Within rural Britain we have to remember that the greatest ally that the tourist sector has is the farmer who keeps the landscape looking as beautiful as it does, ensuring that it is a place that people want to visit. This is particularly so in the upland areas where it takes very special skills to farm in some of the most unforgiving conditions. . .the delicately woven tapestry that is our countryside is facing unprecedented challenges. Start pulling out the threads and the rest unravels very rapidly indeed. No farmers, no beautiful landscapes with stone walls; HRH The Prince of Wales Speech on Tourism 14 March 2011
The 60th anniversary of the Peak District’s designation as Britain’s first national park in April 1951 (see www.peakdistrict.gov.uk/anniversary ) gives me the opportunity to reflect on some long term issues. I thought it would be interesting to talk to a handful of people with unique credentials to give the ‘Long View’ on a key topic related to the Peak District. In the series of Blogs I will report on my conversations with some remarkable people with remarkable stories. I continue this series with an interview with the Dowager Duchess of Devonshire or, to many, Debo Devonshire.
Deborah Devonshire has had one of the most eventful, fulfilling and remarkable lives and has lived much of it in the spotlight, first as one of the Society “Mitford Girls” and for the last 60 years as a towering figure in farming, the land and the family business at Chatsworth. I have thoroughly enjoyed Wait for Me, her candid biography which describes her incredible life as a Society beauty who mixed with heads of state and the elite and whose passion for fine art, writing, Elvis and Chatsworth have driven her through her life.
Debo, Dowager Duchess of Devonshire and 'The Chairman'
As Duchess of Devonshire, she described herself in Who’s Who as a ‘housewife and shopkeeper’ – some house and some shop. Her modesty hides the remarkable achievement she and her husband Andrew Cavendish, the 11th Duke, made of turning Chatsworth House and Estate from a loss-making liability into one of the most successful rural businesses in Britain. My particular interest was in her passion for food and farming and its role in the success of Chatsworth and I met her at her home in Edensor with Ian Turner, Chatsworth’s long-serving farms manager.
Prior to her husband’s death in 2004, the Duke and Duchess had lived at Chatsworth for over half a Century after inheriting the Dukedom and the Estate. The house had been a school in the war and the estate was subject to huge costs and death duties. Whilst the 10th Duke had transferred much to his son, Andrew Cavendish, his death only weeks before the lifetime tax exemption led to 17 years of negotiations with the Inland Revenue, a tax bill equivalent to £179M in today’s prices and a situation many of the Estate’s advisors believed to be irretrievable. ‘With death duties at 80% and tax at 19/6 in the pound it was dire, we had to do something.’ explains the Dowager Duchess.
Chatsworth House and the Estate is an asset to the nation and the Peak District today
That something was a sustained and positive approach to running a complex and risky business based on the house and a large rural estate with innovations such as the maze, the restaurant, the children’s farmyard, and highly successful cafes and shops. Over the post war decades, farming has had its ups and downs and for many family farms and aristocratic estates, the combined effects of changes in policy, mechanization, urbanization and sustained low prices for farm crops meant the end of farming and profound changes in rural life. ‘This was a mixed farming area, with many small fields of potatoes, wheat, rye, beans, vegetables and livestock.’ After the 2nd World War, Chatsworth employed 100 men, mainly in the gardens and farms. Today the Chatsworth Estate employs nearly 800, many of them in the extensive food and hospitality businesses.
The Dowager Duchess of Devonshire and Ian Turner consider winter damage to her garden
As daughter of David Freeman-Mitford, 2nd Baron Redesdale, Deborah was brought up to love and be involved in all aspects of country life on the family estate at Asthall Manor, Oxfordshire. Here, the youngest Mitford daughter Deborah followed her adored father on his fishing trips, on one occasion narrowly avoiding drowning on a narrow plank as her father cast a fly. As her sisters were honing their political and debating skills, Deborah explained that she ‘had no concern for politics at all’ and instead spent her time with the estate’s keepers ‘especially a Mr Lord, who always had egg on his moustache and used to shoot in the Churchyard, he would say let’s now shoot ‘at back o’ parson’s’.
At an early age of 6 Deborah Mitford also began to develop an interest in two lifelong passions – poultry and selling. ‘My mother bought a few hens for me when I was six and in no time we had a poultry farm that paid for my governess. I learnt what fun it was to sell to people. I still love that and I sometimes used to work on the tills at Chatsworth.’ Until she moved out of Chatsworth in 2004 chickens were very much a feature of the gardens and public areas of Chatsworth and the Dowager Duchess still keeps chickens at her garden in Edensor.
