When the TV historian Lucy Worsley graduated from Oxford, she was offered a job at Milton Manor House , in nearby Abingdon. “As I walked up the drive,” she recalled, “I was a little disturbed to see a black boat upended in the lake, a swastika painted on its stern.”
That was in 1995, and the swastika was left over from a VE Day celebration. Recent visitors have been greeted by a map of Agincourt and two flags fluttering on the other side of the lake. They were from a party in September, when guests re-created the battle: men as the English and women as the French. Against the run of play, the French won.
“I think one of Milton’s defining features is its air of eccentricity,” Worsley remarked, and she might be on to something. There are chickens running about in front of the 17th-century red-brick facade. The doorbell doesn’t seem to work, paint is peeling from the window frames, and two llamas patrol the grounds. The owner, Anthony Mockler-Barrett, is currently living in the former estate brewery, because he can’t afford to heat the main house during the colder months.
Mockler (the “o” is long, as in “smoke”) and his partner, Gwendoline Marsh, are the undoubted stars of this Friday’s episode of Land of Hope and Glory, a BBC2 series about rural life as seen through the eyes of Country Life magazine.
When the cameras visited last year, the crew found the couple in heavy overcoats and scarves, huddling around an open fire because they couldn’t afford oil for the central heating. There was also a huge hole in a bedroom ceiling (now repaired). Indeed, such is the parlous condition of the grade I listed house that in 2012 it was placed on the English Heritage At Risk register (now run by Historic England).
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The register reports: “Stable and carriage house roofs in poor condition, with failing leadwork, and cornice to main block in very poor condition. The condition of the timberwork to the windows is also cause for great concern.”
According to Historic England, the aim of the At Risk register is benevolent: to focus attention on work that needs to be done, and to offer help and possible financial support. Not that the owner of Milton Manor sees it that way. “At risk of what, that’s what I want to know,” he snaps. “Terrorist attack?”
A military historian who has also written biographies of Haile Selassie, Graham Greene and King Arthur, Mockler briefly practised as a barrister and once ran a company renting holiday castles in Spain. Marsh is a comic actress who appeared alongside Benny Hill and Tony Hancock.
The home belonging to the couple, who stoutly refuse to reveal their ages, has been in the Barrett family since 1764, when it was bought for £10,600 (the equivalent of about £1.7m today) by Bryant Barrett, lacemaker to King George III. It’s claimed that both Peter the Great and William of Orange slept here.
Barrett spent a further £7,000 modernising the main house and adding two wings. He built a magnificent library in the so-called Strawberry Hill gothic style, inspired by the writer Horace Walpole’s innovative home in Twickenham. A Catholic convert, he also added a chapel, where Mass is still said once a month. The building works needed special permission from the king; it was granted, providing the chapel was hidden at the rear of the house, and only family took part in the services.
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The chapel is one of the areas identified as “at risk”. The 14th-century stained-glass windows that flank the altar need work , and heritage inspectors say the roof needs repair, although Mockler strongly contests this.
He inherited the house in 1990 from his mother, Marjorie, who had firm ideas about the way life should be lived at Milton. Afraid of fire, she refused to heat the house. It was so cold that a Russian guest took refuge in an airing cupboard. Couples couldn’t even huddle together for warmth: as a strict Catholic, she refused to allow double beds.
Milton had been largely abandoned in the 1920s and 1930s, and was used to house RAF officers during the Second World War. Marjorie and her family took over in 1947 and she single-handedly revived its fortunes. It was Marjorie who first opened Milton Manor to the public. (If a historic property is open for a certain number of days each year, currently 30, then it becomes free of inheritance tax on the death of an owner.)
So how much will it cost to carry out the repairs demanded by Historic England? Mockler shrugs off the question. “English Heritage don’t give a monkey’s if a house is owned by a Russian oligarch or an Arab sheikh, or whether it’s been owned by the same English family for years,” he says. “They ought to have some thought for the people who live in the houses, as well as their fabric.”
All is not lost, though. Before Marjorie died, she set up a £250,000 repair fund. About £7,000 of this was used to fix the drains, which used to flood the cellar every year, while half of the stable block ceiling has been replastered and the roof of another outbuilding repaired. There are also four cottages, whose rents will eventually be used to finance work on the main house. Unfortunately, the cottages themselves needed a lot of work and used up much of the repair fund.
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“The inspectors have no concept at all of the difficulty of keeping up a property on little income,” Mockler says. “I have less income per year than the average quangocrat at English Heritage.”
Why doesn’t he just sell up and live more comfortably off the proceeds? There’s not just the house, but up to 70 acres of land. “If everybody gave up when things got difficult, where would the country be?” Mockler responds.
In the meantime, the house continues to attract visitors with its slightly eccentric style — and the queues may get longer after the house gets its 15 minutes of fame. Marsh says: “The public rather like the shabby gentility.”
Land of Hope and Glory is on BBC2 on Friday at 9pm; miltonmanorhouse.com