Holkham Hall in Norfolk is the family home of the 7th Earl of Leicester, below, who died last week. In recent years, he revived the property’s fortunes, overseeing its transformation fr

OR the past three weeks, Holkham Hall in Norfolk had been a frenzy of feather dusters and polish. Tapestries and paintings had been rehung and the lawns meticulously edged. Far from dreading the arrival of bus-loads of visitors to his family seat, Thomas Coke, the eighth Earl of Leicester (the seventh earl died last weekend), genuinely looks forward to when the Palladian mansion reopens to the public.

“I was born into it so it doesn’t seem odd at all,” says Coke, 49, who lives at Holkham with his wife, Polly, and four children. “The public has been visiting since the house was completed in the 18th century. It was designed with a visitor’s circuit.”

Easter weekend marked the reopening of almost all the 500 members of the Historic Houses Association. “It’s the first time families go out together,” says James HerveyBathurst, who is hosting an egg trail at Eastnor Castle, his 19th-century revivalist castle in Herefordshire. “And for us it is a chance to see all the changes we’ve made in action. I’m looking forward to watching children using our new rotor swing.”

At Inveraray Castle, the seat of the Campbell Clan, visitors can admire the armoury hall with the tallest ceiling in Scotland, which was repaired and painted over the winter, a job that required 50 tons of scaffolding to be erected in the great hall. The Duke and Duchess of Argyll have spent the past week cautiously moving ancient muskets and helmets back into the hall. “I’m excited about unveiling all our hard work,” says Eleanor, Duchess of Argyll, who moved to the castle in 2002 when she married Torquhil, the 13th Duke of Argyll. “We’ve cleaned all the armoury ourselves. If my husband or I had a spare moment, we’d get polishing.”

Today’s stately custodians, usually the second or third generation to have the public at large in their homes, are remarkably unsentimental about what could be seen as a massive intrusion. As Charles Courtenay, son and heir of the 18th Earl of Devon points out, Britain’s landed gentry have been opening their doors to the public since their great houses were built. It’s only since the ’50s that visitors have become a revenue stream.

“You don’t build a stately home simply for your private enjoyment; these houses were built to be shown off,” says Courtenay, whose family seat, the 14th-century Powderham Castle in Devon, reopened this week.

Charles Berkeley, whose family seat, Berkeley Castle in Gloucestershire, was one of the first houses to open to the public under new inheritance-tax laws in 1956, believes visitors are a small price to pay to keep a historic home in the family. He recalls an idyllic childhood playing in the castle’s dungeons, turrets and keep. “I did have to pose for visitors’ photos but I never minded,” says Berkeley, who is married to international event rider Daisy Berkeley and has a daughter, Mary.

For a chatelaine who has not been raised in this environment, however, the lack of privacy can be overwhelming. “I found it extraordinary at first,” says the Duchess of Argyll, who grew up in London and Oxfordshire. “I’d be chasing my children around the garden, fall over, and look up to see a whole crowd of people staring at me.”

By their nature, stately homes are usually large enough to accommodate the family in private quarters, out of sight (if not earshot) of visitors. At Inveraray Castle, the Duchess has transformed the top floor, destroyed by fire in 1877, into a comfortable home for her three children, Archie, Rory and Charlotte.

“The furniture is from Ikea and John Lewis and the walls are painted in standard Dulux paint: if the children draw on the walls it isn’t a disaster,” she says. She has never felt a shred of resentment that the family is hived off at the top of the castle while the public enjoys the formal rooms. “I was under no illusion when I moved here that the castle is a business as well as a home,” she says. “As we drove between the church and the reception at our wedding, we were signing off the wording for our new guidebook. I knew what I’d let myself in for.”

Far from living like a princess, the modern day chatelaine finds herself at the forefront of an endless campaign to keep her home watertight. The visitors, she soon realises, are their lifeblood as the house struggles to break even.

Unlike the Duchess of Argyll, whose mother-in-law was on hand to help her to adjust to her new role, Charlotte Brudenell, the new chatelaine of Deene Park, a medieval manor in Northamptonshire, came to the helm with no handover notes, her in-laws having died last year.

“People say running a historic house is like painting the Forth Road Bridge but it’s so much more difficult,” says Charlotte, who with her husband, Robert, has a son, William.

“With a bridge you start at one end and finish at the other. We get a drip one end, a broken tap the other, and as soon as you’ve mended a window another one goes.”

The most important thing she has is vigilance. “You need to notice what is not quite right before it starts dripping,” she says. Unlike previous ladies of Deene Park, she employs just a handful of staff; it’s her responsibility to ensure the picture frames are dusted and the carpets mended.

“There’s no upstairs downstairs anymore — I can load a dishwasher as well as the next person,” agrees the Duchess of Argyll, who serves tea in the café at Inveraray while her husband and children take turns to run the shop.

Even at Holkham Hall, which with 10 000ha is one of the larger private estates in Britain, the Coke family is served by just three members of staff, although Lord Coke does still allow himself a butler.

This season, more than 85 000 visitors are expected at Holkham Hall but Lord Coke admits he is having to work harder to keep the public coming.

Visitor numbers at Britain’s stately homes peaked in the late ’90s, according to figures from the Historic Houses Association.

“You have to have more attractions,” Lord Coke says. “Everything you offer must be really good.”

It makes sense for estates to target families who will spend a full day in the house and grounds, spending money in the café and gift shop.

At Holkham there’s a new £80 000 Bewilderwood play area to attract children, while at Eastnor Castle, James HerveyBathurst has created a mini Land Rover Experience with battery-powered children’s off-road vehicles.

Other revenue streams are also gaining more significance, however, such as festivals, weddings, filming — Inveraray featured in the Downton Abbey Christmas Special — and private house parties. At Somerleyton Hall in Suffolk, Lara and Hugh Crossley have taken the decision to focus on private house parties, weddings and corporate events. “Under our new business model the house is expected to break even for the first time,” he says.

The Duchess of Argyll, who is curating a World War 1 exhibition at Inveraray Castle this year, admits she will do anything — within reason — to keep the roof on her husband’s ancestral home.

Since the advent of TripAdvisor, however, it would be imprudent for a custodian not to consult the public before making a change, however small.

“Visitors like to have their say on TripAdvisor,” says Guy Macpherson-Grant who, with his wife, Victoria, has recently taken over Ballindalloch Castle in Scotland from his parents. “It’s a useful tool to find out where you are going wrong and which assets you should be celebrating.”

Lady Edward Manners, new chatelaine of Haddon Hall, a medieval manor in Derbyshire, discovered this to her peril when she made changes to the house last year. “I introduced a green sofa into one of the rooms and it caused an uproar on TripAdvisor,” she says.

Apart from a few private parties in the offseason, most owners are reluctant to take