The Manleys and the Hunts The Secret History of My Family

1887, Victorian working class Britain.

A labyrinth of destitution,

street crime,

gang warfare,

drink addiction

and welfare dependency.

Into this dark continent,

came an army of upper class do-gooders

to study and help the problem families they found...

..and on their expeditions into the slums,

these missionaries came face-to-face

with Britain's outcast and unrecorded.

We knew very little about the history of our family.

She's sort of lower-class.

Not worth anything.

The working class?

Yeah, get over there. They're only crap.

Now, using the explorers' written accounts of their meetings

with the underclass, we've traced their descendants

from Victorian times all the way down to the present day

to find out -

what happened to the families that history forgot?

To think about where our family's come in 200 years

from just one girl?

I think she'd be amazed.

We don't talk about it.

A story told by the descendants themselves.

We are all prisoners of our family histories.

Don't forget where you've come from.

Don't forget.

Tonight, the story of two mums

from opposite ends of the social scale,

brought together by domestic violence...

"He stood over me with a knife in his hand and threatened to stab me."

..and their families

struggling to escape the past.

It was a really privileged upbringing, but really...

what was more important was love.

Chewy? Chewy?

Good boy.

'My name is Denny Kidd. I live here in Windsor.'

Leave. Leave. Do you want me to talk? Is that all right?

Is it picking my dulcet tones up?

Great fan of Disney, we all love Disney.

They're all quotes from Disney, from Cinderella.

You've got Peter Pan, Lion King, Winnie The Pooh.

I like, "Even miracles take a little time" and that's Cinderella.

I like that one.

My family's story starts back in 1887

in Fulham in West London.

This is Lavinia Manley, my great-grandmother.

Back then, she was living with my great-grandfather John.

He had been ill and lost his job...

and there was nothing to keep them afloat.

They had six children.

And the children hadn't been out for days, they had no footwear to wear.

They was in a dire, dire mess, really.

'I'm Evelyn Bateman and I'm the great-granddaughter

'of John and Lavinia Manley.'

He sold everything he had.

No clothing.

A blanket wrapped round his waist.

They are having to sell their belongings just to eat.

I believe he wrote to a family friend who was a vicar

asking for assistance.

The vicar passed that on to a charity

and the charity sent someone round.

The visitor from the charity was a well-to-do lady

called Florence Hunt.

I'm Elizabeth Cox, and Florence was my great-great-grandmother.

She came from a very affluent family

who had servants both in and out.

She was always going to dances and balls

and just living life to the full.

I don't think Florence was a wallflower!

She was quite a large lady. I think she was about 16st.

Florence and her husband had 11 children.

But in 1878, her privileged way of life in Shropshire

came to an abrupt end.

Her husband died when she was around 41.

She wasn't ready to be widowed off and, sort of, the door closed.

Her life was just beginning for her.

She left her country estate and she joined a growing movement

of "lady visitors" who ventured into London's deprived underworld

trying to help the poor.

She found a role as a case worker for a charity called

The Charity Organisation Society.

Through her work with the charity,

she managed to support people who needed her help.

She wanted to understand the people and their lives.

Obviously, these people didn't have any money,

but why didn't they have any money?

She tried to really get to it

and understand how she could make that difference.

On 27th May 1887,

Florence paid her first visit to Lavinia and John Manley.

'She was about to meet my family for the very first time.'

Well, Florence went the first time to see the Manleys

and she speaks to Mr Manley.

"Notes by Florence Hunt. 27th May 1887.

"I visited Mrs Manley, but could not talk to her as her husband was there

"and talked all the time.

"He talked so fast, he rather bewildered me."

Poor Lavinia couldn't get a word in edgeways.

John's the governor.

There was a big divide between them.

His family were well-to-do and her family couldn't even read and write.

Florence felt that John dominated Lavinia.

She was quite suspicious of him.

I was coming over the East End of London the other day,

passing one of the new barber shops.

I think she can see between the lines.

Lavinia being closed up, sort of thing, not wanting...

Not so much not wanting to speak, but not being able to speak.

Being afraid to speak.

'My name is Cheryl Steward.

'I'm Lavinia's great-great-granddaughter.'

The next time Mrs Hunt comes back,

Lavinia's there on her own.

Lavinia actually opens up

and tells Mrs Hunt her side of the story.

John is actually a violent man.

And a very controlling man.

Then Lavinia does tell her that he's not treating them well

and he's knocking her around.

Two years before, Lavinia had taken John to court

seeking a legal separation from him.

This is what was said when Lavinia took John to court.

"I, Lavinia Sophia Gilliam Manley make oath and say as follow."

"That John Manley is a man of a violent temper

and that he has habitually treated me with neglect,

"unkindness and cruelty..."

"..and has habitually used abusive and threatening language to me..."

"..and that on numerous occasions he has assaulted and struck me

"and threatened me with knives and razors and thrown things at me."

"The said John Manley dragged me into the dining room..."

SCREAMING

"..and tore my hat and clothes and cut my boots...

