‘We left London for our 230-year-old family estate during lockdown – and never looked back’

Boughton House has been the English home of the Duke of Buccleuch since 1790, and is now one of the homes belonging to the current duke, Richard Montagu Douglas Scott, 10th Duke of Buccleuch and 12th Duke of Queensberry.

The phrase “one of” is key. As well as Boughton, Richard Buccleuch has three other stately homes in Scotland, across estates totalling 196,000 acres. Until 2019, he was the UK’s largest private landowner. Just as peers of high rank and many houses did in centuries gone by, he moves between his different homes – Bowhill in the Scottish Borders, Drumlanrig Castle in Dumfriesshire and houses in London and France – no one lives at Boughton full time. 

Since 2020, his younger son Lord Charlie Montagu Douglas Scott and his wife Flora have lived in a house on the estate, taking a role in the local community, with Charlie a director of Boughton.

We meet among the Christmas trees propped up for sale outside the house on a blissfully bright, sunny day. Boughton is closed to the public for the winter, and conservation works are taking place – the peace is broken by the hum of tools, but it is otherwise a total idyll. Our dogs run around madly, blessed by the spoiling surroundings – hundreds of acres of open parkland.

The Scotts moved to Northamptonshire from London on the day the first lockdown was announced, with an idea to buy a house locally and continue their commuter lifestyle – Charlie at Christie’s, and Flora in finance. But then life, and Boughton, got in the way. 

First, they found that just buying a local rectory wasn’t the easiest task: “You’d think that would be straightforward,” says Flora, “but the stock isn’t there.”

And who’d give up the chance to live at Boughton? “The power and magic of Boughton is unbuyable, extraordinary,” she says. Giving up the search for a new home, they decided that they would build one instead, and their new house, designed by Robbie Kerr of Adam Architecture, will complete late next year.

Relocating gave them both a change of heart about work, too. “We thought, do we want to be on trains five days a week?” says Flora. Inspired by Boughton’s ancient history, its extraordinary collection and the ongoing efforts to conserve it, they launched a furniture restoration business, Summerfield and Scott, dealing and sourcing antique furniture and prints, using Boughton’s beautiful backdrop in their photography. 

Now, Charlie divides his time 50-50 between the business and his role at Boughton, feeding back to his older brother Walter, Earl of Dalkeith, vice chairman of Buccleuch, the family estate business. As the younger son, Charlie will not inherit Boughton. 

Moving to Northamptonshire, he felt he could do some good on the estate, creating a tangible, everyday link between the family and the business, supported by his father and brother, who felt that “having a family member on the ground here would be very helpful – there hadn’t been someone here full time since my great-grandmother”. This set-up has not been trialled before – though Richard Buccleuch’s brothers Lords John and Damian Scott are involved with the estates, neither live on at the ground at any of the family houses.

Boughton began life as a monastery, and in 1528 Edward Montagu acquired the building from St Edmundsbury Abbey, building a manor house on to its great hall. In the late 17th century Ralph Montagu, later 1st Duke of Montagu, former British ambassador to Paris, lavished French architectural influences on it, bringing a touch of Versailles to the heart of England. 

In 1767, his great-granddaughter Lady Elizabeth Montagu married Henry Scott, 3rd Duke of Buccleuch – a descendant of Charles II via his illegitimate son James Scott, Duke of Monmouth – and the house was absorbed into the Buccleuch empire. With the duke preoccupied with his larger Scottish estates, Boughton entered its deep sleep, unused by the family in any meaningful way until the early 20th century. 

It is hard to imagine how the 100-room Boughton, a calendar house with seven courtyards, 12 entrances, 52 chimney stacks and 365 windows could ever be forgotten, or overlooked for another. The so-called “English Versailles”, 15 miles from Kettering, is utterly magnificent – as Sir Henry “Chips” Channon described it in 1948, “It is the stillness, the curious quiet of Boughton, for the place is half asleep, that impresses the most.”

Benign neglect saved it – there is no Victorian wing, nor Edwardian library. It is as it was left in 1700 – but it is now receiving far more care and attention.

With innovation – or rather, turning to old ways of doing things: over the next few years nine kilometres of hedgerows will be laid – there remains a built-in responsibility to do the right thing. In a big family company like Buccleuch, Flora says, “It’s your name on the tin. You’ve had a responsibility to people, communities and to your environment for hundreds of years. You can’t screw that up because you’ve tried to turn a quick buck on something.” 

It’s a helpful reminder, says Charlie, “that we are a very small part of a very long history. Decision-making has to be with the view of how it will look in 50 to 150 years’ time – if you lose something now, you’ll never be able to get it back. You have to take the longer view, not only with how you maintain a sustainable business, but balancing your commitment to the landscape, the environment, the community, and how the estate is perceived in the local area”.

For Charlie, being the younger son is freeing. If he and Flora wish to sell their new house in a decade and move away, they can, but they have chosen to come to Boughton. Their part involves, quietly, unshowily being involved in the local community – as school governors, members of church steering committees, and bringing new families onto the estate. “You don’t go and make a song and dance about it,” says Flora, “it’s just what you should do.” 

Being involved with Boughton’s agricultural side is exciting, too, she says. “It’s a really cool time to have land. There is a lot of really good regenerative agriculture going on at Boughton, and that side of things almost excites me more. I love the house and the history, but you can do a lot with 11,000 acres.”

Boughton is a surreal place to be involved with, at any level. When I ask Charlie for a favourite part of Boughton, he chooses the cedar tree on the edge of the 17th century canal in the park. This overlooks Orpheus, a landform by the landscape architect Kim Wilkie, commissioned by Richard Buccleuch, an inverted grass pyramid that descends seven metres, the water at its base reflecting the sky. Flora finds the whole place “very restful, very restorative”.

This is echoed in the house, which has been built on over the centuries making “a real patchwork of history that somehow rolls on, quietly, sensibly”. But it’s still a party house, and sleeps about 50. “I think it’s always been a really happy place,” says Flora. “What’s so important is that we make sure our children live and breathe it. What is there not to gain from the wider family having that story to tell about it?”