LIFE in a castle isn’t always a fairytale, as the Duchess of Rutland – who grew up a farmer’s daughter in Wales – reveals in her fascinating and funny autobiography.
Pony-mad Emma Watkins grew up on a farm just outside Knighton, Powys, and is now in charge of running Belvoir Castle, one of the UK’s grandest stately homes, in Leicestershire.
Emma always thought she’d grow up to be the wife of a younger version of her father. But then she fell in love with David Manners – who became the 11th Duke of Rutland – in 1992.
She he had no idea he was heir to one of the most senior hereditary titles in the land and when David succeeded his father, Emma became the chatelaine of Belvoir Castle, ancestral home of the Dukes of Rutland.
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Emma grew up on the family farm at Heartsease, three miles from Knighton, and went to school in Bucknell. As a child she adored ponies and would often work as a beater for the shoot at Stanage Park, riding her ponies Betty and Tina into the undergrowth to put up the birds, spending every day after school riding through the local fields and woods.
After struggling at school, Emma worked as an estate agent, marketing properties in London, then started her first business as an interior designer, founding Eardisley Park Interiors with her friend Janet.
At this time she was living with her brother William, who discovered spring water at Heartsease and started Radnor Hills Spring Water. Emma’s work as an interior designer led her to meet David at the age of 27.
She fell madly in love with him, but had absolutely no idea that he was the future Duke of Rutland.
These stories of her Powys childhood are featured in Emma’s autobiography ‘The Accidental Duchess’.
She coped with five boisterous children – including the future Duke of Rutland – while faced with a vast estate in desperate need of modernisation and staff who wanted nothing to change.
With sound advice from the doyenne of duchesses, ‘Debo’ Devonshire, she met each challenge, including scaling the castle roof in a storm to unclog a flooding gutter, being caught in her nightdress by mesmerised Texan tourists and disguising herself as a cleaner to watch filming of The Crown. She even took on the castle ghosts.
At times the problems she faced seemed insoluble, yet with her energy and talent for thinking on the hoof, she triumphed, inspired by Rutland duchesses in whose footsteps she trod, as well as the redoubtable and resourceful women who made her who she is, and whose homes were not castles but remote farmhouses in the Radnorshire hills.
Today, the Duchess runs the commercial activities of Belvoir Castle, including shooting parties, weddings and a range of furniture. She has presented on various television programmes, including ITV’s Castles, Keeps and Country Homes, and has produced a book about Belvoir Castle.
In 2021, she created a podcast titled Duchess, where she interviews chatelaines of castles and stately homes throughout the UK.
In her podcast’s first season, her interviewees included Lady Henrietta Spencer-Churchill of Blenheim Palace and Lady Mansfield of Scone Palace.
‘The Accidental Duchess’ will appeal to everyone who has visited a stately home and wondered what it would be like to live there.
Published by Pan Macmillan is it available in hardback from £12.99 from September 15.
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