Charles's £20m gamble: He bought a crumbling pile, but couldn't afford to pay for it and the financial risk almost engulfed his charities... but has the Prince of Wales's huge punt at last paid off? (2024)

• Prince Charles borrowed £20million to pay for Dumfries House in Ayrshire
• The purchase was questioned at the time amid fears over restoration costs
• His purpose was to save the crumbling country house for the nation
• Seven years after purchase the Prince of Wales believes gamble has paid off
• The project has created local jobs and resulted in a 'palace for the people'
  

By Geordie Greig

Published: 22:06, 28 June 2014 | Updated: 13:47, 29 June 2014

On the windswept landscape of Ayrshire, one of the bleakest unemployment blackspots in Britain, Prince Charles made the biggest and, some would say, most reckless gamble of his life.

Astonishingly, he paid £45 million for a decaying Palladian mansion – and didn’t even have the money. He had to borrow £20 million of it.

His purchase of the Marquess of Bute’s home, on the market after 300 years in the family, seemed a rash, almost quixotic move.

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He was forced to borrow the massive sum against his own Charities Foundation, putting at risk his entire life’s work and his credibility as Prince of Wales.

His purpose was plain. As well as saving the magnificent but crumbling country house for the nation, he was preserving one of the world’s most magnificent collections of Chippendale furniture.

Without intervention, it would have been divided up and dispatched via auction houses to billionaires’ palaces from Beverly Hills to Beijing.

Nonetheless, it was seen as an impulsive romantic whim.

When an investigation uncovered his secret loan, the revelation raged on the front pages of every newspaper.

The questions were relentless. How would he afford restoration if he had already spent a king’s ransom?

Was it all a massive vanity project – was he literally building castles in the air?

And besides, why did a man who would one day inherit a dozen Royal residences and already lived in a Grade I-listed house in Gloucestershire need another great pile?

Putting Dumfries House on a basic financial footing seemed a fantasy, and the spectre of the Prince defaulting on his loan gave fuel to his critics.

Those fears only intensified when, two years later, the money appeared to be running out.

There was a risk that the £400,000 monthly outgoings could not be met, according to Royal sources.

It was Catch-22: the Prince could not afford to stand still and see the house rot further, but on his own he could not afford to do the staggeringly expensive restoration and conservation work.

Lady (Eileen) Bute, the chain-smoking owner from 1932 to 1993, had been a stylish chatelaine but her legacy also included cigarette holes in the sofas from a lifelong addiction to Benson & Hedges.

Curtains were bare, carpets thread-worn. The horror was that Charles needed many millions more to move forward or Dumfries would sink into greater debt and more decay, dragging him with it.

There was genuine panic among some of Charles’s courtiers as to how his whole charitable enterprise might be tipped into a spiral of debt by this albatross around his neck.

Beyond his court, his critics simply wondered if he had finally lost the plot.

Charles, though, remained undismayed. And today, standing amid the restored splendour and frantic energy of workmen, artisan builders and gardeners, he still likes to quote the 5th Earl of Dumfries, who declared of his decision to build the house: ‘Tis certainly a great undertaking, perhaps more bold than wise, but necessity has no law.’

Charles adds: ‘I felt rather the same 250 years later.’

And on Wednesday he will receive the rare appreciation of his own mother. In a hugely significant date in her court diary, the Queen is going to see what all the fuss was about.

Indeed, she is interrupting her stay at Balmoral to do so. It will be her first visit; Charles thinks that he now has a triumphal story to tell her.

Central to her trip will be the opening of the Walled Garden. At five-and-a-half acres, it is the second largest in the country. Hundreds of volunteers cleared the ground and a team of builders and gardeners turned it into a stunning tiered garden and education centre.

Charles believes it is the last piece in his seven-year plan which will show that his gamble has finally paid off.

The Prince has always put his – as well as other people’s – money where his mouth is: his support for organic farming, concern for the environment and other campaigns have often been ahead of the curve.

It was understandable that this man who championed classical architecture could not bear to see Dumfries’s furniture and pictures sold and split up.

As the bills added up, he went to find help.

As Britain’s biggest charity fundraiser (he raises £100 million a year) the Prince used his position as the best-connected man on Earth to tap up some of the richest people he could find.

He had already added a consortium of grants and donations to his own loan to buy Dumfries for the nation.

But how to raise more? And how would he make potential backers cough up for his country pile?

First, he had to make sure they did not think it was his house. It was owned by a trust and he insisted that it was the public who would have use of it.

His idea was to set about turning Dumfries into ‘a palace for the people’ by making it the most upmarket job scheme in Britain.

He called it ‘heritage-led regeneration’, emphasising that this house was not for his personal use, it was an instrument of social change and conservation: the mansion and its land must feel owned by the local community.

In just four years he raked in a further £19 million – and not a penny of it from the public purse. In fact, most of the donations came from abroad.

Charles saw it as an exciting new social experiment, an extension of his philosophy at the Prince’s Trust which is about getting people with no aspirations to work and into jobs.

He wanted to show that conservation could also be used to generate local jobs and boost the economy.

He knew the local town, Cumnock, was blighted by unemployment and a devastating lack of optimism and opportunity.