A lifelong passion
The young society girl also began to develop a huge respect for the people who worked on the family estate, an attribute that was critical in making a success of Chatsworth ‘My mother would host a Christmas party for everyone who worked on the Estate and give them a garment, a toy and an orange. Most of the families lived and worked on the farms, there were so many compared to today.’
Her interest in farming at Chatsworth started when she saw the end of the ‘beautiful, beautiful Shire horses that her Grandfather in law (the 9th Duke) had worked so hard to breed and raise going away for dogmeat when 2 tractors took their place. It was very hard on the men who worked so closely with them, it was their lives.’ Ian Turner adds that ‘Derbyshire was an important area for the breeding of horses for the mines, railways and agriculture until mechanization in the 1960s.’
I am fascinated by how the Cavendish family has made such a successful transition from one of inherited wealth and power to one in which hard work and business acumen are the key to its success. I wanted to know how this had happened and wondered what lessons there were for farmers in the Peak District today. It’s clear that the young Deborah Cavendish’s love of food, farming and selling was key to this. ‘Just because you’re called a Duchess, you have no power, you’re not part of the Government now as my father, his father and his father were. You have to make your own way in the World.’ The young Duchess was inspired to do something about food and farming at Chatsworth after she had been involved in the great butcher’s showcase, the Royal Smithfield Show, where she was responsible for hosting its President the Queen Mother.
Chatsworth Farm Shop, Pilsey
The Duchess saw an opportunity to turn a redundant building into a business. ‘My Grandfather in-law’s stables at Pilsley had become redundant as the Shire horses were replaced by tractors. The Jersey herd that had started at Churchdale then moved to Pilsley, but sadly they were dispersed in 1982. Andrew was very busy in the Government at the time and almost everyone in the Estate Office was opposed. We wanted to sell carcasses from the farm. Initially, the planning permission only allowed limited sales of meat from the farm, but the planners have been helpful in letting us develop the business.’ Today, the Chatsworth Farm Shop employs 100 people, many of whom are highly skilled butchers and bakers. It has consistently won national awards and is one of the most successful rural diversification enterprises in the country, employing many local people and sticking strongly to its ethos of selling local high quality food.
In the garden of the Old Vicarage, Edensor
Throughout my conversation with the Dowager Duchess, I was struck by her enormous respect for the people who do practical things – butchers, keepers, farmers, drystone-wallers. She has a great concern about the hill farmers and in our conversation returned several times to ways in which we could help them ‘ It is very hard for them on the high ground in the Peak District, she explains, and the really beautiful walls that the tourists so love are really only there because of the farmers. The grants they get only pay for some of their hard work.’ Ian Turner explains that ‘the high cost of grain feed, fuel and labour is a real problem for livestock farmers and when farmers have to pay £4-5 for a bale of hay, how will they make any money?’
Drystone walls in the landscape, near Alstonfield
Again, drawing on her Chatsworth experience, the Dowager Duchess says ‘it is very important that we help the farmers provide services to tourists, especially bed and breakfasts, caravan, camping and camping barns, but this must be done on a scale that fits with the working farms.’ In 2010, the Dowager Duchess was awarded Visit Peak District’s first Lifetime achievement award for her tourism work at Chatsworth. As we walked around her garden, the Dowager Duchess explained her husband’s philosophy when they first opened Chatsworth to the public, something of a pioneering thing in its day. ‘We wanted everyone to feel welcome at Chatsworth, not just tolerated.’ This ethos is alive and well today and, indeed, Chatsworth has been nominated as ‘best large attraction’ in the 2011 Visit England tourism awards.
Ian Turner explained that ‘At Chatsworth, we have always tried to farm in a way that works with nature,’ although both he and the Dowager Duchess are sceptical that organic farming is right. ‘The consumer doesn’t want cabbages with holes in or potatoes that are wormy’ says Ian. ‘It is a balance to get the management of meadows, moors and dales right.’ We discussed the importance of the agri-environment schemes that pay farmers to manage the land for environmental reasons. Ian cautions that ‘maybe it has gone too far one way and now many farmers do not have enough stock to sell at market.’
Today, the 12th Duke of Devonshire continues the family tradition of treating his inherited wealth as a responsibility with maintaining and improving Chatsworth House and the Estate as his priority. He continues to lead an effective team who are building on the successes of his forebears, not least the retailing, farming and tourism businesses started by his mother and father. The 12th Duke is playing a leading role promoting tourism, the arts, farming and business in the area and he too inspires great loyalty from his staff and those who work with him. His is the current generation and his passion for everything that happens at Chatsworth is explained by a simple philosophy explained by his mother: ‘For people who are on the land it means everything to them, they are hefted to it just as sheep are hefted to the hills.’
Chatsworth House
I would like to thank the Dowager Duchess of Devonshire and Ian Turner for their time and especially for the generosity with which they offered their insights on this important topic.
