He may have played a minor part at the King’s coronation, but it’s clear to Alex Paget, 8th Marquess of Anglesey that the aristocracy’s role in Britain today is a far smaller one than in the past when his ancestors owned vast swathes of countryside.
Lord Anglesey, who inherited his father’s title 11 years ago, says the position still comes with an element of responsibility: “there are a few things I do in Anglesey that are ‘Marquessing’ obligations,” he says.
Now, he is spearheading the next chapter of a necessary family interest in downsizing by auctioning off part of its collection in order to raise money for good causes – including the upkeep of what is left of the Anglesey estate at Plâs-Newydd.
The big house was passed to the National Trust in 1976 by his father Henry Paget, 7th Marquess of Anglesey, but the estate, Lord Anglesey explains, “is in a fairly rundown condition, so [the sale is] to try and raise some money to repair the buildings there”.
It is not your everyday attic sale.
One item up for auction is Napoleon Bonaparte’s spyglass.
The historic item is up for grabs, with an estimate of £20,000-£30,000, alongside a gold and enamel brooch given to Lord Anglesey’s grandmother Marjorie by her mother the Duchess of Rutland, and a pair of paintings by Sir Kyffin Williams RA.
The Paget family began the 20th century with two stately homes, Plâs-Newydd, and Beaudesert House in Staffordshire – a seat since 1546 – a London townhouse, a pair of yachts, and a house in the south of France.
In the 119 years since Charles, or Charley Paget, 6th Marquess of Anglesey inherited the title in 1905, all of this has gone in a bid to rebuild the finances destroyed by his predecessor.
Henry “Toppy” Paget, 5th Marquess of Anglesey, died in 1905 aged 29, with £250,000 worth of debts.
His flamboyant lifestyle and financial mismanagement of the family estate resulted in the selling of assets in the years after his early death, including the enormous collection of jewellery that he had amassed.
In 1924, despite having recently restored it, Charley Anglesey put Beaudesert up for sale. But it didn’t sell, and was eventually demolished in 1935, some of its bricks used to restore St James’s Palace.
The Norman Shaw townhouse in London, 170 Queen’s Gate, is now part of Imperial College.
Though this sounds like a sorry tale of decline, dedicated conservationist Henry Anglesey was delighted to make the transfer of Plâs-Newydd to the National Trust; in the early 1970s he wrote a paper for his trustees explaining why he thought it was the way forward for the house.
“I don’t think my dad really consulted me but if he had I would have said ‘absolutely – do it,’” says Lord Anglesey. “There was no way in which we could possibly have gone on living in the whole of that enormous house.”
Lord Anglesey himself no longer lives in Wales. While the family have a flat at Plâs-Newydd – from which sale pieces have come – they are currently unable to keep up residence.
Because of its 1930s plumbing and wiring, Plâs-Newydd is “extremely dangerous,” says Lord Anglesey. A National Trust spokeswoman confirms that “we are not able to allow the family to stay in the residence for their own safety”.
The house held, and still holds, a lot of history. When Lord Anglesey was growing up there, the family lived in the whole house – rather than just in the flat that they have at their disposal now.
Up on the nursery floor, where Lord Anglesey and his four siblings were based, pictures on the walls included those of Toppy Anglesey, known to the family as “Mad Ux”.
In the dining room Rex Whistler’s magnificent giant mural was on display, while the spooky basement contained uniforms from the Napoleonic Wars, alongside the wooden leg of Henry Paget, 1st Marquess of Anglesey who, as second-in-command to the Duke of Wellington at Waterloo, lost his leg.
There were also signs of Henry Anglesey’s efforts to modernise. He adjusted “quite well” to the modern world, says Lord Anglesey.
“One of his proudest achievements was to have put the dishwasher not at ground level but higher up – because you spend your time bending over, emptying and filling the dishwasher. He loved his Miele.”
Henry Anglesey died in 2013, aged 90. A Lord-Lieutenant, he rose to the rank of major in the Royal Horse Guards, wrote an eight-volume history of the British cavalry, and was involved with countless arts and heritage organisations, including the National Portrait Gallery.
His son keeps a lower profile. In his late 30s he trained as a painter – now painting professionally under the name Alex Uxbridge – and has mixed feelings about the title that he inherited 11 years ago.
“For most of my life I have lived with it being almost irrelevant,” he says. “Having built my life in a different direction, I haven’t ended up living permanently in Anglesey, which I might have done if I had inherited earlier.”
His position was given prominence last May when he was asked to carry the Welsh standard at the King’s coronation – albeit in borrowed robes from Nicholas Alexander, 7th Earl of Caledon, representing Northern Ireland.
It is moments such as this where being the Marquess of Anglesey has a vestigial flicker of importance.
“It is a good thing that there is still some connection between a place and a family,” says Lord Anglesey, “even though it is very good that the house is now owned by the National Trust, and very good that it is now open to the public and isn’t a separate, elitist thing anymore.
“Having some connection physically with a place, with a continuing historical connection, is an asset. It’s not an enormous cost in terms of a more egalitarian society that there is still a bit of that connection.”
Classic Design Including Property of the Marquess of Anglesey from the Private Apartment at Plas Newydd, Sotheby’s, April 2-11; sothebys.com
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