What’s it like to live at Hogwarts? Just Wizard!
Duke who transformed glorious Alnwick Castle gives the Mail a private tour of
its blood-soaked secrets
Jane Fryer meets Duke of Northumberland Ralph Percy,
62, at Alnwick Castle
Alnwick is a 150-room castle perched above the River
Aln in Northumberland
The historic building starred in the filming of Harry
Potter and Downtown Abbey
By JANE
FRYER FOR MAILONLINE
PUBLISHED:
01:07 GMT, 22 June 2019 | UPDATED: 01:38 GMT, 22 June 2019
The Percy
family of Alnwick Castle — that splendid, 150-room, heavily crenellated,
many-towered magnificence perched on a rocky outcrop above the River Aln in
Northumberland — have not, traditionally, lived long or quiet lives.
Over the
past thousand years, the Barons, Earls and Dukes of Northumberland have
rebelled against monarchs, battled relentlessly with Scots and shuttled in and
out of the Tower of London on various charges of treason.
Some have
been shot, others hung, drawn and quartered, and a few had their heads
displayed on spikes in cities around the country after a disastrous uprising
against Henry IV in 1403.
Time and
again, Percys have popped up throughout history. The great Sir Henry ‘Hotspur’
Percy, who led endless rebellions against Henry IV of England and was slain at
the Battle of Shrewsbury, was immortalised in Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part I.
The 6th
Earl was secretly engaged to Anne Boleyn before she became Henry VIII’s second
wife, the 7th was beheaded, the 8th was shot dead in the Tower and the 9th was
thought to be involved in the Guy Fawkes Gunpowder Plot and was incarcerated
for 16 years.
Their
sprawling home — now the second-largest privately inhabited castle after
Windsor — bears the scars of centuries.
There are
musket pockmarks, made by Oliver Cromwell’s army, in the yellow sandstone. A
suit of armour hangs above one door. In the cone-shaped dungeon, the screams of
doomed Scots are all too imaginable.
Oh, yes,
and in the main entrance, a maroon board offers Broomstick Training sessions on
the very spot where Daniel Radcliffe had his first flying lesson in Harry
Potter And The Philosopher’s Stone.
The latter
is courtesy of Ralph Percy, the 12th Duke, who, with the help of his energetic
Duchess, Jane, has transformed Alnwick into one of Britain’s most visited
attractions. He has now written a book about the castle, which he will be
discussing this week at the Chalke Valley History Festival in Wiltshire.
‘There are
several times throughout history when the whole thing could have disappeared —
when we’d rebelled against the crown or the money had run out,’ he says.
‘Or the
castle had collapsed and there was the whole Catholic-Protestant problem that
dominated the 16th and 17th centuries. Or there simply was no issue to take it
on. But, somehow, the Percys managed to cling on.’
Ralph was
an accidental duke himself, plugging a difficult gap in the Percy family
history.
He was a
second son, a passionate tennis player, a trained surveyor and was once known
as the best shot in England.
He was
happily married to Jane, a stockbroker’s daughter from Edinburgh, whom he’d met
at a party when she was 16, and lived happily in a pretty Georgian farmhouse on
the family estate with their four children and dogs.
Meanwhile,
his brother Harry (Henry), the 11th Duke and the Queen’s godson, lived a racier
— and ultimately tragic — London life of parties, girlfriends (he dated Naomi
Campbell’s mother Valerie, American actress Barbara Carrera and model Jackie St
Clair) and ambitions in the film world.
‘We were
three and a half years apart and were very close,’ says Ralph. ‘He liked the
castle, but he was a bit depressive, and I think he found the whole thing —
living in this goldfish bowl and being responsible for so much — difficult.’
And then,
in 1995, Harry died of an accidental amphetamine overdose and Ralph, who had
been working on the Northumberland estate for two years, inherited the lot:
title, Alnwick, Syon House in London, vast swathes of land in the north and
south of the country, plus a £350 million fortune.
He, Jane,
the kids and their dogs moved into the castle keep, and that was the end of
their old life.
Today, the
castle is exquisite — an assault of gilded ceilings, gold leaf, polished
floors, gleaming swords and exquisite views over the Capability Brown-designed
parkland.
There is a
art collection, described as one of the finest outside the Royal Collection,
which includes works by Turner, Titian, Canaletto, Van Dyck and William Dobson.
Unusually for a castle, it is also warm, impeccably clean and smells of
expensive scented candles.
At first,
Ralph, now 62, and his family felt trapped. ‘It was quite difficult because, in
the summer when the tourists are here, it’s hard to get in or out of the house
through them. We found that weird, coming in and out with your dogs and tennis
racquets,’ he says. ‘People did seem to stare.’
With the
only private bit of garden 100 yards from the house, the children mostly stayed
inside rather than brave the crowds; and the dogs couldn’t be let out for fear
of messing up the lawns.
Meanwhile,
he and Jane worried that wealth would spoil their children and went to the High
Court to have their heir George’s £250,000 annual income delayed by seven years
until he was 25. They also insisted their children learn to cook and earn their
own living.
Now they
decant to Scotland for the busy months. ‘Which is ironic,’ says Ralph. ‘Because
we spent 300 years fighting the Scots. A lot of them ended up in our dungeon!’
