When you’ve got a tax bill of £8,000,000, out of an estate worth £14,000,000 with daily interest of £1,300, I guess the best thing to do with the property you’ve inherited is to simply tell Her Majesties Revenue & Customs (HMRC), “have the sodding house” which is what Henry Harper-Crewe did in 1982.
The National Trust took ownership in 1985 and found the house in, to put it mildly, decline. The Trust market the property as “an illustration of the English country house in decline”. At its time of endowment, there had been little change to many rooms since the 1880s. A massive amount of remedial work but no restoration has been done and interiors are almost as they were found in 1985, so the decay of the building and its interiors has been halted but not reversed.
