How the Lady of the manor renovated her Cotswold property to be a home and business
A London-born former Hongkonger on moving back into her family’s 15th century estate in southwest England
In 2018, after 15 years in Hong Kong, Briton Alice Fortescue heard her ancestral roots calling when a perfect storm drew her, her husband, Robert Derry, and their two Hong Kong-born children back to the family estate, Ebrington Manor.
“The idea had always been to build a business [in Hong Kong] and sell it,” says Fortescue, who inherited the honorific “Lady” from her father, Charles Fortescue, 8th Earl Fortescue.
“Rob’s father was not well,” says Fortescue. “My father was getting on as well, and he asked if we’d be interested in taking on the house.”
Her parents, living in the main house at the time, would downsize into the (now renovated) old farm buildings on the estate.
Having grown up in Ebrington since the age of three months, London-born Fortescue knew every inch of the three-storey Cotswold manor set on 80 hectares (of the original 800) near Chipping Campden, in Gloucestershire, southwest Britain, complete with summer house, lake house, ponds, orchards and rose gardens.
“Maintaining a house like this is hugely expensive,” says Fortescue. “We always knew we’d have to incorporate some sort of commercial venture to make it work.”