How Britain's stately homes reinvented themselves and which ones to visit this summer

telegraph.co.uk:

capesthorne.com).Another long-established winner is Glyndebourne in East Sussex, where the Christie family have made an internationally renowned success of their grounds with the annual Glyndebourne Festival – a summer programme of picnicking and opera – since 1934.

Tickets will win you serious bragging rights.But where there are victors, there areBoconnoc – a 7,500-acre Cornish estate near Lostwithiel – has a colourful past: former owner Sir Hugh Courtenay was a pirate; in 1717 it was bought by Thomas Pitt with the proceeds of the Pitt Diamond; it has been home to three prime ministers.

But by 1997 it had been empty for decades, having been used as a munitions dump.Boconnoc has been owned by the Fortescue family since 1864, but it wasn’t until 2000 that Anthony and Elizabeth Fortescue set about restoring it. “The estate was without life for so many years, it felt as though the heart was missing: water was making its way through holes in the roof,” recalls their daughter, Clare. “They sold a barn to start with.

The money from that was spent on re-doing the roof. Projects were slow, one stage at a time.”In 2012, Boconnoc received the prestigious Historic Houses Restoration Award, but tragedy followed when Anthony, who had suffered ill-health, was found shot dead on the estate in 2015.