the Seaton Hall estate. Compliment the curtains! exhorted a scribbled note in the
margin. Underlined three times was her final comment: Think Romance! Her Grace intends to hire the house out for weddings.
Instead of feeling, as Ticky had suggested, annoyed by Martha’s micro-management from afar, or affronted at her assumption that I wouldn’t know how to behave, I felt grateful and a
bit sad. Looking at all the work she had put into the trip made me feel guilty that I was the one who was getting the benefit. Of course I owed it to her to conduct the visit as she would have done
(though I drew the line at actually curtseying). The memo also revealed that I would be collected from Buxton Station by a driver. I marvelled at the luxury and felt another pang for Martha.
Usually press trips were an undignified bunfight in which a large group of journalists would be herded from the train into a rackety minibus, the seating on which operated under an unspoken but
rigid hierarchy. At the front sat the broadsheet journalists, holding themselves apart from all of us by virtue of their importance and influence, and a certain studied ennui that spoke of
the many more important matters that weighed on their minds, which we lesser hacks could not possibly understand. In the middle seats sat journalists like me, from small, specialist magazines of
limited and dwindling readership, clinging on to the last vestiges of former glory. We had prestige, thanks to the historical reputation of our publications, but no power. And we were glad of the
day out; at least, I always was. At the back of the bus, like the naughtiest schoolchildren, sat the freelancers; usually of a certain age, they were here for one thing only: free stuff.
Overexcited by the proximity of so many others in comparison to their solitary working-from-home existences, they talked loudly of former trips, the superiority/inferiority of the lunch/tea that
had been provided for us, their glory days as features writers for now defunct publications, and the poor state of current heritage journalism. They were to be avoided as much as possible, since
they would almost certainly try to pitch a feature to you if you showed the slightest weakness and also because everyone, from the editor of the Sunday Times Home section downwards,
superstitiously feared that their lowly career prospects might be catching.
There were no such indignities on this trip. I was astonished to be collected not just by a car, but one driven by a chauffeur in a peaked cap and a uniform. I felt like a heroine in a 1930s
novel as the car hummed smoothly through the country lanes towards Seaton Hall, although I suspected my ancestors in the thirties would have been found scrubbing pans in the scullery rather than
swanning around in motor cars. As we swung through the gates of the estate, the Delaval Arms, where I’d be staying tonight, could be seen across the park, a low stone building that had once
been a hunting lodge. It was a full five minutes along a wooded drive before the Hall itself came into view, but it was worth the wait.
Seaton Hall had, as do all the true country houses of England, a history that spanned the centuries with a combination of elegance and eccentricity. It had begun its existence as a Saxon hall,
built for defence and warmth rather than beauty, its only windows high slits in the thick stone walls. This was the view that greeted me: forbidding and yet beautiful, with a heavily studded wooden
door set deep within the Derbyshire stone. I knew that beyond this hall the house had been added to extensively: there was a Georgian wing, and a Victorian Gothic addition, not to mention a poor
attempt, sneered at by Pevsner, at a Palladian walkway on the eastern side. But the mishmash of styles had been saved by the continuity of the local limestone, which gave the building, the dossier
said, an overall appearance of harmony. None of this could be seen as we proceeded up the
margin. Underlined three times was her final comment: Think Romance! Her Grace intends to hire the house out for weddings.
Instead of feeling, as Ticky had suggested, annoyed by Martha’s micro-management from afar, or affronted at her assumption that I wouldn’t know how to behave, I felt grateful and a
bit sad. Looking at all the work she had put into the trip made me feel guilty that I was the one who was getting the benefit. Of course I owed it to her to conduct the visit as she would have done
(though I drew the line at actually curtseying). The memo also revealed that I would be collected from Buxton Station by a driver. I marvelled at the luxury and felt another pang for Martha.
Usually press trips were an undignified bunfight in which a large group of journalists would be herded from the train into a rackety minibus, the seating on which operated under an unspoken but
rigid hierarchy. At the front sat the broadsheet journalists, holding themselves apart from all of us by virtue of their importance and influence, and a certain studied ennui that spoke of
the many more important matters that weighed on their minds, which we lesser hacks could not possibly understand. In the middle seats sat journalists like me, from small, specialist magazines of
limited and dwindling readership, clinging on to the last vestiges of former glory. We had prestige, thanks to the historical reputation of our publications, but no power. And we were glad of the
day out; at least, I always was. At the back of the bus, like the naughtiest schoolchildren, sat the freelancers; usually of a certain age, they were here for one thing only: free stuff.
Overexcited by the proximity of so many others in comparison to their solitary working-from-home existences, they talked loudly of former trips, the superiority/inferiority of the lunch/tea that
had been provided for us, their glory days as features writers for now defunct publications, and the poor state of current heritage journalism. They were to be avoided as much as possible, since
they would almost certainly try to pitch a feature to you if you showed the slightest weakness and also because everyone, from the editor of the Sunday Times Home section downwards,
superstitiously feared that their lowly career prospects might be catching.
There were no such indignities on this trip. I was astonished to be collected not just by a car, but one driven by a chauffeur in a peaked cap and a uniform. I felt like a heroine in a 1930s
novel as the car hummed smoothly through the country lanes towards Seaton Hall, although I suspected my ancestors in the thirties would have been found scrubbing pans in the scullery rather than
swanning around in motor cars. As we swung through the gates of the estate, the Delaval Arms, where I’d be staying tonight, could be seen across the park, a low stone building that had once
been a hunting lodge. It was a full five minutes along a wooded drive before the Hall itself came into view, but it was worth the wait.
Seaton Hall had, as do all the true country houses of England, a history that spanned the centuries with a combination of elegance and eccentricity. It had begun its existence as a Saxon hall,
built for defence and warmth rather than beauty, its only windows high slits in the thick stone walls. This was the view that greeted me: forbidding and yet beautiful, with a heavily studded wooden
door set deep within the Derbyshire stone. I knew that beyond this hall the house had been added to extensively: there was a Georgian wing, and a Victorian Gothic addition, not to mention a poor
attempt, sneered at by Pevsner, at a Palladian walkway on the eastern side. But the mishmash of styles had been saved by the continuity of the local limestone, which gave the building, the dossier
said, an overall appearance of harmony. None of this could be seen as we proceeded up the
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