Luke and Julie Montagu, aka Viscount and Viscountess Hinchingbrooke, are not your average Lord and Lady of the manor. He's a liberal aristocrat, she's an American yoga teacher. They keep ducks for pets rather than labradors, furnish their wardrobes with charity shop finds rather than designer labels and have embraced the digital age by running a hugely successful YouTube channel about their beautiful 16th-century stately home, Mapperton House in Dorset.
"We can turn it on when we need to," says the future 12th Earl of Sandwich of his titled status. "But we don't want to most of the time."
Behind the scenes at Mapperton House
The couple and their four children – Emma, 25, and Jack, 23, from Julie's first marriage, and their sons William, 19, and Nestor, 17 – have made Mapperton their home, living in private quarters in the back part of the house since 2016, when they took over responsibility for the estate from Luke's parents.
They were soon confronted with the challenge facing all owners of stately homes, which is, he says: "How to keep the roof in the face of enormous, rising costs."
© Millie Pilkington/HELLO!Nestled in a verdant valley and surrounded by 1,900 acres of land, Mapperton, which was built in the1540s, has everything a visitor would expect and more. Full of elegant charm, it boasts 18th-century wood panelling, decorative plaster ceilings, gilt-framed portraits and antique furniture. The 15-acre garden has a croquet lawn and dovecote, wild pools edged with topiary, and an arboretum.
BACK TO NATURE
New inhabitants including rare white park cattle, Tamworth pigs, Exmoor ponies and ornamental Jacob sheep have recently taken up residence in an area of land being used for rewilding. It's no wonder that 15,000 visitors a year flock to the estate, where the annual cost of repairs and maintenance alone is £200,000. The Montagus are constantly thinking of new and inventive ways to keep it running as a business while also conserving its heritage.
© Millie Pilkington/HELLO!"The world has changed," says Luke, 54, as we sit down for lunch at the estate's smart café. "These wonderful places aren't just the domain of a select few; this is a shared heritage with shared stories. And this is a landscape that other people should be able to come in and connect with. It's not just about the business, it's also about what we feel is right."
NEW IDEAS
© Millie Pilkington/HELLO!There are a number of commercial ventures that keep the place afloat: guided tours, weddings, holiday cottages and a campsite, as well as plans to rent out the house for people to stay for limited periods of time throughout the year. But what really sets the family apart is their YouTube channel Mapperton Live, for which they make a new video every week.
Built on their combined expertise and experience, it has been a phenomenal success, with more than 160,000 subscribers. Luke, who is reserved, with a dry sense of humour, ran a dotcom company before founding the Metropolitan Film School in London. Julie, 52, who exudes enthusiasm and energy, is a TV presenter who fronted the Amazon Prime Video series An American Aristocrat’s Guide to Great Estates. She has also appeared in reality TV show Ladies of London.
© Millie Pilkington/HELLO!"We’ve got so many stories that we’re happy to share," says Luke, who studied film at Columbia University in New York.
"A lot of people would find what we do quite intrusive, but Julie has taught me that you can be open and free, and bring people in. My instinct wouldn’t have been to do that."
© Millie Pilkington/HELLO!"I also think we work well on television, and people like the scenes where it’s you and I together," he says to his wife, who has joined us. "We’re not filming our breakfast in the morning, in our pyjamas. We want to film what we do here, day and night, from the time we wakeup to the time we switch off," she says.
"People are interested in not just the history of these stately homes, but in what we call the living history."
© Millie Pilkington/HELLO!The platform also gives them the perfect opportunity to raise funds from a loyal network of fans who so far have helped restore a couple of lead eagles at the front of the house, as well as one of the 18th-century natural pools where Julie enjoys cold-water swimming every day.
LIVING THE GOOD LIFE
Visitors can also sample some of that living history by joining one of their grand historic tours. Guests can stay for up to five nights, visit neighbouring estates and enjoy black-tie dinners hosted by the couple. At £8,000 a head, it’s one of their "best earners".
© Millie Pilkington/HELLO!Many of the guests are American, and Julie relishes the opportunity to spend time with compatriots "who bring life to a Tudor house", while Luke enjoys the formality of the occasions.
TRUSTED TRADITIONS
"Most of our lives are spent in a very relaxed kind of way, but I care that the knife and fork are an inch from the edge of the table and the glass is in the right place. Odd, isn’t it?" he says.
© Millie Pilkington/HELLO!"I’ve grown up with a sense of the importance of maintaining certain traditions, I suppose. When I was growing up, my grandfather wore a black tie and dinner jacket every night, even if he was on his own. Not that I do the same," he adds.
