4 - A family affair

Summary

When the Conservative minister for the environment, Baroness Young, addressed the inaugural general meeting of the Historic Houses Asso-ciation in November 1973, she made a point of emphasising the importance of family life to the continuing vitality of country houses. “It is still part of the great appeal of our historic houses that so many are still owned by the families which have played so great a part in their history”, she said, demonstrating a shrewd understanding of her audience. The advantage, Lady Young continued, was that lived-in houses remained homes, “rather than merely still-life muse-um pieces”. Lest this be construed as too obvious a swipe at the National Trust and its mansion properties, she went on to emphasise the “immense contribu-tion” made by the Trust and its “high standards of maintenance and display”. Yet her preference was clearly for a house, any house, to remain as a domestic residence. Her message in conclusion was to stress the importance of individ-ual owners being “helped and guided in ways of managing and restoring their properties”, such that these buildings remained, above all, homes.

Baroness Young was a stalwart defender of the traditional family throughout her career. In this she shared some similarities with her contemporary as a parliamentarian, Margaret Thatcher, who at that time was serving as secretary of state for education in Edward Heath's cabinet. Both women were advocates for traditional, Christian family values, even while they doggedly pursued political power in a manner that was somewhat out of kilter with the housewifely public images that they sometimes sought to project. Lady Young's commitment to the conventional family informed her political positions: later, in the 1990s, she would make bitter enemies when she opposed moves to give equal rights to gay men and women, such as in relation to the adoption of children.

Lady Young's summary definition of privately owned country houses as lived-in family homes was entirely accurate. It was the clear difference that set the HHA's houses apart from those managed by the National Trust or by local or national government. This fact had been highlighted by Sir Ernest Gowers’ committee's report in 1950, which listed as a policy recommendation that important country house properties should, so far as was possible, “be preserved as private residences occupied preferably by the families connected with them”.