Charles, aged nine, was at boarding school. “I opened up the Illustrated
London News to see a picture of my uncle and aunt – who I’d never met –
lying by a roadside having been shot by bandits,” he says.
Rather than sell it, Charles’s father, Humphrey, took the decision to buy Town
Head from his murdered brother’s estate. He and his wife Esther were farming
in Scotland, so let Town Head to the local MP Basil de Ferranti for a few
years before moving in. Even then, they still shuffled back and forth
between their two bases, trying to balance making a living with running
their newly acquired estate. With a seven-bedroom main house and numerous
outbuildings, some of which have since been converted into holiday cottages,
the estate has always been high maintenance, particularly as its peak
complement of 16 staff has dwindled over the years.
Still, it was a haven for the couple after the wartime difficulty of their
early relationship. Humphrey and Esther met in Stirling in the late
Thirties, when Humphrey was posted to learn signals training as part of one
of the newly formed commando units. On learning that he was being sent to
France, he proposed after just three weeks, promising to hurry back and
marry as soon as the fighting was over.
But Humphrey’s unit was captured in a village in France, and he spent the next
three years as a prisoner of war, first in camps in Germany, and then in
Italy.
At one stage he escaped with another prisoner, donning overalls and pretending
to be a decorator before being recaptured a week later. His fellow escapee
was shot by the Germans. Then, as he and other P O Ws were being taken
through the Brenner Pass in a cattle train, there was another attempted
breakout. Humphrey was going to be one of the last out of the hole in the
bottom of the carriage, but heard so much machine gunfire that he decided
not to risk it. It was the right choice. Looking out of the window, he saw
that almost all of the other prisoners lay dead.
Esther, waiting anxiously in England, nearly gave up. When Humphrey was
released at the end of the war, she was planning to tell him it was all
over, until she met him off the train at Grange over Sands station. “My
mother took one look at my father on the platform,” Charles says, “and knew
it would be OK.”
Charles says his father only spoke about his war-time experiences in the final
years of his life, and was clearly affected by what he’d been through. “He
always had a phobia of scorched earth. Growing up I was never allowed to
burn things in sight of the house.”
Humphrey and Esther remained at Town Head until 1990, when they passed it on
to Charles and Roslyn, who had been living in one of the cottages.
It’s easy to see why they stayed so long. This grey stone house, at the very
south-eastern tip of Windermere’s thin ribbon, could hardly have a more
picturesque setting. Sheep graze beneath great trees alongside the lake,
over the 100 yards or so of grass that separates the house from its stretch
of private waterfront. Sailing boats and tourist steamers slide past, and
water laps gently at the little boathouse. On the other side of Windermere,
tourists mill around, having tea and enjoying the view.
Less than three hours from London, it feels as if you could hardly be farther
away. It’s the landscape that wooed Wordsworth, and where Arthur Ransome set
the Swallows and Amazons series.
Growing up at Town Head, Charles says, was not far removed from those
childhood idylls. “My grandfather used to fish with Ransome,” he says. “When
we were growing up it was all fishing, walking, sailing – we’d make our own
pirate boats. But the children had everything,” he adds. “Waterskiing,
riding, wakeboarding, camping, fishing.”
As well as these more wholesome pursuits, the house has also seen some
terrific parties. The boathouse, a convenient distance from the house, is as
perfect for teenage booze-ups as it is for younger children hiding out.
“We’d take a bottle of rum in the boat and head up the lake for nights out,”
says Victoria, the Townleys’ daughter.
Town Head has always been a getaway. The land was bought some time in the
1890s as a hunting lodge by William Townley, a high sheriff of Lancashire.
The main house was completed in the 1820s. The estate has been passed down
various branches of the family since.
It’s such a permanent fixture, says Victoria, that other local families “sort
of feel that they own it, too”.
It has also long been a stop-off for passing artists and writers.
In the 19th century, John Ruskin and Edward Lear were both reported to have
stayed here on their travels in the Lakes. Beatrix Potter bought pigs from
the family, and a tiny ivory pig the author gave to say thank you is among
the antiques strewn over every surface.
Humphrey and Esther counted the actor Edward Fox as a lunch guest. More
recently, the actor Sam Riley, a friend of Victoria’s, was staying here when
he got the call saying he’d been cast as Joy Division singer Ian Curtis in
Control, the film that launched his career.
Charles and Roslyn say it would be unfair to give the house to any one of
their children, and that they don’t want to divide the estate up. They’re
looking for somewhere nearby, but something much smaller.
“Mum’s always wanted a cottage surrounded by roses,” says Victoria. “And Dad’s
just wanted a little fisherman’s hut.” Charles agrees. “A bed, a bedside
table and a bottle of whisky,” he says. “That’ll do me.”
Though he and his wife are pragmatic about the decision to sell, it is clearly
a wrench too. “Sometimes I sit out on the boathouse terrace, looking over
the lake, and I think ‘what am I doing?’” says Roslyn. “But then in the
mornings I wake up and think how nice it would be to have a place I could
just lock up and leave.”
“I won’t be able to drive down this road again,” she adds. “It would break my
heart. It’s like people always say: don’t go back.”
Charles, on the other hand, is looking forward to seeing what happens to the
old place.
“It would be nice if it was bought by a couple with children, or who were
about to have children,” he says. “But we don’t want people to be
intimidated by our history. They should make their own.”
Local literati
Beatrix Potter
John Ruskin
William Wordsworth
Horace Walpole
Arthur Ransome
Thomas De Quincey
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Robert Southey
- Town Head, near Newby Bridge, Cumbria, is on the market for £5.25 million
with Carter Jonas (01539 722592; www.carterjonas.co.uk)