I recall many years ago a quick tour of the repair shop for Salisbury Cathedral, somewhat similar to castles. They had a giant saw to slice rocks to the correct size block. For other repairs, they had stone carvers. Even cheating, with power tools, that was a skilled and time-consuming task. Then, replacing crumbling blocks was a bit more complex and critical than fresh new construction. I’d hate to be the guy who had to lug mortar, a replacement step and tools up a very narow spiral staircase to replace a worn step. then there’s the artisan woodworkers, ironwork, stained glass, etc.
To maintain its value as a historic building (and likely mandated by law) there is a limit to how much of a change you can make to historic buildings. Obviously they might have to be retrofitted (discreetly) for electricity, lighting, fire stand hoses, washrooms, etc. but renovations and restorations have to be done that best preserve the original character. What would be the point of a Downton Abbey that inside looked like a cross between a swedish modern design furniture store and a glass-wall Apple store? Plus, all those valuable antiques at the very least need an alarm system, if not some care in how they are displayed.
(There’s the story about the small parish church in Italy that once was Titian’s church; their caim to fame was an alterpiece painted by him. The local priest opened the church one morning to find it had been ripped from the wall. But a small local parish could not afford insurance or an alarm system for a priceless painting. If you had a Rembrandt in your house, could you afford the insurance? A year’s insurance probably would cost more than the annual house maintenance.)
the last time I saw Chateau de Vicennes in Paris over 10 years ago, it was closed for renovations; but it was obvious that a significant number of stones all over the building had been replaced byy new ones. Also, apparently the wall and ceiling paintings had to be restored - art restoration is NOT cheap, as any government in Europe will tell you about their costs to maintain their heritage.
As for ruins - Urquhart castle on Loch Ness was a ruin for a century, but a major storm in the 1800’s cause the castle keep tower to collapse even more. Nowadays, I belive they have reinforced it with modern concrete to prevent further collapse.
Would they sell to private individuals who wanted to actually just live there? If I were rich, I wouldn’t have an issue with the outside area having some lovely gardens for people to wander around in, if I could have some private gardens to grow fruits, veggies and herbs for my kitchen in that I could keep people out of [so they wouldn’t pick my dinner first] and also raise some chickens, geese and turkeys in for myself.
I can’t answer for the Netherlands, but over here, you’d have no trouble buying a castle from a private or public owner. There are less publicly owned castles, and local/national authorities are less likely to put them on sale, but it still happens, in particular with buildings that used to house a public service. For instance, they move the retirement home/register service/military barrack to a more modern and convenient building and auction off the castle. There won’t even necessarily be any conditions attached.
As I already said, becoming a proud castle owner is pretty easy and doesn’t even require to be rich. A link have been posted to castles sold for less than € 500 000, but you can find one for much less than that. It does require, though, that you have the time and/or money to maintain it. I remember a couple who was doing pretty much what you describe (moved out of Paris, raised chickens and grew vegetables) while slowly restoring a small castle. They were refurbishing the main tower, allowing visits for a small fee and rented a hall for marriages and such for extra income. It takes dedication, though, since they weren’t wealthy at all (the husband used to be a mailman, IIRC, and they had day jobs in the nearby town) and did as much of the work as they could themselves.
The same is true of great many historic ruins, from Greek temples to WW1/WW2 stuff. Why buy bricks to build your shithouse when you can just take a sledgehammer to that old bunker down the road ?
Drives historians bonkers, of course.
It is exactly the same here in the Netherlands, although there are far less castles here then in Belgium and France. That’s because the Netherlands is overcrowded and there is a huge pressure on any plot of land to be used. In the thinly populated areas of Belgium and France, however, you just go to a realtor to buy any castle.
But sometimes stuff gets preserved that way. My mom bought a plot of land in Portugal to build a house on. There was a derelict house/barn on the plot. parts of the wall were built with rather remarkable, big slabs of stone. It turns out the slabs were part of an old Roman road that once bordered on her plot. No museum asked for the stones back, so she just incorporated them in her newly built house.
Insuring these old buildings and their valuable contents is often not worth the premiums. Prevention, ie. security, is often more cost effective than cure, ie. collecting cash after the event. I would expect that they carry public liability insurance, but nothing for the buildings and contents.
There comes a point where it is cheaper to have an armed guard patrolling, than paying for theft insurance.
In 1992, when St Georges Chapel in Windsor Castle burned and the roof was destroyed, there was no insurance to pay for the replacement. When Hampton Court caught fire in 1986, there was no insurance to pay for the restoration there either.
