Awakening a Jacobean sleeping beauty

Jeremy Musson visits Apethorpe Palace to learn about its new owners' plans to awaken this Jacobean sleeping beauty

Northamptonshire is peppered with fine country houses. Apethorpe Palace, built of golden stone and with its forest of gables, mullioned windows and tall chimneys, seems almost like a small town of its own. Like many big, rambling country houses, it has had a rocky road through the twentieth century - it was used as a school after the war and then left empty for years - but now, remarkably, it is a family home once again. Jean Christophe, Baron von Pfetten, bought Apethorpe in November 2014. He and his wife Nadia are now working on refitting this great shell - as well as opening the house to the public.

Nadia is a conservation architect, hailing from a line of Venetian architects. She brings practical skills and experience to the project, as well as courage and imagination. 'The first time that I saw this house, I fell in love with it,' she says. 'It looked like a medieval village, but as we wandered round we discovered a real hidden beauty inside. You can feel the generations that have gone before.'

Apethorpe Palace, so renamed in honour of the state apart- ments created for the visits of James I, is like something from a fairy tale. It started as a manor owned by Henry VIII and Elizabeth I, and was acquired and remodelled in 1551 by her Chancellor of the Exchequer, Sir Walter Mildmay, who enter- tained the queen here. It was then extended in the 1620s for Mildmay's granddaughter's husband, Sir Francis Fane, who became 1st Earl of Westmorland. This extension was designed to host James I, and the Fanes would decamp when he was in residence. There was always much music, feasting and dancing.

Different generations made their contributions. In the Georgian era, there were plans to recast it all as a Palladian mansion, which were only partly realised inside the east courtyard, as seen in the north façade of the main south range. Sold by the Fanes in 1904 to manufacturer Leonard Brassey, who became 1st Baron Brassey of Apethorpe in 1938, the house was given a sensitive upgrading by the architect Reginald Blomfield. But it was sold on by the Brasseys in the late Forties and became an Approved School, with various concrete buildings and insertions.

When this period came to an end in 1982, the building fell into disrepair. In 2004, English Heritage and East Northamptonshire District Council swept in with a comp- ulsory purchase order to rescue the building. This was just in time: damp and decay had threatened the collapse of the fine plasterwork ceilings put up in James I's apartments.

The loss to the nation's heritage would have been catastrophic. English Heritage analysed the building and then secured and stabilised the structure as one great stately shell. But it could only go so far; the right person to take it on had to be found. Simon Thurley, then chief executive of the charity, recalls: 'English Heritage was determined that this building should not become an institution again, and the ideal use would be for it to be a home.'

The late Dowager Marchioness of Salisbury, a renowned garden designer and family friend of the von Pfettens, suggested they visit Apethorpe. After long negotiations that, at times, resembled an interview process, they bought it. 'I have a lot to thank Mollie Salisbury for; it is because of her we are here now,' says Jean Christophe. 'We want to bring this great house back to the status it once had and are hugely enjoying the process. On the first day we came, I was amazed to find one of the coats of arms carved into the stone here was identical to our own.' It was a good omen. They have generously signed an agreement for the house to be open to the public 50 days a year for the next 80 years, with guided tours managed by English Heritage.