Lifestyle
Karen Spencer Invites a Special Guest to the Walled Garden at Althorp, Princess Diana’s Family Home
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Last year, Charles, 9th Earl Spencer, and his wife, Karen, Countess Spencer, started Spencer 1508, a web series that documents their maintenance of Althorp House, the family estate where Princess Diana lived as a teenager and was buried after her death in 1997. For the last few months, the series has showcased Karen’s attempts to revive the estate’s walled garden, which used to be a source of fruits and vegetables for the kitchen, along with flowers to decorate the house. On Friday, Spencer 1508 welcomed John Richardson, a groundskeeper of the estate for more than 40 years, to help Karen plan her renovations to the garden.
On Instagram, Charles shared an image of Richardson and pointed out just how long his tenure with the family lasted. “He started here with my grandfather in 1963, the year before I was born,” he said, adding that Richardson has “fascinating insights into how Althorp’s Walled Garden was in the ‘60s and before, and also how it will hopefully be again.”
In the video, Richardson reminisces about the day in 1964 that Charles was brought home from the hospital, and shared that his grandfather, Albert, 7th Earl Spencer, was particularly fond of putting up gates and posts made of oak. He added that he remembered that Winston Churchill, a distant cousin of the Spencers, loved to go to the walled gardens when he visited Althorp.
Karen, Charles’s wife of 11 years, has used a few episodes to discuss the process of reviving the old walled garden, which likely went fallow after World War II, when stately homes across the country jettisoned their gardens due to the high cost of upkeep. In a November video, she pointed out that important parts of the old garden were left intact. “The fundamentals—a lot of the big infrastructure is very intact and in shape,” she said. “The walls, the gates, the garden house—the backbone of the garden is still there for us to build on.”
When Richardson visited, he said that he spent plenty of time trying to keep the garden’s brick walls solid by clearing them of ivy and other plant growth. But he tearfully added that he felt like he hadn’t done enough. “I wish I could turn back the clock, knowing what I know now,” he said.
Karen thanked him for the work that he had done. “It was really moving to see how much he cared,” she said afterward. “It just reminds you of the generations of people who have dedicated their lives to keeping this house and this park going and keep it in the shape that it’s in now.”
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Erin Vanderhoof
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