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Unravelling a 400-year-old secret

A suggestive clue to a 400-year-old royal scandal has emerged as restorers clawed back one of the most beautiful houses in England from the point of collapse.

The general public have been invited into honey-coloured Apethorpe Hall in Northamptonshire for the first time in 500 years, to see what over £7 million of public money has achieved for a house left ruined by several careless owners — and a secret hidden for hundreds of years.

Apethorpe, for most of the 20th century a borstal, then owned by a Libyan businessman who never spent a night there, was built in the 15th century and then palatially extended to entertain Tudor and Jacobean royalty.

Visitors will see one telling detail, unknown when English Heritage started work three years ago, which may support rumours that the serial visits by James I were down to more than his love of architecture .

He stayed 11 times, more than in any house in England except his own palaces but James ordered his unfortunate friend Sir Francis Fane to rebuild, “for the more commodious entertainment of His Majesty and his princely recreation there”.

Even then there was gossip about what constituted the princely recreation.

Sir Francis added a procession of staggering state rooms leading to the king’s bedroom.

The second best bedroom, and the closest to the king’s, was for the king’s favourite, the handsome young George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham — invariably visiting at the same time.

Over the past two years English Heritage has spent over £4 million on its most complex restoration project ever — and in the course of the work uncovered a secret pair of connecting doors, bricked up centuries ago, which directly linked the bedrooms of James and George.

The Government acquired the house by compulsory purchase for £3.18 million, a rare move, recognising its exceptional importance and peril.

The house was left battered by its half century as a borstal. It was then bought by Wanis Mohammed Burweila, a Libyan businessman who left the country never to return, with most of the Libyan community, in the wake of the shooting of P.C. Yvonne Fletcher in 1984.

The house only survived because the elderly gardener, and resident caretaker George Kelly, continued to do their work for years after their wages stopped being paid.

Next year English Heritage intends to market the house as a palatial private home.

The price has yet to be decided, but the buyer will need an estimated £5 million for repairs, and another £4 million to make it a home again. — © Guardian Newspapers Limited, 2007

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