We inherited our run-down family seat in 2002. It's still not finished

Times

5 hours ago

On a dark, rainy January morning in 2002, Liz and John Thorold walked into the 700-year-old Marston Hall as the new owners. Liz flicked the light switch to view the great hall of their grade II* listed stately home, and promptly fused the electrics of the entire house.
'I thought to myself, is this a good idea?' she says.John inherited Marston from his cousin Henry, an eccentric chaplain with little interest in either heating or maintenance. He owned the house from 1940 until he died, without children, in 2000, aged 78, leaving behind every copy of The Times since 1950 and an extensive damp problem.
The floors and walls were soaking, water was running along the kitchen floor and the library reeked of rotting books. The central chimney and three walls appeared perilously close to collapse.
John, 77, a chartered surveyor who also flies light aircraft, says: 'It dawned on me slowly how immense the task was. Like learning to fly, you realise after some months that you took on more than you thought. But you get on with it.'
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This resolve would see John virtually rebuild the main structures of Marston over 20 years — prising up floorboards, stripping back plaster to the bones of the house, dodging falling ceilings and hoisting roof timbers.
Perhaps it was ancestral spirit. The Thorolds trace their line back to Vikings from southern Sweden; some settled in eastern England and others in Normandy. They even make a cameo appearance in the Bayeux Tapestry.
The family have lived at Marston, in Grantham — the Lincolnshire town famous as the birthplace of Margaret Thatcher — since 1380 when Richard Thorold, of Yorkshire, married the local heiress Joan de Marston.
There may have been a domestic building on the site as far back as the 10th century, but the present structure is later. 'The building is largely from the 1300s and the stonework is crude,' John says.
The house and grounds have evolved over seven centuries, along with the fortunes of the family. There are Elizabethan features, such as the porch, which was added in 1577. Two wings were also added, making the 'E' shape that was popular at the time.
During the English Civil War the Thorolds were royalists, prompting Oliver Cromwell to ride over and burn down the southern wing of the E, in 1642. The northern wing was removed about 200 years later, restoring symmetry.
A succession of Thorolds became MPs for local constituencies, and the family had a strong line in clergymen, including cousin Henry and his father Ernest, who was chaplain to Edward VIII. John believes Ernest refused a request from the king to marry him to the divorcee Wallis Simpson.
Henry, a classicist with a passion for Georgian style, wrote Shell Guides — guidebooks to Britain — and was friends with John Betjeman and the artist John Piper. Several Piper watercolours and prints still grace the red dining room.
When Henry died, Marston went into a trust and the trustees approached John about taking it on. At the time John and Liz and their twins, Guy and Alexandra, were living in Putney, southwest London.
'It was not hard to convince the trust that I was the man to do it as I'm a chartered surveyor,' John says.
Liz, in her forties at the time and working in a London art gallery, and the twins, then aged ten, needed a little more convincing. During the first few years they mainly stayed in London while John travelled up to work on the house from Thursday to Monday, but often joined him at weekends.
The first challenge was funding. The trustees gave John £127,000, which was raised by selling paintings from the house, including at least one by John Ferneley, who specialised in horses and hunting scenes.
John auctioned other heirlooms, including a portrait by Henry Raeburn of two boys, Thorold relatives, which fetched £10,000. He estimates that he cut restoration costs from well over a million to a quarter of that, by being as hands-on as possible.
'I didn't do a huge survey but I had some builders — a father and son — and myself, and we just worked away at each little problem. No architect, and me as surveyor. One problem after the next. I aimed to gather a team around me who regarded the building as their own.'
First they stripped the plaster from about half the walls of the house. Electricians installed new wiring and professionals replastered. John did much of the plumbing and rebuilt the 'almost non-existent' sewerage system.
Damp was affecting many of the floors. Inspired by aircraft systems, John installed fans in the roof space and pipes to the ground floor to push air down and out through floor vents. The dining room floor was beyond saving and had to be replaced with new oak.
He estimates it took about five years to dry out the house.
Next they tackled the unstable walls. The southwest corner had to be taken down and rebuilt. But repairs to the southeast wall suddenly became critical: an earth tremor in 2008 left the wall moving further outwards from the house. This at least meant that insurance would cover the cost of rebuilding the wall, which took two months.
The builders next stripped back the roof over the main part of the house and rebuilt it. John joined them to tackle the leaning central chimney, reconstructing part of it and removing the top.
Several years later, though, water dripping through a bathroom ceiling heralded a new roof problem, on the east side of the house.
John, his builders and an apprentice went up and discovered that tiles were missing. Taking the roof apart, they found that 90 per cent of the medieval structure needed replacing. This meant getting heavy green oak timbers up to the roof. John created a pulley system and hauled while his apprentice rebuilt above.
Each challenge required more funds. Working with the builders and the apprentice, the family built a cottage and sold it. The builders also restored a stable cottage attached to the house; the family now get rental income from several cottages on the estate, and from grazing.
A plan to hold weddings at Marston foundered due to objections about noise, traffic and parking. Instead, the family hope to build more cottages to shore up their income and support the estate.
Liz and John made Marston their full-time home in 2020 after Liz, 70, gave up her work in London. They thought the main repairs had finished in 2022. But then the kitchen ceiling collapsed last year.
Did they ever feel like giving up? 'There were moments when I was trying to juggle the finances, but I never wanted to get out,' John says.
Liz says their twins, aged 32, love coming for Christmas and Easter. Alexandra works in a contemporary art gallery and Guy is a pilot.
John hopes the next generation will feel about Marston as he does. 'Being in the place — as much as the building — where your ancestors had been for the last 700 years gives you an incredibly grounded feeling. This house is in my blood. '