138 SEPTEMBER 2019 | TOWNANDCOUNTRYMAG.COM
DESMOND^O’NEILL^(LADY^LEICESTER);^GETTY^IMAGES(HOLKHAM^HALL);ALAMY^(MACCARTHY,^WIVETONHALL)the gossip and intimations; lawsuits were threatened.
At the state dinner the couples wouldn’t get close at all—after the
awkward procession they were scattered across long tables. Instead
Rose sat next to perhaps the only man who might know the official
version of events: Britain’s spy
chief, Jeremy Fleming.S
ervice corridors lead to
the family wing of one of
England’s grandest homes.
“Please address Lady Leicester
as Lady Leicester,” an equerry
requests, her footsteps echo-
ing above the cold stone floors.
She opens the door to an airy
kitchen and sitting room. A
television trails cables across a
white bookcase on the far wall,
in which cookbooks are stacked
below ornamental letters that
spell out “TOM.” The domestic
scene could almost belong to
an average home were the room
not in Holkham Hall, a Palladian
mansion that sits on an estate so
vast it would take more than an
hour to walk across it.
Lady Leicester, whose husband Tom Coke (pronounced “Cook”)
is the eighth Earl of Leicester, is standing next to a large birdcage in
which Basil is tearing up scraps of today’s Times. The parrot usually
flies free. “I put him away because I didn’t know if you were bald or
not,” the viscountess says. “He doesn’t like bald men.”
The Holkham estate sits in the middle of the north Norfolk coast,
a bulging rump of fields and marshes on the North Sea. The aristo-
cratic residents of its verdant villages and country houses have tra-
ditionally been easy to caricature. “Doctors used to write ‘NfN,’ or
‘normal for Norfolk’, in their notes, which meant you were a little
bit interbred,” says Desmond MacCarthy of nearby Wiveton Hall, an
eerie 17th-century manor.
“There isn’t much interbreeding now, and it’s intended as a laugh,”
says MacCarthy, who is best known for his fuzzy eyebrows, which are
so thick and animated they look as if they might turn into butter-
flies at any moment. “It’s always fun when you get someone who
really minds.” Yet residents have become increasingly prickly of late,
for this corner of England has been shaken by the storm of reports
about the Cholmondeleys and the Cambridges. The inbreeding jokes
have faded, only to be replaced by catty riffs on the “Turnip Toffs,”
a gang of viscounts and marquesses whose titles betray a down-to-
earth approach to life in a fertile county where turnips were once
a vital crop.
The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge appeared to fit right in when
they moved, in 2014, into Anmer Hall, a relatively modest Georgian
pile between Sandringham and Houghton. As well as the Cokes and
the Cholmondeleys, there was Mave Fellowes, William’s cousin, a nov-
elist and daughter of Lord Fellowes; James Meade, one of William’s
best friends, and his wife Lady Laura Marsham, godmother to Louis;
and the van Cutsem brothers—Nicholas and William—who lived
at Anmer when their father rented it from the queen and who are
by all accounts William’s favored shooting partners. (As in countiesacross England, game shoots are woven into the social fabric here;
Duchess Kate has reportedly become quite a skilled shot, attending
Sandringham’s famous Boxing Day shoot. The Cambridges quickly
began hosting friends and events at Anmer, including a lunch cele-
bration for Kate’s 37th birthday
in January.
As well as being neighbors,
Rose and Kate are of a similar
age and attend the same char-
ity galas and garden parties. The
Marchioness was a guest at the
Cambridges’ wedding in 2011, and
they mingled at events at Hough-
ton, including its annual horse
trials. (Zara Tindall, the queen’s
eldest granddaughter, was com-
peting at Houghton when I
visited in May, although, I was
politely informed, the owners
were not at home.)
The women, apparently fast
friends, represent the modern
face of North Norfolk, which has
been changing while still eschew-
ing the showiness of the smarter
counties in London’s orbit. The
area has become a magnet for
middle class holidaymakers and second home owners. Over a sunny
week in May, quivers of fresh asparagus sat on tables outside delica-
tessens in quaint coastal villages while Kate was reportedly pottering
about the antiques shops along the coast in Holt, her bodyguards
attempting to blend in outside them. One dealer who prefers not
to be named says she served the duchess several times, once selling
her a persian rug with a large hole in it. “She said, ‘Oh, I’ll just put
a bit of furniture over it,’” the dealer recalls. “She’s just another cus-
tomer—except that she doesn’t really do haggling.”
Only the houses get away with being grand here. “I mean, there
are people who try to be chichi, but they get battered down prettyHOLKHAM HALL
Though now open to the public several days a week,
this Palladian pile set on 25,000 acres is home
to Lady Leicester and her husband, Tom Coke, the
eighth Earl of Leicester.WIVETON HALL
This Jacobean house is home to one of the
Cambridges’ more colorful neighbors, Desmond
MacCarthy, whose grandparents were part of
the Bloomsbury Group.