Families may have skeletons in the closet, but they rarely have hidey holes in a castle. Last weekend I took my little 11 year old nephew Ze’ev to Scotney Castle and garden…

The beautiful home of the Hussey family, most notable of whom was Christopher Hussey, erstwhile architectural historian and editor of Country Life magazine from 1933-40. My sister’s husband is the only son of Ernest Simpson, the deserted second husband of the infamous Wallis, who caused the Royal abdication crisis of Edward VIII.

Ernest’s aunt married into the Hussey family, so as family, Ze’ev’s dad used to spend his school holidays running around the castle grounds. So it was strange to wander through the drawing room, untouched since Betty Hussey’s death in 2006, to see old black and white portraits of Ernest and his father and be able to say ‘That’s your grandad’.

I suppose that’s what they mean by ‘living history’. Needless to say, this was cold comfort for little Ze’ev, who’s got a real fascination with all things castellated. Seeing the pictures on the drawing room table left him wondering why he was having to get his kicks playing ‘Age of Empire’ on the computer, when, like his dad, he should be running around a real one.

Anthony Salvin’s work as architect of the 1843 revived Tudor-style house that formed the new family seat, left the kid distinctly cold. Instead, the majority of the time was spent down at the moated 14th century old castle, the centrepiece to the Picturesque Garden designed by Edward Hussey III, and ‘reconstructed’ according to the founding principles of the Picturesque style. This process involved the careful removal of its 16th century ‘east range’, despite its being built in the style of Inigo Jones, to create the ‘authentic’ ruin.

Sounds Stalinesque rather than Picturesque, the removal of one reality in order to create another, but as an aesthetic style, it too took few prisoners. But it also points to the ephemerality of architecture and fashion. Ze’ev was keen to have a photo of the Hussey family coat of arms carved into the stone above the entrance to the house, claiming it as his own. He asked me what the motto ‘Vix ea nostra voco’ below it meant, and I had to look at the guide to check. The translation was intriguing and inscrutable; and for my little nephew, rang all too true – ‘We scarcely call these things our own’.