Growing up, Tom Barclay kept quiet about his family home of Middleton Castle, just outside King’s Lynn.
“I never really talked about it,” he says. “I wasn’t an expectant child, but I knew I was going to come back to Norfolk at some point.”
Now, aged 45, he’s done just that – and after a lifetime of not really mentioning Middleton at all, he’s now started shouting about it. “My wife says, ‘But Tom it’s your business, you’re going to have to start telling people’.”
Barclay has recently completed his first year of trading at Middleton Castle, the 15-bedroom moated country house that he opened as an exclusive-use venue last winter.
“It’s been a slog, and I’m aware of how lucky I am, but I’m proud of myself – I hate the word proud – that I’ve made a profit in the first year.”
Middleton Castle’s origins date back to the 15th century when Wars of the Roses commander Thomas Scales, 7th Baron Scales, built a gatehouse on the site.
His daughter, Elizabeth, and her second husband Anthony Woodville, 2nd Earl Rivers, are thought to have completed the house. In time, Middleton passed to John Howard, 1st Duke of Norfolk, a close supporter of Richard III, who was subsequently killed in 1485 at the Battle of Bosworth.