Anyhow, it includes about $600k for staff salaries. On top of that, cleaning, maintenance, and grounds are separate items totaling $5.5m, which I suppose implies these are sub-contracted out rather than taken care of by household employees. At those sorts of prices, I’d WAG that you’d be paying a big premium for rare expertise. Rather than supporting 100 mid-income workers, you’ve got to pay high salaries for 20-50 people who actually have experience running and maintaining such an estate.
Utilities totaled $1.6m, which boggled my mind since it’s three orders of magnitude more than I’ve ever considered for utility costs. But I suppose it makes sense, since that kind of mansion is an order of magnitude draftier and two orders of magnitude bigger than anyplace I’ve ever seen the heating bill for.
My soon-to-be sister-in-law is something like 17th in line to inherit Borthwick Castle in Scotland. Built by William de Borthwick in 1430, the family still owns it (though it was abandoned for a couple hundred years). They run it as a wedding venue and hotel.
That’s why houses and estates like Downton is supposed to be began to disappear after 1918 - they were just too expensive to live in and people (notably women) had other employment possibilities opening up for them other than domestic service and those that were still willing demanded higher wages than the owners could afford to pay. By the 1950s they were being demolished at the rate of around one a week. The land which supported their existence had to be sold to pay taxes and death duties. Some were sold to become schools (like Stowe) or public institutions (like Wrest Park) and often suffered in the process.
My ancestral “stronghouse” would have fit inside your barn! Stayed in the family until early in the 20th century, it’s now property of the Marqués de la Real Defensa. My widowed great-grandmother sold it to the then-Marqués in order to be able to educate all of her children (most of them got college or college-equivalent degrees, and those who did not, it was by their choice).
Always lovely to fantasize about for after winning a lottery [I know that I have no lost rich relatives, we are all accounted for for the past 400 years. *sigh*]
The only thing that makes me twitchy about buying a great property is the whole land purchase vs land lease - and also land use laws. I spotted some reasonably costing empty land in coastal southern France [I was looking near Perpignan for a place I had visited on google Earth. I love looking at land use in Google Earth.] and it was seriously affordable, something like 15 acres for E25 000 - but I don’t know enough about land use laws and land sale/lease laws that I would feel comfortable buying it with an eye towards drilling a well, putting in a septic system and hooking it into the electrical grid and building a small house on it and planting a small olive and fruit orchard … can one build on agricultural land, can an American citizen buy land in France, and so forth.
I like to think that I am not as sucky a customer as the majority of people on the show - I understand that the rooms may be small, the bathroom may be broken into a toilet and a bathing room, or that the electrical and plumbing systems were designed by Torquemada and need serious updating to drag the house into the 21st century, and that the whole stainless steel/granite kitchen with double sink bath may be totally impractical.
A couple of British properties come to mind straight away, Longleat Longleat - Wikipedia
and of course Windsor Castle,
It is somewhat debatable about whether the Windsor family can directly trace their ancestry back to the Plantagenets of the 11th Century or indeed whether they own the place or just inhabit it.
Anyway Longleat is still pretty impressive and still in the possession of the Thynne family, the current Marquess of Bath is, to put it mildly, a tad eccentric!
Peter
Prince William Lobkowicz went back to Czechoslovakia in 1990 to reclaim his family’s ancestral holdings. The Wikipedia article references ten castles, four of which are now overseen by the prince. But I seem to recall when we took the tour of Prague castle (where the prince owns a palace) they said over 50 “castles” were restored to the Lobkowicz family, though many of those are probably more like chateaux or royal hunting lodges.
Well, if we’re down to the anecdotal, the threshold stone to my parents’ country house bears the date 1582 in Roman numerals, even though the house itself was built quite a bit later than that. And you can infer it from the fact that the number is* upside down*.
Far as I know, nobody knows where that stone came from. It is just the right size and shape for a doormat though, so that’s good ;).
Not that the house itself doesn’t bear marks of History with a capital H - down in the cellar, the walls bear scatological scribbles done by soldiers that were quartered there during some 18th century conflict of troop manoeuver… and replies carved by WW1 troopers. Grunts will be grunts :D. There’s bound to be a Kilroy somewhere too, but so far I haven’t found him.
Besides Beldorney Castle, those Gordons owned the castles of Huntly, Kildrummy, Wardhouse and others. Most are in ruins today and can probably be bought by someone with enough cash in hand. I am sure there are plenty of castles, abbeys, monasteries, etc. like that all over Europe.
