Style & substance: Building a new future for Hotham Hall
‘COULD HAVE BEEN FRANCE’: Hotham Hall in the afternoon sun. Pictures by Hotham Hall
By Phil Ascough
Knowledge of David Kilburn’s passion for football in general and Hull City in particular prompted the frivolous email inviting myself for a look round Hotham Hall.
“The grounds look amazing and they’ll be even better once you get the five-a-side pitches marked out!”
And the knowledge that he’s actually got very little to do with the rebirth of the 18th-century stately home left me not the slightest bit surprised that he passed me on to his wife.
Linda elaborated as she led me on a tour up and down the feature staircase, past an endless array of varied artworks adorning the walls of connecting corridors, in and out of guest rooms grandiose in their fit-out yet simple in their layout.
“David doesn’t have any real involvement in the development of Hotham Hall but he does get involved occasionally in helping us with strategy and of course, we both support the project financially,” she asserted.
“He hates being given jobs and he doesn’t want to get involved in making decisions!”
Into the compact ballroom and then round the back to the library which doubles as a bar or maybe it’s the other way round. The bookcase unfolds to reveal a big-screen TV which is in demand for such glittering events as Royal Ascot, spilling out onto the terrace where guests enjoyed canapes and cocktails, and a flutter with a travelling bookmaker brought in as part of the service.
The same terrace that so impressed billionaire guests of one client that for a moment they quite forgot they were in East Yorkshire, just a few miles from Hull.
“They said it felt like the south of France,” Linda revealed.
Then across the yard at the side to the old stables which are in the process of being converted to create a function room, accessible ground-floor guest rooms and artisan retail units. There’s more to come with plans for a spa and woodland lodges.
“The vision is to develop something that people are excited to come to,” said Linda.
“Something new and different every time. People will never know what they are going to get but we want to make sure it’s always amazing. We won’t settle for anything that’s not completely unique.”
The Hall was built in 1720, is Grade II*-listed and stands on a 117-acre estate. The stat most people will be asking is how much? Hotham Hall was a multi-million-pound project and still growing, because Linda and her colleague Rachel Waugh keep coming up with new ideas.
Whatever the price tag it’s still a start-up, and one which has its roots in one of the UK’s most spectacular business success stories. David was working with a firm of builders merchants when he met Linda, a management consultant who provided advice on retail and customer service.
When he was made redundant and set out to launch a new company, Linda contributed her business planning expertise to the launch and stratospheric growth of MKM Building Supplies.
PARTNERSHIP: Linda Kilburn and Rachel Waugh
“I looked after HR and anything else that came up that didn’t actually involve being a builders merchant,” she said.
Under Linda’s guidance the caravan side of the business evolved into MKM Leisure and went from about £65,000 a month to £1m a month. She then took control of marketing and digital in MKM central support to help raise the profile of the company. Rachel, with a background in the construction sector, joined as head of marketing in 2012 and her team expanded to 19 people.
Linda said: “The growth of MKM has been amazing for us because it’s enabled us to do what we do now. This is a multi-million pound development and it’s all personal investment. We haven’t got any grants or anything.“
The Kilburns had tried to buy Hotham Hall from Stephen Martin before Covid. They ended up closing the deal in 2020 in somewhat bizarre circumstances and they moved in early in 2023.
Linda said: “David had in his head that he wanted to run a wedding venue. I have no idea why! We looked at one or two other places that turned out not to be suitable, but Stephen had been trying to get me to buy this place for some time before we bought it because he knew of my love of antiques and of the building.
“I loved the Hall but we felt it was too much of a project to take on. One day a beautiful handwritten letter came through our door telling us they were going to put the house on the market and it was our last chance. We came down for a glass of wine and sat out on the terrace on a beautiful evening. We agreed before we came that we weren’t going to buy it but then on the way home as asked ourselves ‘Have we just bought that place?’ And we had!”
It’s helpful that both Linda and Rachel are as comfortable wearing hard hats and work boots as they are in ball gowns and tiaras, and their approach is very much hands-on.
“I didn’t know what we had bought,” Linda confessed.
VAST: Hotham Hall lies in a 117-acre estate
“It seemed huge but when we finally got to start on it, things became more manageable. It shrank along the way. Reconfiguring rooms, getting familiar with a really warm, friendly, cosy house. The excitement for us now is developing the bit away from the house, which is not as restrictive.
“Initially we thought the builders were also project managing. They weren’t, so we took it on. Rachel’s background is in building and mine is in building materials so we have a lot more knowledge than a lot of people who work here. We were able to introduce products and materials and ideas and methods that they didn’t know about.”
Our conversation is interrupted by the construction team asking how Linda wants to run the cables which will provide a power supply to the sauna and spa. Can they go across the bridge, underwater or via a trench?
Across the estate and inside Hotham Hall itself you’ll find features inspired by the experience of running a business which rewards success lavishly. There’s a picture of David at a celebration in Cannes, with the background a blaze of dancers in MKM blue and yellow. A trip on the Orient Express to Venice brought yet more ideas, and a look at the Hotel Cipriani website shows how it has influenced the transformation at Hotham Hall.
Linda added: “We also went to the Old War Office to see what they had done. Some architects invited us down and that set the brain whirring. We learned a lot from that.”
You can see the evidence not so much in the two concrete sheep which welcome visitors to Hotham Hall but certainly in the style of the layout, the quality of the fit-out, the use of carefully placed assorted artwork. And Hotham Hall goes a step further with the wider and sometimes random use of vibrant colour, creating exciting points of difference in every room, ensuring absolute individuality. Thick, heavy curtains. Fabric rather than paper on some walls. Seemingly arbitrary items which stand out as peculiar, but which work.
Rachel said: “We go on antique weekends and forays.Newark Antiques Fair, Ripley Castle, Tetbury. It’s great fun! What we thought we wanted in the beginning was not necessarily what we want now. Your tastes change.
“Every room is different. It’s got a twist of traditional and contemporary. You layer it. You start with your basic furniture and rugs and you go at it in lots of different ways.”
VISION: Linda Kilburn
All those curtains, prints, cushions, throws and even an almost turquoise room with yellow velvet-covered candelabras combine to create something compelling and really comfortable. That’s the key. Ultimate style, but not so much that you can’t use it.
The promise from the start was that Hotham Hall will pay its way, and that brings spin-offs for the local economy. The current best estimate is that the venture will create about 55 jobs, but you sense that will increase as more ideas emerge.
Linda said: “There are gardeners, house keepers, an events manager, waitresses, catering and bar staff. We bring in visiting chefs to work for us and we’re looking forward to the spa and the lodges. They will be built on stilts in the woods, as will the walkways. It’s part of the masterplan!”
Although remote and tranquil, the estate is close to several major routes which brings the potential for big events in addition to more intimate gatherings. The original ballroom can only hold about 50 people but the renovation of the outbuildings will create another venue with three times the capacity.
One event brought the installation of a glass marquee. With something like that the outside has to look as spectacular as the interior décor and, as darkness fell and the lights came up, this one hit the heights with the Hall on one side and the parkland on the other. With a festival field only a short distance from the manicured lawns, the possibilities are vast.
“People don’t realise what we can do,” said Linda.
“We don’t want to be seen as just a wedding venue because we have so much more flexibility. We know what the corporate world looks like and we know what we want. We can create anything here.”
And then off they went to sort out the trench.