After a tour around Bridwell House, it’s time for tea and cake with the King’s second cousin, Lord Ivar Mountbatten, and his husband James Coyle. The couple chat to Chrissy Harris about the daily ups and downs of managing their Grade I-listed home.
Ivar Mountbatten is in the middle of decorating a bathroom. The King’s second cousin and direct descendent of Queen Victoria has got around 20 visitors arriving at his house for dinner on Tuesday and he wants everything to look spick and span.
‘The clock tower had a leak in it and then the ceiling to the bathroom came down, so we had to get that repaired,’ says Ivar, whose official title is Lord Ivar Mountbatten. ‘And we’ve got this Duke of Edinburgh Award party arriving next week, so I’m desperately decorating it all to get it done on time.’
‘Are there people staying in the house?’ asks Ivar’s husband, James.
'Oh yeah, they want 15 bedrooms,’ comes the reply.
‘Oh jeez!’ says James.
If it wasn’t for the posh titles or the family photographs of the late Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip on the side table, you’d be forgiven for thinking you were in any other family home.
But then that’s the general vibe here at Bridwell House, an impressive, yet welcoming historic house, near the village of Uffculme.
Ivar and James are like any other married couple, arranging who’s turn it is to take the dog out and correcting each other’s anecdotes as we sit in their comfortable drawing room, drinking tea and eating homemade fruit loaf.
There’s lots of background to this, of course. Ivar - who is in line to the throne, albeit it quite far down - bought Bridwell in 1997 when he was married to his wife, Penny. The couple raised their three now grown-up daughters here during their 17-year marriage. Ivar and Penny divorced in 2010 and Ivar later came out as ‘Britain’s first gay royal’. He married his husband James, who works for British Airways, in 2018 (Penny walked Ivar down the aisle).
Much has been written about all of this and more. In fact, Tatler magazine was recently here for a feature about the Queer Spirit Festival held at Bridwell Park in August. In 2022, Ivar and James were filmed as part of ITV’s Keeping up with the Aristocrats series.
Nothing much seems to phase these two and Ivar is, well, not as ‘lordy’ as I’d imagined.
‘Ha!’ says Ivar. ‘I mean, what is a lord these days? I remember Penny and I went to Seattle once for some charity thing and we did a morning TV show and the presenter said I wasn’t what he was expecting. Lots of people have this image of some crotchety old man in a tweed suit with a walking stick. That’s not me at all.’
It certainly isn’t. Although, Ivar, who recently turned 60, says he’s just been issued his bus pass. But no. Ivar is not crotchety or dressed in tweed. And his house is as unstuffy as he is.
‘What I like about it is that it looks quite grand, but it’s actually quite compact,’ says Ivar, as we take a tour. ‘It’s actually only four rooms on the ground floor, so it’s perfect for entertaining.’
The original classic Georgian Bridwell House was destroyed by a fire in 1990 and had to be completely rebuilt, a process which took nearly six years and was done in partnership with English Heritage. When Ivar bought it, the building was new, had up-to-date insulation, heating and electrics - and was a blank canvas.
‘The great thing about that is it meant I didn’t inherit anybody’s gopping décor – all of this gopping décor is mine!’ he says, before letting out a wonderfully aristocratic guffaw (he is a lord, after all). ‘I loved doing it,’ he adds, talking about making his mark on a house that was considerably more contemporary than his previous home - a huge Elizabethan mansion in Essex, called Moynes Park. ‘That was a beautiful house, but it was slowly crumbling all around us,’ he says. ‘This one is in pretty good nick.’
This is a fabulous house, no doubt about it. The artwork, the beautiful library, the morning room with its distinctive plasterwork (the plasterer left his makers’ mark on one of the decorative ceiling pieces) have been the setting for much fun and laughter over the years. Visitors - some of them royal - enjoy being here because it’s such a nice setting but also because of the company. HRH The Duchess of Edinburgh, godmother to one of Ivar’s daughters, recently paid a visit for a charity dinner honouring The Two Moors Festival, of which she is patron.
‘She flew here in her helicopter and then the Devon weather closed in and she had to take the train back,’ says James. ‘You went down to Tivvy Parkway, do you remember?’ he adds, describing the last-minute royal arrival at Tiverton Parkway station. ‘You said you’d never seen it looking so clean!’
We chat more about how well connected this part of Mid Devon is and how Ivar ended up here because he ‘just always fancied it’. He’s now a Deputy Lieutenant of the county and very much part of the local community. And so is Bridwell House these days. After running the house as a wedding venue for five years, Ivar and James decided to open up the parkland to visitors during lockdown.
It was and remains a hugely popular move, thanks largely to the delightful Orangery café the couple created in the estate’s former swimming pool building.
There was a blip last year when Ivar and James tried to introduce a £60 annual charge for visitors to cover insurance costs, as well as a new car park etc.
‘The story was picked up by the newspapers and television,’ says Ivar, describing the outcry that followed. ‘I had to go on the Jeremy Vine Show to defend what we’d tried to do,’ he adds, becoming re-annoyed at the whole ‘lord charging people to walk on his land’ slant the story was given across various media platforms.
‘Anyway, so we decided to stop charging,’ he says, adding that since then, income has doubled. Probably because of all the publicity.
‘Business is all about trial and error,’ says Ivar. ‘A lot of people have said, well, that was a bloody good exercise, wasn’t it? A lot of other people have said ‘well done for having the balls to realise it wasn’t working’.’
The experience – as well as being an interesting delve into the public psyche - has opened the couple’s eyes to the development potential at Bridwell. When we meet, Ivar and James are just about to put the house on the open market to attract investors. Ideas floating around include making Bridwell into a unique hotel or guesthouse, while moving the café to an unused helicopter hanger in the grounds (yes, there’s one of those). Ivar and James plan to continue living here but will retreat to the gatehouse lodge.
‘James calls it the hellhole!’ says Ivar.
‘It’s filthy and so, so cold!’ says James.
‘Yes, but in the summer, it’s absolutely fine,’ says Ivar, agreeing it’ll need some work, but plans are in place to make it feel more homely. ‘There’s so much potential,’ adds Ivar. ‘We can really create something here.’
The couple celebrate six years of marriage in September and are looking forward to whatever the future brings. Right now, however, they’ve got to prepare for the arrival of the next lot of guests.
‘I do like showing visitors around because it’s good to be reminded how beautiful it is here,’ says Ivar, before remembering his deadline. ‘Right, I’ve really got to decorate this bloody bathroom…’.
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