The business of Bolesworth

For Nina Barbour, an equestrian spectacular on New Year’s Eve will be the culmination of an exciting, but unforeseeably tough, year. Here she talks about the very modern challenge of keeping her 200-year-old family estate in business

- Katie Mulloy

For 2019, it is an anomaly of day. We’re in the dying weeks of autumn, just before winter’s true chill splinters the air, here to photograph and interview Nina Barbour, Managing Director of the Bolesworth Estate – a modern-day lady of the manor if you will. Falling leaves flutter against crisp blue skies. It wasn’t like this weeks ago when I first visited, her assistant Sarah showing me around the grounds, pointing out the spots that could make great backdrops (which, as you might guess, is much of it). That had been a wellies-on, umbrellas-up kind of day where the globulous, pounding rain had refused to pause even for a minute – the weather that has characterized much of this year; weather that has proved to be Bolesworth’s biggest foe.

‘It seemed to hit on every event we had which was really galling,’ says Nina, an accomplished horsewoman ‘at a high-ranking amateur level’, who at 39, has been at the helm of the events side of Bolesworth for the last 11 years and is now very much in the saddle when it comes to shaping the future of the business. Only this isn’t just business, this is her home too, her family history and future.