Me And My Home: At home with history

Events organiser Tania Harcourt-Cooze talks to Patricia Wynn-Davies

The Hon Tania Harcourt-Cooze lives with her husband and three children at The Chanters House, in Ottery St Mary - the country home of the Coleridge family. It is now used as a venue for photo shoots, arts events and weddings

The Chanters House has always occupied a special place in my heart. I spent lots of time here as a child when my grandparents lived here, but I never imagined it falling into my pathway. It's majestic and is set in some of the most beautiful parkland imaginable, and I wake up in the morning with my husband in a room fit for a king. Then the children come scampering in and off we go to get on with the business of combining family life with making this house earn its keep.

My father is the sixth baron Coleridge of Ottery St Mary and he returned from abroad to take over the house when my grandfather died. Dad's 65 and like all good stately-home incumbents approaching later years, he and Lady Coleridge, my stepmother, now live in the newly converted "stables". In the past, family members who ran the estate were always in a retired situation; it's a very different story coming here in your mid-30s, with three young children under the age of five including a newborn.

I left England at the age of 20 to become a model and an actress, and lived in Los Angeles until I was 28. Then I started married life with my husband Willie in a 1,000-acre cocoa hacienda in Venezuela, where we planted more than 50,000 trees and built up an eco-tourism venture - mini-haciendas within a proper working cocoa farm. Sadly, we had to mothball the farm temporarily due to the political climate.

Becoming the latest caretaker of the house has turned out to be a huge challenge, but its history runs thick in my veins. Sir Thomas Fairfax and Cromwell stayed here in 1645, and the Coleridge connection with Ottery began a century later with the son of a Crediton weaver who went on to become Vicar of St Mary's.

One of his 12 children was Samuel Taylor Coleridge and another was James Coleridge, a career soldier who became known as "the Colonel" and who bought the house in 1796. His grandson was John Duke Coleridge, who became the first baron Coleridge in 1873 and, in 1880, Lord Chief Justice of England. With the architect William Butterfield and sculptor Frederick Thrupp, he trans- formed the house into the monumental property it is now and set up a trust to perpetuate it for future generations.

Now, the days of this being solely a private home are no more. When I took over in March 2002, my job was to bring the house into the 21st century. My father started the commercial ball rolling by hosting a couple of weddings as gifts for friends. I expanded this idea and set up my own company, Kubla Khan, to do this professionally, along with fashion shoots, residential art courses, exhibitions in the Gallery, house tours and cultural gatherings.

I seem to have been dealt an extraordinary, if demanding, slice of life. The thing about this house and its history and its cultural dimension is that you wear it every day, a bit like the same outfit - you have to keep going and keep everything clean and keep it moving. Luckily, my husband Willie is a natural entrepreneur, too, and a fine chef who handles all the catering for the location work and residential courses.

At the beginning of August there will be an art fair, open house tours and the first, long-awaited [Samuel Taylor] Coleridge festival, on 6 and 7 August, which will involve readings, lectures, music and theatrical performance. There's a lot of talk of Coleridge in Devon but until this, little to actually engage with.

My office is in the servants' quarters and looks out across a courtyard towards the studio; it beckons me but I never seem to get there! A lot of our life happens on this side of the house but we make a point of using it all. You have to use a stately home and live in it properly, especially for your children. You have to open all the shutters and let the sun shine in. In the summer, when a warm breeze floats through the house and you catch the aroma of the oak panels breathing, it really comes to life.

The beauty and character of the house are intimately connected with its history. The library occupies the whole ground floor of the west wing; its beauty and sheer elegance still never ceases to amaze me, or anyone who visits it. With its lavish wood panelling and full-height bay windows, it's the most astounding of Victorian libraries; it's also a fascinating insight into the man who ran the legal system of this country at the turn of the century.

The grounds are also special. A lot of the Coleridges were keen on the elements and created numerous walkways, while the legal men of the family used to commemorate their big successes by meaningfully planting something, such as the 'Tichborne clump', a spread of tall trees in honour of John Coleridge's 26-day address to a jury that saw off the fraudulent claim to the Tichborne baronetcy in 1872. Much of the immense feeling of history is in the gardens, the planting of which was recorded in numerous diaries or the drawing portfolios of the Coleridge ladies, many of whom were artists of one sort or another. The diaries make me laugh, too - there's not a word about the rigours of running the house!"

For more information about events at The Chanters House, visit www.chantershouse.com