Julie’s latest passion project, meanwhile, has been to delve into Mapperton’s archives. She’s uncovered a treasure trove of information, including 10,000 previously unseen diaries, journals and letters dating from 1888 and written by Alberta, the 9th Countess of Sandwich, a fellow American.
Using cutting-edge technology they have taken the transcribed documents and put them into their own custom-designed AI, bringing the American heiress back to life in an exhibition at the house.
© Millie Pilkington/HELLO!Julie feels "a strong connection" with the Countess, who also came from Chicago and was a "big yogi" – Julie is a trained yoga teacher and still occasionally takes classes.
"It’s my baby. I’ve learnt how to book bind and how to restore archive paper, which is very fragile – all through YouTube tutorials," she says proudly.
© Millie Pilkington/HELLO!POSITIVE APPROACH
Her commitment and positivity (possibly a hangover from her role as captain of a cheerleading squad) have been a major drive behind the running of Mapperton. Has Luke considered what would have happened if he hadn’t met her?
"That’s a great question," she jokes, before he has a chance to answer. "It would have been a disaster," he says, laughing. "But I haven’t really thought of the alternative because there isn’t one."
© Millie Pilkington/HELLO!"I lived in America for a while, and one of the things that attracted me was this sense of enterprise and getting on with things.
"Also, looking back, my mother led a lot of the work here because my father was in the House of Lords. So there’s a tradition of strong Montagu women taking charge."
© Millie Pilkington/HELLO!"And while I wouldn’t say that Julie has completely taken charge," he qualifies, "she’s certainly taken charge of lots of different areas."
"I’m a go-getter," adds his wife. "I come at it from a different viewpoint. I’m not public school-educated and I don’t have a background in British history or architecture. I think Luke likes that, as he can educate me about some things but also likes it when get overly excited about others: –'What? That’s 800 years old?' – I still have that enthusiasm."
© Millie Pilkington/HELLO!Julie had a "typical suburban American childhood", growing up just outside Chicago. She came to London in her late 20s and worked for a tech company.
In 2003, she met Luke at a party and they married a year later – they celebrate their 20th wedding anniversary this June. But her first visit to Mapperton wasn’t a huge success.
© Millie Pilkington/HELLO!"I invited her down for the weekend, and in those days, we did quite a lot of hunting," Luke recalls. "Some wild boar had escaped, so I got my rifle out and went off with Julie to shoot it.
"We had this dead animal, weighing more than 400lb, lying in the woods, and we had to get it out. The very first time Julie met my parents, all four of us were holding one end of this animal upside down."
© Millie Pilkington/HELLO!Adds Julie: "His parents were like: 'Where do you come from?' and I’m like: 'Chicago,' but thinking: 'What in the world have I stepped into?' "We have evolved since then," her husband says.
"We used to do pheasant shooting here, but not anymore, as we don’t think it’s right to ear huge numbers of pheasants just to shoot them for pleasure."
RESPECTING NATURE
Inspired by youngest son Nestor, who is a committed environmentalist and naturalist, and a vegetarian like his mother, the family has handed around 1,000 acres of land back to nature as part of a rewilding project – hence the introduction of cattle, ponies and pigs to graze the fields and meadows.
© Millie Pilkington/HELLO!He hopes one day that they’ll also see more skylarks and quails, turtledoves and nightingales. "Our values have evolved, and we want to do more to help nature recover, rather than shooting it down."
Lunch is almost over and the Montagus have to get back to work – there’s a new YouTube video to film and Luke is leaving for London, where they also have a home, that evening. Does he ever resent his inheritance and the responsibility it has brought with it?
© Millie Pilkington/HELLO!"I’ve never thought of it like that, as I was in my late 40s when I took it on, and had lived other lives. It affected some of the choices I made – I might have gone into the arts if I hadn’t felt I needed to make money – but I rather looked forward to it," he says philosophically.
LEARNING HIS ROLE
"I thought it was a joke up until the age of 12, when my parent told me the Earl of Sandwich story – that an ancestor of mine had invented it. It sounded so preposterous that it couldn’t be true. Then gradually it dawned on me that I’d have to take it on."
Their son William is next in line to inherit, and, according to Julie, is "very keen". Until then, the couple will continue being "nimble and creative" in keeping the estate running and might, one day, be able to relax.
© Millie Pilkington/HELLO!For more details on private hire, visit mapperton.com and mappertonwildlands.com. For Mapperton Live, visit youtube.com/mappertonlive.
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