In Britain, there's hundreds of stately homes scattered around the country from all sorts of different families that had/have varying degrees of wealth and power. It seems like most of the families are alive and well, and still have vast sums of money. Obviously some houses have no heirs and thus go straight to the crown and/or they're left under the control of Heritage England/National Trust etc.
Is there any particular reason these families started sort of abandoning their ancestral homes? Did they just become too costly to maintain in the 20th Century? Am I underestimating how much revenue they bring to the families? I would assume that most of these families are still extremely wealthy and have other sources of income that help maintain that wealth (on top of being able to have practically whatever job they desire). I just know if I lived/grew up in some of these places there's no way I'd be opening up to the public and moving out unless there's some really compelling reason.
Any insight would be much appreciated!
With WWI, it became harder not only to attract but also retain staff on large estates, and more, often better paying work became available to those who would have traditionally worked the houses and land (in England, at least. That’s may area of interest.)
Women began to be able to find work in offices, libraries, as teachers, and in healthcare settings in greater numbers and for better pay. The “Servant Problem” of the 1920s which lead to the development of things like the portable vacuum cleaner and the (slow) adoption of interior plumbing is an expression of this. There just wasn’t enough cheap labour around to run those large estates.
This coincided with the depression, which wiped out fortunes, some of which had been propping the old estates up by providing an infusion of cash from places like the US through the Dollar Princesses (the daughters of wealthy industrialists from the US who were happy to trade riches for titles.) It was also about this time that mechanized farming really took hold, and the ways in which land could be converted to cash through agriculture changed dramatically. By the 50s, two wars, industrialization, and more equal pay and working conditions saw the end of most of the great estates. Those that still exist are often reliant on non-traditional forms of income to keep the lights on. The houses are tremendously expensive to run!
(Some super accessible reads on this era and its effects are “Sissinghurst” by Adam Nicholson, “The Victorian House” by Judith Flanders, “Up and Down Stairs” by Jeremy Musson).
Shifting income streams. Originally, people derived much of their income from their land - farming it and renting it to tenant farmers.
As the economy changed, these large estates became net losses instead of net gains. If a family failed to find other lucrative income sources (not easy for everyone to do, especially in a society that, for class/social reasons, was slow to engage in the economic changes begun by industrialization).
The introduction of inheritance tax was a further problem for them. Even if the estate was not profitable, a large, historic manor had a value, one that would be taxed as part of inheritances.
What saved them was also taxes.
The 1976 Finance Act gives owners inheritance tax exemptions in return for a commitment to keep their houses open to the public and in good order.
Funds for upkeep can also be saved in Heritage Maintenance Funds that are their own special class in tax terms, although they are taxed at some level and the rate has increased over the years.
The idea was to save the historical properties while making them open to the country to come and see them.
Once such an exemption became available, however, even still-wealthy families with income from other sources found it too good of an offer to pass up.
They aren’t required to open their private rooms, (just the most historic bits), they aren’t required to be open every single day (although there is a minimum) and the truly wealthy people often spend a significant amount in other homes or traveling anyway.
https://www.historichouses.org/uploads/assets/uploaded/20a370f0-3472-46a6-8d444c9dbdfe4f31.pdf
https://www.gov.uk/hmrc-internal-manuals/trusts-settlements-and-estates-manual/tsem5800