An invitation to Knebworth House was never a dull affair. Guests could include the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, Queen or Oasis, whose sold-out concerts in the Seventies, Eighties and Nineties saw the venue immortalized as the stately home of rock ‘n’ roll.
Still, there were some strict rules for overnight stays. “It didn’t matter who I shared the bed with, I had to leave the room at 10 a.m. because that’s when the velvet rope was back in place and the paying public was let in,” recalls one regular visitor.
“If you’re late, you can put everything under the bed and come back later.”
This was a rare concession from Knebworth’s chatelaine, Lady Cobbold, to those unwilling to break off their romantic entanglements until the last possible moment.
Because she had to manage the precarious business of keeping the house afloat with a keen eye on results, even though it seemed at odds with her fairy, hippie beauty and otherworldly air.
For decades, Chryssie Lytton Cobbold, who has died aged 83, and her late husband David, the second Lord Cobbold, kept the family seat and its 250 acres of parkland afloat with a mix of extravagance, optimism and rock ‘n’ roll.
Lady Cobbold, pictured in 1995, once delicately referred to her marriage to David, the second Lord Cobbold, as “mild promiscuity”.
The handsome and dashing David was reported to have fathered two children with different women.
With its vine-covered turrets and fearsome gargoyles, Knebworth House was a ruin when Chryssie and David took on the task of restoring it in 1969.
“There was always something leaking, rotting, falling off or needing repair,” says an old friend.
Headlines suggested that it was music and her reputation at the world’s best-organised festivals that ensured Knebworth could pay her bills, but Lady Cobbold’s sewing skills were equally vital.
Thanks to her debutante years, when she worked as a pattern maker for £3 a week at Worth, the London couturiers, she reupholstered old chairs, sewed new curtains and cushions and renewed old fabrics. And when he wasn’t sewing, he was wielding a paintbrush or cutting down overgrown flower beds.
With its vine-covered turrets and fearsome gargoyles, the house was a ruin when she and David took on the task of restoring it in 1969. Her parents had been unable to give it away: “They offered it to the county council, then a series of public bodies , but they all said they couldn’t justify the expense,” Lady Cobbold recalled years later.
Mick Jagger of the Rolling Stones in concert at Knebworth in the 1970s
David Lytton-Cobbold and his wife Chryssie on skateboards with their children, Peter, Richard and Rosina, at Knebworth House in Hertfordshire
Oasis, pictured, enjoyed sold-out concerts at Knebworth in the 1990s
‘One day, when we were living in our London flat with our four children, we visited Syon House (home of the Duke and Duchess of Northumberland in Brentford). We were very impressed with what they had done, so we thought: Should we try it too?
Despite the fears of their father Kim, former governor of the Bank of England and Lord Chamberlain to the late Queen Elizabeth, that the property was an impossible burden, the couple enthusiastically set to work, laying roads and building toilets. and restaurants.
There were challenges: Chryssie was once woken up in bed by mice nibbling on her toes. Although they had much less money than larger rivals such as Longleat and Woburn Abbey, when they opened the doors two years later, visitors came in droves. The house, a strange mix of Tudor and Victorian Gothic, was not the only attraction.
As well as an impressive collection of Jacobean furniture and tapestries, there were all sorts of curiosities: from Winston Churchill’s love letters to David’s grandmother, Pamela, Countess of Lytton, a leading society beauty, to a crystal ball left by an occultist whose ghost is said to haunt the passages of Knebworth.
But finances were precarious. Salvation came with music. In 1974 they performed their first concert with Van Morrison and the Allman Brothers headlining the bill. There were rave reviews and the era of country rock had begun.
Later festivals included Pink Floyd, Genesis, Paul McCartney, Eric Clapton, Robbie Williams and, in August 1986, Freddie Mercury’s last concert with Queen. The two concerts that Oasis gave in the summer of 1996 were described as the “concert of the decade”, while the crowd of 125,000 each night was said to result in the two biggest rock concerts Britain had ever seen. .
Inevitably, when rock star royalty stayed, stories of unpleasant and unexpected behavior soon proliferated. Mick Jagger is said to have left a pair of blue underpants at the foot of the 16th century bed where Queen Elizabeth I slept, while Noel Gallagher rang the doorbell for a bath.
Chryssie’s worst moment came the first time she invited a band over for drinks at her house. Expecting only the members of Pink Floyd to be there, plus his wives and girlfriends, she pulled out some ashtrays.
Forty people came into the house (‘liggers’, he called them) looking for a free drink. At that same moment the police and the anti-drug squad arrived to reflect on the day’s events and they seemed thirsty too. “I gave them whiskey in the kitchen while the band and their friends were in the studio, so I knew how to roll joints.”
Time stood still as she ran trying to keep the two groups separated. “I almost collapsed with relief when the police left, blissfully unaware of all the shenanigans going on next door,” she said.
But Chryssie was not one to wait for aristocratic formalities. With her long blonde hair, her gentle manner, her fascination with astrology and her visits to Glastonbury, Lady Cobbold was, in many ways, an archetype of the Sixties. Also her husband. They married young (Chryssie was 20, David 23) and, putting aside the prevailing prejudices of the time, adopted two Ugandan school friends of their eldest son, Henry.
And, in true Sixties style, her marriage survived what she once delicately called “mild promiscuity.” A more direct assessment would describe theirs as an open marriage. The handsome and dashing David was reported to have fathered two children with different women. For her part, Lady Cobbold acknowledged that there were “occasions when one was a little promiscuous.” I think it was just because everyone else did it, one did it too. But you get over it with age.
“I think there is too much talk about sexual behavior. There is a lot of scandal about adultery. Most people are probably guilty at one time or another, but a happy marriage should be able to stomach the occasional transgression.’
Certainly, she and Cobbold remained happily married until his death in 2022 living by this maxim. Neither her indiscretions nor her affection for the thrice-married bohemian Earl of St. Germans made any dent in it.
When her husband died after years battling Parkinson’s disease, she decorated his coffin with artwork from her favorite Pink Floyd album and placed a memorial bench next to his grave in Knebworth with the inscription: “See you on the side dark of the moon.”
One day after his death from pancreatic cancer, Lady Cobbold was buried next to him.