Insights
A passion for celebrating history – the restoration of Knowsley Hall
An interview with Caroline Stanley, Countess of Derby
In a previous life, Caroline Stanley, Countess of Derby, trained as an art historian, having studied History and History of Art at the University of London. On graduation, she went on to work at the Royal Collection as Exhibitions Assistant to the Surveyor of The Queen’s Pictures.
It wasn’t until she married her husband Edward, The 19th Earl of Derby, that Caroline put her skills to overseeing the massive project of restoring their ancestral home, Knowsley Hall, and its magnificent art collection. Today, Knowsley Hall is used for a variety of events from location filming to corporate events, but over the centuries the Derby family has hosted royalty and heads of state from King Henry VII to Queen Elizabeth II.
We sat down with the Countess of Derby, known as Cazzy to her friends, to hear about what has motivated her throughout the decades-long project and what continues to inspire her today.
How did you develop your love for art?
I grew up at Audley End estate, near Saffron Walden in the South of England where I had a very close relationship with my grandfather, the ninth Lord Braybrooke, who had inherited the house and estate from a cousin after the Second World War. It was a fantastic Elizabethan mansion with more than 100 rooms, and grounds that had been that had been designed by Capability Brown. It also had an extraordinary collection. When I was a child, I would go and have tea with my grandfather and he'd tell me about the paintings which he loved dearly.
What were your first impressions of Knowsley?
I first visited the Knowsley estate in 1995. Although I didn’t go inside, I was struck by this enormous house, all shut up. It wasn’t lived in and half of the house had been rented out to Merseyside Police for 30 years.
It wasn’t until a later visit when I went inside and I remember feeling so sad. There was no furniture, very few pictures, and it was completely unloved. Though the estate office was still there, it was crying out for attention and all the paintings were stacked against the wall with great rips in them.
Where did you start with the renovations?
The first room I worked on was the State Dining Room – a vast room which can seat 160 people. At the time, paintings from all over the house were just hung haphazardly on the 50-foot walls which were covered in fraying silk, producing a powder that was getting in to the frames and causing damage.
I asked my colleagues up from the Royal Collection to come and help me. We took every painting down – about 60 in all – including many family portraits. We put them on A-frames and set to work restoring them; surface-cleaning, reframing and trying to work out who all the people were. So that was where we started, and it set us on the path to restoring the whole house. Amazing to think it has taken nearly 30 years.
How much of restoration has been driven by a desire to preserve the family legacy?
My husband and I came at it from different angles. He had been lucky enough to inherit this extraordinary house and collection from his uncle. Tied up in that, I think, was inevitably a sense of duty to honour that privilege by looking after it and restoring it to its former glory.
For my part, though my grandfather had kept his beloved art collection, he sold the bricks and mortar of our family home to English Heritage. So, while I grew up in the grounds of Audley End, the building itself wasn't ours. I sometimes wonder if my drive to restore Knowsley Hall and park was born of an impulse to recreate something I had wanted in my childhood.
Has it given you a sense of purpose over the years?
Restoring Knowsley Hall has certainly always been a passion. And having worked at the Royal Collection, I was well trained to do the job. In that sense, I have had a keen sense of purpose throughout. I strongly believe in the importance of telling the stories of the past. For me, history is not really celebrated as it should be. In unpacking the meaning behind some of the pieces in the collection and telling the stories of our family’s ancestors I hope I am doing my bit to celebrate history.
What has been the hardest thing about restoring Knowsley Hall?
People often assume that when I first walked into the house it looked as it does today. In fact, we have completely recreated our family’s stately home after years of benign neglect. I chose every paint colour, every chair fabric and every curtain myself, I visited discount material houses, used a local carpenter – I even got my sister to help me. It has been a real labour of love.
It is hard to be dispassionate about something that has been such a challenge to turn around. Letting go and seeing other people use it has probably been the hardest thing. When your house is used by a film production company, things get damaged. We’ve had lights and a billiard ball put through paintings – it's hard not to mind. But I've learnt that a house like Knowsley Hall is extraordinarily resilient. Our family has withstood a Cromwellian invasion, so I hope that our current generation can cope with most things that are thrown at us in this fast-changing world.
The Countess of Derby is a British historian, curator and storyteller. Find out more about her and her podcast series at her website.