‘Our 17th century castle looks intimidating but it’s a real family home’

Haddon Hall is the family home for Lord and Lady Edward and their two children, but is open to the public March to October - Andrew Fox

Lord Edward Manners hauls his Land Rover up the hill into the medieval parkland at Haddon Hall. The view from the top is that of a total idyll.

Down in the valley is the River Wye, twitching with wild rainbow trout, and then there’s Haddon, nestled alongside.

We’re here to observe how the park is being “unfielded” – or perhaps de-farmed. The hedges, the old dividing lines between spaces that were once fields farmed by tenants, are being removed to return the landscape to an open space.

“I don’t like the word ‘rewilding’,” Lord Edward says. “What we’re doing here is parkland restoration.”

It’s a project Lord Edward is particularly passionate about, but it’s just one part of the 30-year restoration plan he instituted in the late 1990s.

“We’re now 20 years in,” he says. “We know which bits to pick off in which order, and most of it we can do through cashflow.”

It has taken time to transform Haddon into a family home; the house was 'profoundly cold' and there were dust sheets over everything when they moved in six years ago - Andrew Fox

This is helped along by the popular artisan markets held at Haddon, and the bat watching evenings in the 12th century chapel – as well as the Peacock at Rowsley, a hotel Lord Edward bought a few minutes down the road

The house is open to the public March to October, and the estate has 80 residential properties, two quarries, and 20 miles of riverbank on its 3,800 acres in a very popular part of Derbyshire.

Being a proper family home gives Haddon much-needed added warmth.

In 2013, Lord Edward married the entrepreneur Gabrielle Ross, and five years later they moved into Haddon with their two children, becoming the first family to live in the house full-time since the 17th century.

His wife’s first encounter with Haddon left a lasting impression.

The restoration and upkeep is part-funded by holding artisan markets and events - Andrew Fox

“Haddon,” Lady Edward says, “has a masculine and feminine side. When you approach it by the driveway, it’s big and robust with a defensive wall – it’s pretty intimidating on its stony crag.

“But if you approach it from the other side, you see its romantic, beautiful side, twinkling where the Bombay glass catches the light. I remember just being stunned at the beauty of it.”

On that first visit, she remembers, Haddon was totally asleep. “All the furniture had dust covers on. It felt like we were walking through a fairytale castle that hadn’t been awake [for years].”

Haddon has not necessarily been an easy house to live in. When they first moved in with their young sons, the house was so “profoundly cold,” Lady Edward says, that she found herself wearing a ski suit indoors.

“But it’s a house that you want to live in with a family,” she says – and so that’s where they needed to stay. “It needs children, it needs love, it needs the energy.”

Medieval markings on doorways denote whether you were allowed through or not (depending on whether you were a family member or staff) - Andrew Fox

What is inescapable about the building is its extraordinary age.

“You think, ‘how can this be real – how can this have survived?’ It’s deeply old, and that goes into you, it affects you.”

Medieval markings on the doorways denote “whether you were allowed through the door [if you were part of the family], or you weren’t [as staff]. If you were illiterate, it was a code,” she says.

As the family has bedded in, “we have found ourselves naturally gravitating towards the rooms that the family would have used. It’s so wonderful – they are the footsteps of the past that you can’t hear, but you can still follow through.”

Some rooms have the feeling and smell of a cathedral, that woody, slightly musty but ancient sense that comes with buildings that have cloisters and courtyards.

It is so unlike Belvoir, that relative new build, high on the hill, visible from miles around. As Lady Edward puts it, “Haddon is so old that they didn’t build it for an ego.”

Haddon has been in the Manners family for 461 years.

It has never been sold, having passed only by descent – first, through the Vernon family who acquired the estate in 1170, and built the house, and then through the Mannerses, after the heiress Dorothy Vernon married Sir John Manners, second son of Thomas Manners, 1st Earl of Rutland, who lived at Belvoir Castle in Leicestershire in the 1560s.

Despite its lengthy history within one of England’s oldest families, Haddon has not always been the centre of the Manners’ universe.

After the Whig politician John Manners, 9th Earl of Rutland, was created Duke of Rutland in 1703, the family moved en masse to Belvoir. They closed up Haddon, not to return in any meaningful way until the early 20th century.

Thus, Haddon entered its deep sleep.

In the 1920s, Lord Edward’s grandfather John Manners, 9th Duke of Rutland, realised his long-held ambition to restore Haddon as a family home, modernising it with electricity and running water, installing tennis courts, and finally moving in with his family.

Lord Edward's grandfather John Manners, 9th Duke of Rutland, began restoring Haddon as a family home in the 1920s, installing electricity and running water - Andrew Fox

But then in 1940, he died aged 53, and his 21-year-old son Charles took over.

During the war, both Haddon and Belvoir were used as storage by the Public Records Office – a deal negotiated by John Rutland to prevent them from becoming barracks and thus trashed – and Haddon was otherwise mothballed.

During Lord Edward’s childhood his father Charles Rutland ran both Belvoir and Haddon himself.

The former MP for West Derbyshire Matthew Parris remembered the Duke as a “fantastically ruthless chairman” of local Conservative Party meetings, who “dispatched business with brisk courtesy and a glance of steel”.

Charles Rutland was, says his son, “a proper gentleman, an amazing man, with great charm and charisma. He was much loved, and very easy to get along with.”

The 15th century wall paintings in the chapel were discovered by John Rutland - Andrew Fox

When Charles Rutland inherited the dukedom in 1940, it was with two magnificent houses in Belvoir and Haddon, and other estates besides. His younger brother Lord John Manners had the right to use Haddon for his lifetime, but the system was imperfect.

“There had been confusion between my father and uncle over Haddon, about what my uncle’s rights were here, what he would pay for, and what my father would pay for,” says Lord Edward.

“That arrangement was quite a new thing then. It sort of worked but it would only take one or two bits of pushback [to fall apart] and then there would be an almighty row.”

Charles Rutland decided that this would not happen to his sons if he could help it, and agreed that Belvoir and Haddon would be split.

'The place is deeply old but it needs children, it needs love, it needs the energy,' says Lady Edward - Andrew Fox

Belvoir would descend through the main line and stay with the Duke of Rutland – from 1999, Lord Edward’s older brother David – and Haddon would become Lord Edward’s.

This is now the case: Haddon is Lord Edward’s house, and it will not revert to the dukedom upon his death, but instead will pass to one of his own children.

In the chapel, where John Rutland discovered the 15th century wall paintings, I get the chills – how extraordinary that they remain today.

John Rutland remains an inspiration to Lady Edward. “When I look back at his work and the notes he wrote, I think about his passion and drive, and what he did in a very short amount of time. It’s probably the driving force behind me here.”