We were given a very special opportunity by Baron and Baroness Pfetten to take a small party round Apethorpe Palace. Baroness Pfetten very kindly guided us round herself.

Apethorpe Palace holds a particularly important place in English history. Owned by Henry VIII and Elizabeth I, it then became a much loved royal residence of James I and Charles I, who both regularly lived there, with James I adding a series of state rooms. It is one of the very finest Jacobean houses in the country to survive.

In 1939 the house was requisitioned and after the war became an approved school. When the school closed the house deteriorated until in 2004, it was compulsorily purchased by the government, the second of only two cases of such purchase. English Heritage then did some essential works on the structure and roof before Baron and Baroness Pfetten took on ownership and the massive task of restoration in 2014.

From that moment the Pfettens have achieved a staggering resurgence of this huge and magnificent palace. Their exemplary programme of repair and refurbishment has taken Apethorpe from a place where, in 2004, much of the building was on the verge of collapse, to a family home where the great state rooms used by James I, together with restored lost interiors such as the Library, Orangery and White Hall must rank among the finest in the country. Country Life, which has devoted a large part of two recent editions to the house concludes in summing up Apethorpe: ‘The stuff of dreams’.