Since Jane Percy became Duchess of Northumberland, her stately home and gardens have appeared as Hogwarts in the Harry Potter films, provided the setting for the world’s largest wooden treehouse and hosted cage-fighting contests.
The Duchess, who introduces herself by saying “everyone calls me Jane”, is now adding children’s author to her list of achievements, after taking inspiration from the wonderland she has built for youngsters in her gardens at Alnwick Castle, in north-east England.
Jane, 67, unexpectedly gained her title in 1995, when her husband’s brother Henry, 11th Duke of Northumberland, died at the age of 42. The businesswoman’s sudden elevation to the aristocracy worried her: would she be bored?
Her husband, Ralph, the 12th Duke, suggested that she renovate the castle’s dilapidated gardens. It was a project she took on with gusto, creating the largest children’s play structure in the world, within a fantasy village named Lilidorei. It opened to the public in 2023, 12 years after Jane had conceived the idea.
Although her plans for the estate once landscaped by Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown appalled horticultural traditionalists, she won the support of the King. As Prince of Wales, Charles visited on four occasions. Upon ascending to the throne, he remained the estate’s royal patron, despite ending his patronage of almost 200 other causes.
“It was hugely important to us,” Jane says. “That’s possibly the biggest honour we have. When he was cutting back, he kept us on. We run 17 programmes and it’s a very active charity, looking after every part of the community, so having the King is very important.” Asked if he might visit again, she says: “Maybe he’ll come to see Lilidorei some day.”
An ‘extraordinary’ vision
Jane, who was the first woman to serve as Lord Lieutenant of Northumberland, is determined to attract visitors who wouldn’t usually go to a stately home. A fan of mixed martial arts who studies both kickboxing and the Filipino art of Kali, she opened the gardens to regular mixed martial arts events.
“You try and get a 17-year-old boy into a garden,” she says. “The cage-fighting nights have been the biggest nights of all. It was heaving with a demographic that would never normally have come to a garden. It’s possible to make somewhere like the Alnwick Garden accessible to everybody. You have to approach it like that.”
© Tim Graham Photo Library via GetJane herself went to the Walsall Sports Centre in 2015 to present medals at the IMMAF European Championships for amateur MMA athletes. “I was pretty shocked by the amount of blood on the people I was handing the awards to,” she says.
Her other challenge was to create a fantasy world of fairies and giant mushrooms that would tempt children away from screens. Lilidorei features a soundscape that suggests the mushrooms have hearts and lungs. “At night, you can see the mushrooms breathing. I was trying to get children to put their mobile phones back in their pockets. I don’t think I can compete with a screen, but I can if they can hear a fairy cry.”
It’s possible to make somewhere like the Alnwick Garden accessible to everybody. You have to approach it like that.
She has now stepped back from running the gardens, but hopes to export the idea of Lilidorei to overseas locations. “If you build something, you have to build something extraordinary. Children have everything at their fingertips [on a screen] and yet they have nothing. They are stuck alone in a room.”
Passion project
Jane has now published a children’s story, Amanita, and a picture book for younger readers, An Illustrated Guide to Lilidorei. They are set in the same fairytale world as the gardens’ play area. She says that her book’s heroine – Amanita, named after a genus of mushrooms – is a misfit. “She’s bullied at school. She’s got no friends. Then she starts to develop and wings sprout from her back.
© Duchess of Northumberland“A squirrel comes to visit her and says: ‘You’re wanted back home.’ She discovers that she’s been fostered or adopted. Her name is Anita but her real name is Amanita, the destroying angel mushroom.” Jane, who has four children with Ralph, tested her stories on her grandchildren, four of whom live in America with their mother, Lady Melissa Percy. She also has two grandchildren from her younger son, Lord Max Percy.
“I’ve told them the stories,” Jane says. “They’re all fascinated, particularly by Crabbit the hobgoblin [the main antagonist of Lilidorei].” During one visit by two sets of grandchildren, she recalls, one cousin said to another. “Don’t go behind that rock because Crabbit might be there.”
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