With great
fortune came great responsibility. Maintenance of the castle costs more than
£1.5 million a year. Ralph and Jane had to make the castle work in the 21st
century, as a home, a tourist spot and historical treasure, fighting against
convention with a raft of visitor attractions, jousting sessions, gift shops
and tearoom, and a few controversial decisions.
Ralph gave
Jane an area of garden to revamp. ‘She was always mad about gardening, so I
thought it was something for her to get her teeth into,’ he says.
Two
decades, £45 million and equal measures of criticism and praise later, she has
created an astonishing garden with a treetop walkway, treehouse restaurant and
even a ‘poison garden’ (which specialises in toxic plants).
Amazingly,
it is now the UK’s third most-visited garden — after Kew in London and Wisley
in Surrey (though Ralph hasn’t set foot in it since last autumn).
In 2002,
there was a big fuss when he sold a Raphael to America’s Getty Museum for £35
million. The National Gallery, which had restored the painting and had it on
loan for ten years, was furious. ‘We needed to maximise the return; they felt
we were being a bit greedy,’ explains Ralph. ‘But the painting was never here
anyway.’
Meanwhile,
he invited more and more film crews in. Over the years, the castle has featured
as a backdrop for Blackadder, Robin Hood: Prince Of Thieves, Elizabeth, Mary
Queen Of Scots, Transformers and the Christmas special of Downton Abbey. But it
was Harry Potter — and, in particular, the broomstick lessons and Quidditch
matches — that really changed things. ‘There’s been a huge Harry Potter effect
and we’re very grateful for it,’ says Ralph. ‘We do as much Harry Potter stuff
as possible and it just doesn’t seem to die out.’
Over the
centuries, Alnwick has had so many incarnations, lurching from good fortune to
bad and back again with every new monarch. During the Reformation and
Counter-Reformation, the Percys abandoned Alnwick as the north was considered
too dangerous. By the 18th century they were back, and the place was abuzz.
There was a staff of more than 200 maids, cooks, valets, butlers, grooms, ten
priests and, at one point, even a resident executioner.
Today, the
150-strong staff seems to consist mostly of guides, shop assistants, cafe
workers and gardeners. The Percys themselves have a daily as well as a chef.
‘People
think we lead a very different life, but we really don’t,’ says Ralph.
Indeed,
their living quarters are surprisingly cosy — taking in just eight of the
castle’s 20 bedrooms.
But most
people don’t have an enormous snooker table in their living room or an indoor
tennis court. Or, for that matter, host a family wedding in 2013, where Prince
William broke a tooth while dancing and had to be rushed off for emergency
dental surgery.
And most of
us don’t sleep in a tower, 140 steps up. ‘As we get older that gets more
complicated,’ says Ralph. ‘And if you have dogs feeling ill in the night, it’s
a long way to come back down again.’
There are
dozens of other animals around the place: a rat running along a skirting board;
a squirrel shooting up bookcases in the library; and more than 20 dogs — all
stuffed.
‘They’re
not our dogs!’ says Ralph. ‘Jane just buys random dogs that have been stuffed.’
It is now a
quarter of a century since family tragedy changed everything but, while the
12th Duke knows he can never go back to his old life, he still occasionally
yearns for a quieter existence.
‘I love
this place. It’s fantastic, but it is living in an office to some extent,’ he
says.
Which is
why, after all their hard work, he has no intention of being carried out in a
box.
‘George has
control of Syon House and the Southern Estates, so whenever he feels ready,
we’ll move out,’ he says. ‘I’ve always been rather jealous of Bamburgh Castle
[just up the road from Alnwick]...’
The current
duke and his family live in the castle, but occupy only a part of it. The
castle is open to the public throughout the summer. After Windsor Castle, it is
the second largest inhabited castle in England. Alnwick is still the
tenth-most-visited stately home in England according to the Historic Houses
Association, with 195,504 visitors in 2006.[20] This figure has increased
significantly in the subsequent decade.
During
World War II, the Newcastle Church High School for Girls was evacuated to
Alnwick Castle. Since the war parts of the castle have continued being used by
two other educational establishments: from 1945 to 1977, as Alnwick College of
Education, a teacher training college; and, since 1981, by St. Cloud State
University of Minnesota as a branch campus forming part of their International
Study Programme.
Special
exhibitions are housed in three of the castle's perimeter towers. The Postern
Tower, as well as featuring an exhibition on the Dukes of Northumberland and
their interest in archaeology, includes frescoes from Pompeii, relics from
Ancient Egypt and Romano-British objects. Constable's Tower houses military
displays like the Percy Tenantry Volunteers exhibition, local volunteer
soldiers raised to repel Napoleon's planned invasion in the period 1798–1814.
The Abbot's Tower houses the Regimental Museum of the Royal Northumberland
Fusiliers.
An increase
in public interest in the castle was generated by its use as a stand-in for the
exterior and interior of Hogwarts in the Harry Potter films. Its appearance in
the films has helped shape the public imagination regarding what castles should
look like. Its condition contrasts with the vast majority of castles in the
country, which are ruinous and unfit for habitation.
No comments:
Post a Comment