The boss in question is David Ross, 41, and I am not the only one with reason to be grateful for the invention of the mobile. Ross is deputy chairman of Carphone Warehouse, one of Europe’s largest phone retailers, which he set up in 1989 with Charles Dunstone, an old friend from Uppingham school. With an estimated fortune of £562m, Ross is number 113 on this year’s Sunday Times Rich List, and bought Nevill Holt, parts of which date back to the 13th century, in 2000. Its last incarnation was as a boys’ prep school, and it was on the market for £1.1m, though Ross is coy about saying how much he paid for it.
Ross works in London during the week but uses Nevill Holt at weekends, and also travels up for the shooting season and in July when the Hampshire-based Grange Park Opera holds performances there. The 30,000sq ft house sits on top of a gentle hill not far from his alma mater, with huge views over the Welland Valley. It is a gloriously eccentric architectural assortment, with castellations, turrets, cloisters and wings added to the original 13th-century great hall over the years. It was home to the Cunard family from 1876 to 1912; Nancy Cunard, the writer and society hostess, was born there in 1896.
Ross eventually appears, dressed in jeans and a snazzy T-shirt, decorated with a pair of sequined revolvers, that he has thrown on to greet us. Saffron Aldridge, the society girl and model, who is staying for the weekend, joins us for a while before wandering off to sun herself on a bench.
The last thing that most people — especially those, such as Ross, who rarely give interviews — would want to do after a night of partying is to be bossed around by a photographer, but he is gracious.
He balks, however, at posing in the gold Land Rover, which is parked in front of the house and was used by Ranulph Fiennes on one of his Arctic expeditions — it’s taking the image of the blinging lord of the manor a step too far.
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Ross has spent five years restoring the Grade I-listed property back to a private home, “ripping out blackboards, school rooms, dormitories and boys’ lavatories”, he says. He used Simon Morray-Jones, the architect who worked on Babington House, the fashionable hotel and club in Somerset, and the interiors are a similar concoction of contemporary grooviness and the original fabric of the house, which was revealed when the stud walls and hanging ceilings of the 90 or so school rooms were removed.
Rather than go for period pastiche, “it was key to maintain the historic fabric but to use modern lighting and heating and everything else to make it a house for the 21st century”, says Ross. “I wanted to make it comfortable and functional and also to look as if it is relevant today and not a product of the past.”
The same approach is adopted in the garden, although it soon becomes obvious that Ross is not the man to ask about horticultural detail. While he may have the Midas touch when it comes to mobiles, he is first to admit that his fingers are far from green. He’s a generous boss, however, giving Jane Rogers, his head gardener, a free rein.
“Jane doesn’t come and tell me how to sell mobile phones, and I don’t tell her how to run the garden. Fair deal,” he says. “I think you should stick to what you are good at in life. I am very lucky to have a fantastic gardener, and I wouldn’t want to get in her way.” Rogers, a Kiwi who has been working for Ross for a year, beams with pride. “Thank you, David, I appreciate that.”
“It’s the most beautiful space,” says Rogers, admiringly, as we look back over the wide, long lawns to the fairy-tale amalgam of architectural allsorts at the back of the house. A large cedar of Lebanon dominates the lower lawn and, to the sides, wide borders that run the length of the lawn are filled with colourful herbaceous plants. These have replaced island beds, which were dotted along the lawns and broke up the space.
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Together with Rupert Golby, a Chelsea gold medal-winning designer, Rogers has been working on upgrading the hard landscaping such as paths and paving stones to high-quality materials, and to get some structure back into the garden. “Everything was tiddly,” she says. “When I came here, there was nothing taller than 2ft. We need to lift and add a bit of wow.”
Surprisingly for a gardener with a big budget and a hands-off boss, she has done this by moving plants around the garden and growing from seed in the kitchen garden’s glasshouses rather than buying in masses of new stock. “We’ve grown thousands of plants,” she says. Taller plants such as cardoons, alliums, Madonna lilies, Crambe cordifolia and bronze fennel now provide the “oomph” Rogers and Golby are after.
In the first of three walled gardens, the Italianate garden, are 19 standard holm oaks, Quercus ilex, which have been moved from the side of the upper lawn and now provide a formality that sits well with the neoclassical portico by a formal pool. Next door is a well-stocked kitchen garden with surprisingly ugly glasshouses that Rogers hopes one day will be replaced — she hasn’t got round to tackling Ross about them. A third walled area still holds 1970s-style school buildings (which now act as staff accommodation) and the ground has been left fallow — it will eventually become a wildlife garden.
Elaborate wrought-iron gates lead back to the lower lawn. Along with the weather vane on the house, they were made by Sir Bache Cunard, Nancy’s father, in his workshop in the tower. Ross has the tools, along with Cunard’s engraved penknife, which he later shows me in a room devoted to Nevill Holt memorabilia that he and his mother have created for house guests in one of the towers. It seems fitting that the Cunards’ fortune came from shipping and the sea has also set up the Ross family: above the house is a flagpole, a house-warming present from Ross’s parents. On it flies the lone-star ensign of the Ross Group, once the biggest name in the British fish industry.
The garden has been designed to be at its best during Grange Park Opera’s annual season. Performances are held in the Grade II*-listed 17th-century stable block, the courtyard of which is covered over by a giant bubble dome to make an auditorium for 320.
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During the interval, opera-goers are free to wander the garden, inspecting the borders, nabbing the odd pea pod and sneaking a peek through the windows to see what Ross has done to the interiors. The top lawn is dotted with decorative pavilions where they can eat supper and admire the view.
High summer is a difficult time of year for a garden to look fresh, but Rogers and her team of four and a half (one gardener works two days a week) relish the challenge. “Obviously, if you have a couple of thousand people walking through the garden for 10 days, you want it to look as good as possible,” she says. “It is a bit of a focus; it sets the level.”
To this end, she employs techniques such as the Chelsea chop — when you cut back perennials such as sedums, artemesias and nepetas at the end of May, so that they will create new growth to flower later than their normal season.
For Ross, hosting the opera season has benefits further than the sweet notes of Mozart and Donizetti floating through the evening air. “I get quite a lot of letters from people who were at school here and people who have an interest in the historical significance of the house,” he says. “The opera keeps a focus: ‘Fine, you can all come and have a look but it’s at that particular time.’ That way, the whole place can be organised and set up properly.
I’m interested in opera and I have a very good, long-standing relationship with Wasfi (Kani, who runs the opera company), so there’s something I could get enthused about and be engaged with. The opera is the best way of showing off the house. It’s a fantastic place to share.”
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With that, he checks his mobile for the time, and heads off to collect Aldridge and the keys for the Land Rover: they’re off — not to the Arctic, but to Uppingham for lunch.
For details of next year’s Grange Park Opera season, visit www.grangeparkopera.co.uk