Weathering the perfect storm

There were sighs of relief at Berkeley Castle as the doors reopened to visitors last month. But the barren weeks of lockdown didn’t stop bills from piling up for a 700-year-old building that simply eats money. So how are historic house-owners coping? Katie Jarvis spoke to Charles Berkeley

- Katie Jarvis

The gardens at Berkeley Castle are scented with the perfume of a myriad blooms; a teeming riot of colour. Bursts of reds, whites, pinks, yellows: unfurling roses, irises, peonies. Dipping in and diving out are heady flights of butterflies and moths, pausing only to bask when the sun beats down; while, in the grass beneath, you can almost hear the scurrying of busy beetles.

Gertrude Jekyll – who helped plant the 30-feet of climbing terraces early last century – must be sighing a happy sigh of satisfaction. But until mid-last month, castle ghosts (three tea-drinking Victorian ladies; a woman in white who floats upstairs) were amongst the few still able to admire these glorious sights.

For the first three-and-a-half months of this season – and for the first time since the castle opened its doors to the public back in 1956 - it was bare of visitors. Not that that stopped gardener Chris Gill from working hard to keep its eight acres shipshape and Bristol fashion.

Charles Berkeley’s lockdown hair, by contrast, was less pruned. “It grew wild and bushy,” the castle’s owner admits. “My wife liked it; my mother was not so keen. I ended up getting a haircut from a friend of a friend so as not to terrify the visitors on their return.”

There’s a third growth spurt, too. Berkeley’s ever-deepening pile of bills.

Lockdown might have temporarily deprived Berkeley of visitors, but it hasn’t had the same effect on expenses. Heating and lighting its 44,000sqft drains £27,000 a year from the coffers. Maintaining its rose-pink walls eats another £50,000 into the annual budget. And that’s just for starters. If any major work is needed, that’s a whole new ball-game.