_The Duchess of Rutland on being CEO of Belvoir Castle
If you’ve ever wondered what it must be like to live as an aristocrat, you’re best off not asking Emma Manners, the Duchess of Rutland. “I don’t feel like a Duchess at all,” she tells us in the video above. “I’m just [...] a Welsh farmer’s daughter who happened to marry into aristocracy.”
Born Emma Watkins, her Grace trained as an opera singer, interior designer and estate agent. After a chance meeting at a dinner party, she married David Manners, then the Marquis of Granby, in 1992.
Seven years later, David inherited Belvoir Castle and, with it, the title of the 11th Duke of Rutland. And just like that, the Welsh farmer’s daughter became the 11th Duchess of Rutland.
Although the Duke and Duchess have since separated, they both harmoniously reside at the Duke’s ancestral home – Belvoir Castle in Leicestershire. “Nothing in my life that’s touched me like seeing this place,” the Duchess smiles. “It’s overwhelming. There’s nothing about it that doesn’t blow your socks off.”
Built in the early 1800s, Belvoir Castle exists today as more than just a place of residence for the Manners family. As well as being open to visitors, and with its grounds hosting everything from shoots and annual fireworks to the Belvoir Cricket Club itself.
The estate has also been used as a location for many film and television programmes. You might recognise it from 1980’s Little Lord Fauntleroy, The Da Vinci Code or the second series of The Crown on Netflix, where it stood in for Windsor Castle.
Above: Grade I listed Belvoir Castle in the English countryside of Leicestershire
But you’d be mistaken for assuming the Duchess spends her days aimlessly wandering the lofty halls like the royals of the silver screen. She’s CEO of Belvoir Castle, and an evidently passionate one at that.
Lady Manners says: “The only thing on this earth that makes me passionate about being who I am is maintaining our countryside as it is, and will always be, for my children and my children’s children".
“[Belvoir has been] the bedrock of our community for thousands of years,” she adds. “Every bird that is shot on this estate, like every shoot on these British Isles, goes into the food chain. [We’re] employing local people, making food for our community and we have a Trust that brings five thousand children out of Nottingham, Leicester and Lincoln every year to come and see us.”
More recently, her Grace has channeled this passion for supporting the local community into Belvoir Castle’s Engine Yard – a collection of Victorian buildings that stand by the castle’s entrance and originally served as workshops. She spearheaded an ambitious transformation project, restoring the buildings and turning the space into a £2,5million shopping village, which opened its doors in September last year.
“One of the ideas I had when I first came here was to turn this range of buildings into a retail space,” she says of her passion project. “Now, we’ve got a wonderful plant centre, an amazing butcher and a wonderful chocolatier who created this extraordinary space for coffees and cakes.
Well, as the saying goes, you reap what you sow...
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