It was a sort of workers’ revolution in reverse, the Prince turning himself out of the house to allow the public to enjoy it.

Well, up to a point. He still has a bedroom there and the set-up is also very Upstairs Downstairs, with a hierarchy of staff in the house, though one that allows jobs to go to local people.

But there were some dramatic changes. He ordered that every gate be unlocked and left open to allow constant public access. He opened the house up to visitors.

The Prince showed his entrepreneurial skills as much as his aesthete credentials as the money tumbled in.

Tetra Pak heir Hans Rausing and his then wife Eva donated more than £10 million.

Hedge fund billionaire Michael Hintze gave £5 million, as did former NCP car park boss Sir Donald Gosling.

Some of this was for the original consortium, but altogether Charles got about 30 people to provide an additional £19 million to give Dumfries a future.

Pivotal has been Michael Fawcett, the former Buckingham Palace footman who controversially resigned but was then rehired as a freelance consultant and is crucial to everything in Charles’s life.

He is now executive director of the restoration project and the only man who knows exactly what the Prince likes.

‘No azalea, no tree, no bench is placed without the Prince marking exactly where they are to go, and Michael makes sure it happens,’ said one Dumfries insider.

There are undoubted comic moments in such a personal crusade for perfection.

For example, a folly called Belvedere House, built to afford a view of the garden, was based on a sketch made by Charles of The Hunting Lodge, the 18th Century house in Hampshire lived in by the designer Nicky Haslam.

When the Editor of the Financial Times arrived on site, he was perplexed to be asked if he was there for a red squirrel convention being chaired by the Environment Secretary.

At any one time there are schemes to train stonemasons, chefs, waiters, kitchen staff and foresters. The house is a hub for debate and ideas close to the Prince’s heart.

It is a 24-hour-a-day obsession for the Prince. He calls, he writes, he chooses, he curates, he organises and he gets the money to pay for it.

As he walks, he asks a gardener about the density and make-up of the manure. He suggests a tree is planted a few inches further west, and that a stone bench is set up for the public to get the best view.

As the grounds are open to the public, he finds himself ambushed by a small terrier, the owner running after the dog and astonished to find it is tugging at the Prince of Wales’s leg.

A 400-year-old sycamore tree in the new garden is the subject of much debate about how to preserve it. New trainees in the kitchen school are quietly told that they cannot wear a nose ring if they want to work front-of-house for the Prince.

Every Friday a report is sent to the Prince by Fawcett and by Monday morning it arrives back covered with his red spidery fountain pen scribbling (‘oh dear, oh dear!’ is one comment).
His staff are as messianic as him.

‘Look, he could be sitting on his backside at Highgrove having a drink and doing nothing,’ said one executive. ‘Instead he is up at 6am trying to save this house and provide jobs. He works his socks off.’

The speed at which the house has been returned to its former glory is unprecedented.

In 2012 the Prince got donors to fund the purchase of 23 clocks he had found to go into the house, as it had contained none.

With other money he has trained disabled people in the kitchen garden, set up an engineering school in a former steading, and hired local people to mend fences.

And he has overseen the conservation of the most elaborate silk four-poster bed, with three mattresses.

The hangings were thought to have been green until Prince Charles’s curator found the original invoice to discover they were blue.

His textile historian oversaw 20 craftsmen in three specialist workshops restoring its intricately carved cornice and covering it in skin-tight blue silk damask.

Finally, Dumfries has a rosy financial future. It is almost self-financing as small businesses bring in cash – for example, the house now hosts some 60 weddings a year; the new investment has allowed bed-and-breakfast houses to be set up; the tea room will serve as many as 1,000 people on the afternoon of the Queen’s visit and employs six staff.

Seven years after the furore broke over the loan, Dumfries is no longer in danger of either itself or the Prince going broke.

No taxpayer money has been used. No Royal residence has been added to the House of Windsor.

The trust set up as the new owner is obliged to share it with the public.

Now a £30 million endowment fund is being raised by the Prince to give it permanent security for its future – the basic upkeep alone is £600,000 year.

Last month, the Prince had Carlos Slim, the world’s second richest man, and philanthropist bankers Sir Evelyn and Lady de Rothschild to stay.

No one does so without being asked to contribute – or having the Prince say thank you for a contribution.

Serving them dinner in the elegant Blue Drawing Room near a suite of Chippendale elbow chairs and sofas was a man whose life has been transformed by Dumfries.

Stuart Banks, 23, started a five-week course in hospitality at Dumfries and is now the house butler.
‘I never had ambition.

I simply never thought of a job or career path,’ he said.

His father died when he was young and his mother is still unemployed. ‘I can’t believe the Prince even knows my name. I have a life path I never had before.’

Many of those the Prince has hired had been jobless for two years. Thomas Breckney saw his life literally change before his eyes.

He was overweight and with no immediate prospects. Since working for Charles as a Collections Assistant at the house, he has lost 6st.

He said: ‘I had little hope and few opportunities. Now I not only look different, I am different.’

He is responsible for the many extraordinary treasures inside the house.

If the Queen happens to ask him what he thinks of Charles and Dumfries, he will say it was the best gamble Charles ever took.