About the show
Welcome to Hidden Heritage – the podcast that brings you inside Great Britain’s favourite destinations with help from custodians, historians, artisans and experts.
From the same team that brought you the No.1 History podcast Duchess, Hidden Heritage uncovers the fascinating stories behind the UK brightest hidden gems. With the help from the biggest voices within British heritage, Hidden Heritage will explore some of the key challenges facing national heritage today and how they can be addressed.
Hosted by Lady Violet Manners, founder of HeritageX and Executive Producer of the hit podcast Duchess, this podcast shares the untold & unique stories that celebrate UK heritage. From landmarks to architecture, artefacts to myths & legends, Hidden Heritage will highlight a side to British history you have never seen before.
This is Hidden Heritage.
Hosted by Violet Manners — Viscountess Garnock (née Lady Violet Manners) — this series explores the lives of those shaped, influenced or quietly drawn towards heritage.
Some guests grew up inside historic houses, as Violet did.Some work behind the scenes preserving them.Others simply fell in love with old places and found that fascination shaping the course of their lives.
These are conversations about ambition, memory, risk, family and belonging — with heritage woven throughout.
Because heritage is never just about buildings.
It is about the people drawn to them, shaped by them, and sometimes changed because of them.
In this episode of Hidden Heritage, Violet Manners is joined by Jason Lindsay, Chairman of Historic Houses, and Marcus Yorke-Long, Head of the Private Office at Charles Russell Speechlys, for a conversation exploring one central question: who owns our heritage now?
Heritage is often discussed emotionally, romantically even, but rarely strategically. Yet Britain’s historic houses, estates, collections and landscapes sit at the intersection of identity, economics, policy, private capital and global interest.
Together, the conversation examines whether British heritage is fundamentally undervalued as a national asset, why international buyers increasingly recognise value in what Britain itself sometimes overlooks, and what “ownership” really means in 2026. Is heritage something we legally possess, culturally inherit, economically exploit, or simply steward for the next generation?
From overseas investment and custodianship to policy failures, succession pressures and the realities facing modern estate owners, this episode explores the tension between heritage as a living responsibility and heritage as a global commodity.
Far from a nostalgic conversation, this is a clear-eyed discussion about continuity, stewardship, national identity and the future of Britain’s historic landscape.
Because the question is no longer whether the world values British heritage. It is whether Britain values it enough itself.
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https://www.heritagexplore.com/hx-club/
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