the mythical border country known as the Welsh Marches, a magical place of muscular hills and gentle valleys that was as different as could be imagined from the flat landscape that surrounded Belvoir Castle".
Until the financial crash of 1929, the Watkins family had been tenant farmers on the Stanage Estate, but in order to pay death duties, the Coltman-Rogerses sold Heartsease to Emma's grandfather outright. Despite growing up oblivious to the class structure around her, Emma's friends came from relatively high places. They were mostly from Pony Club, she laughed. "Over the years I made friends, one of the first being Arabella Lennox, whose family owned Downton Castle, ten miles or so across into Shropshire," she writes in the book.
Even so, Emma doesn't see that as particularly special: "Growing up on a farm, you're very hands on." she recalled. "We were never spoilt, we had one pair of shoes, one dress and yet it didn't matter." She takes that one step further in her book: "My sex education, if you can call it that, was limited if practical. ‘You see that, Em?’ Dad said, pointing at our bull mounting a heifer. ‘That’s as quick as it happens; you need to be careful of men'."
Her real love as a young girl was her pony. Before her parents came down for breakfast she would have tacked up and gone, exploring every inch of the land around and following streams up onto bracken-covered hillsides until the whole of Radnorshire was laid out before her. On the horizon, the Beacons would beckon. She remembers such an innocent time fondly.
Many years later, life has taken unexpected twists. Emma explained her book was about shining a light on the role of women in private heritage: "I've been blown away by the fact most of them marry knowing diddly squat about what it really entails when they say yes I do," she said.
When Emma had lunch with her future mother-in-law, Frances, for the first time, she got the first inkling of this. Writing in her book, Emma says: "In a subtle way she [Frances] was telling me that there was more to marrying David than just marrying David. That marriage to David came with responsibilities. My view then was that every marriage has responsibilities. As to what those responsibilities might be, she didn’t spell out and I didn’t ask."
Emma's own parents were a little more relaxed about this new boyfriend of their daughter's. When Emma introduced David to them, her father asked her the "inevitable" question: "So, how many acres does this David have?’". Emma writes: "For once I had an answer guaranteed to stop him in his tracks. ‘Around 17,000,’ I said. ‘Give or take.’"
Coming from a very normal background – in Emma's case, she was a ‘Miss’ – the whole process of becoming titled overnight just because of marriage does feel "very odd initially", Emma admitted. She is conscious she suddenly found herself entrusted with a great deal of private heritage.
"With a stately home, it is fundamentally about fixing the roof before you fix anything else because that can keep the rain out," she explained. "And for me running this business, it is that same principle you take through to everything. I am always very keen on signing every invoice and cheque that leaves this estate, so I know where the money’s going. Nothing goes out without assignment from me. I have worked harder than ever in lockdown – there’s only me, my PA and one other so you end up doing everything."
The grandeur of Belvoir Castle means it has formed the backdrop for scenes in Young Victoria in 2007, The Da Vinci Code and The Crown - where Matt Smith and Claire Foy filmed in one of the opulent rooms, which stood in for Windsor Castle. The castle has nearly 1,000 years of history, built on land originally gifted from William the Conqueror in 1067.
Emma writes: "Yes, my husband had inherited a castle, but behind the fairy-tale façade we were faced with jaw-dropping levels of debt, as well as battalions of rats, and staff who clearly preferred the former incumbents to us and our unruly brood of little people with their high-pitched voices and water pistols."
The castle came with some rather famous friends: Susannah Constantine – known then for her TV fashion show with Trinny Woodall – was a regular guest. Emma recalls in her book: "By the time I met her, Susannah was part of a glamorous London-based set, and she persuaded them to come to our hunt balls – people like Elizabeth Hurley and Hugh Grant and David Furnish and the shoe designer Patrick Cox. Just like anyone else, the best part for them was getting out into the country and going on long walks. But in the evenings, we’d get out the karaoke machine in the private drawing room. Elizabeth Hurley turned out to have a surprisingly good voice, and she and David Furnish would always do a duet to Elton John’s ‘Don’t Go Breaking My Heart’.
"After one charity do, David Furnish asked if he could bring a few friends up for the weekend along with Elton’s chef. Of course, we said yes. Among these friends were David and Victoria Beckham and their kids. I thought Victoria was the most amazing mum. Her children were small and the eldest, Brooklyn, had a little trike, and when he started pedalling across the private drawing room, she yanked him off."
Emma has sacrificed a great deal to make not just the castle work, but her marriage too. Their marriage in June 1992 didn't immediately see Emma become a duchess - that title was bestowed on her when her husband's father died, which would happen seven years later in 1999.
"There’s no big announcement, no ceremony," she writes. "At the moment of my father-in-law, the 10th Duke’s, death David automatically became the 11th Duke of Rutland, and I, as his wife, became the 11th Duchess."
Overnight, "nothing and everything" changed, she adds. "The following week, grey-suited advisers arrived from London with bad news tucked inside their briefcases. Yes, David had inherited Belvoir Castle, but he’d also inherited £11 million worth of inheritance tax."
Emma had to learn how to understand the complex finances of a stately home. She threw everything into making the castle work, beginning with opening it up to the public and trying to capitalise on the 500–1,000 acres of flat parkland that she saw could be brilliant for concerts and game fairs. The castle itself was tailor-made for weddings, she thought.
Emma is no stranger to cold calls, recalling how she rang people up with the well-rehearsed line: "This is the PA to the Duchess of Rutland. Her Grace would be very interested to meet you."
"I remember one man whom I had convinced had to come and see for himself what the grounds had to offer, and when he arrived I showed him around, holding forth on our future plans and ideas," she said. "At the end he said: 'But your voice is remarkably similar to your PA’s'. And I had to confess that actually it was me all along."
In 2012, when the couple had five children between them came the bombshell when Emma realise the marriage was over for good: "Suddenly there he was, dancing with a woman who rented a cottage on the estate who I barely knew but whose son I had regularly given a lift to school," she writes. "Though not particularly striking first thing in the morning, that night she looked a million dollars, and she and David were laughing. And then I knew."
Lawyers told Emma she could leave the estate and ask for £30 million. But Emma laughed at such a ridiculous idea: "I knew better than anyone that the estate couldn’t afford a fraction of that," she said. "I had seen other stately homes fall into disrepair or bankruptcy due to the breakdown of marriages and expensive divorces." Emma wasn't going to allow that to happen to Belvoir.
"David never mentioned the word divorce, but over the next eighteen months, I decided I didn’t want one," she continued. "If we divorced, I’d have to leave the castle. David and I were legally separated in 2012, and slowly our relationship evolved into one of acceptance and pragmatism and yes, friendship. All I asked in return was to continue to run the castle and the estate until I retired at sixty-five. David agreed and I was officially appointed CEO."
Emma has no intentions of slowing down as she nears 60 and doesn't have a fixed agenda either, instead taking the approach that "what will come will be".
"The only certainty for me is that life rarely goes in a straight line and accepting that really is half the battle," she added.
The Accidental Duchess: From Farmer's Daughter to Belvoir Castle was published on September 15, 2022 by Pan Macmillan.
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