"..and stood over me with a knife in his hand

"and threatened to stab me...

"..and threw me backwards and again threatened me with a knife

"and tried to strangle me.

"Lavinia Sophia Gilliam Manley."

Poor woman.

Poor, poor woman.

Although John disputed Lavinia's version of events,

the court approved her separation.

But she went back to him...

..which we won't know fully why.

Give it one more try.

Which obviously didn't work.

Not long after they'd been reunited,

John left the family...

for good.

Then the charity wouldn't help her

because she'd been deserted,

because she was a single woman, now, with children

and her husband had deserted - which is barmy!

It just doesn't...

It's just when she needed the help.

The charity had devised strict rules about who they would help

because they feared that giving hand-outs to single mothers

would encourage immoral behaviour.

They didn't want to create people who were just

dependent on hand-outs.

Lavinia's left on her own.

She's got no-one to turn to

and she's got six kids to try and feed.

Now, as an uneducated woman,

there was no way Lavinia could support her family.

She has to go into the workhouse -

and that was the last resort, that was all she could do.

Lavinia takes four of the younger children with her.

Lavinia and her youngest children had hit rock bottom.

But there was hope for the two older children, Edith and John Junior.

Sometimes, Florence disagreed with the decisions that the charity

had made and she would actually step in.

John Junior is my grandfather.

Florence agreed to pay, for at least a few weeks,

for a room for him somewhere to keep him out of the workhouse.

He'd managed to get himself an apprenticeship as an upholsterer.

By providing the little bit of help John needed,

Florence had set him on the path to a trade.

This is Peter when he was eight and a half months old.

Oh, there's a picture of me here when I was, um...

-Eight and a half months old.

-..eight and a half months old, yeah.

This is my cousin Peter and his wife, Mary.

They're retired now,

but Peter worked for 30 years in management at Toshiba.

So, anyway, this is my...

..shed.

I've only lifted this box out and opened it...probably twice,

since 1978.

There's a mix of tools in here

that my grandfather John Manley used to use for upholstering

some of the chairs.

There's the old wooden plane.

It's a nice little plane, that.

Well-used.

We don't know where he got the tools from.

He wanted those tools because it was the final cream on the cake,

if you like, to enable him to earn a living to support his family.

There's a determination to succeed running right through our family.

It began with my grandad John getting his trade.

Then in his 20s, off his own back, he managed to make a move

that has shaped our lives ever since.

He probably wanted to get out of London

to put the whole episode of what happened in the past,

or in his living memory, behind him.

In 1906, John and his children moved to a tiny village near to Windsor,

called Langley.

Thank you.

100 years on, I still live and work down the road.

My grandfather managed to move from London,

which was for the benefit of his children.

He gave them a better life and a better start than he had.

You know, we haven't moved far, so I'm still not that...

Windsor's not far from Langley.

Morning, everyone. Ready to Zumba?

OK, lots of whooping today.

Lots of smiley faces!

Since we moved out of London,

things have got better and better for my family.

MUSIC: Shine On by R.I.O

What we aim at doing is to get every child over 11

some form of secondary education.

The effect, as I see it, will be as much social as educational.

I think it will have the result of welding us all

into one nation.

For the first time, kids like us from poorer families,

had a chance to go to grammar school

and get a high-flying education free of charge.

We call ourselves the Transition Generation.

I think our generation had a lot more opportunities

and could come from whatever background then and could...

You had the opportunity to mix and achieve.

I have got one picture of when I was at grammar school in Langley.

I passed my 11-plus and went to grammar school.

And I don't... Let me think. Think, think, think.

Ah, found it.

So, ah, found me.

That's me there.

It was very, very strict.

It was run like a private school, grammar schools, in those days.

Education has always, in my mind, stayed important to me.

So, I endeavour to try and give my children the gift of education

because I must have, deep down, felt that that's what helped me.

'My husband Geoff and I have five grown-up kids.

'For our sins, two of them are still at home.'

That's the five of them when they were little.

Liam,

Josh,

Niall, that's the boys.

That's Fliss.

It's Felicity Faye, but we call her Fliss...

and Gabby, Gabriella.

So, Josh is the second.

We were advised by schools to sit him for scholarships, which we did.

He was ten when he sat the Eton junior scholarship

which took care of him from that age basically up until 18.

It was a massive change.

I mean, it's a completely different structure.

Different...

I guess, even as a child, you know, you have a class

and it was a completely different class of people.

Social class?

Social class, yeah.

There was teasing/bullying on a class level.

But looking back, I probably took that out on Mum a bit.

You sort of think, "Oh, I've just got to get on with this,"

and then learn to enjoy what's there on your doorstep

rather than thinking about what you're missing or had before.

Or do you just forget?

I mean, obviously, you acclimatise, don't you?

When you're there long enough, so...

If you did it again, would you do anything differently?

I always tried to get them to extra lessons, extra curricular lessons,

and making sure they didn't miss out,

especially as there were five of them.

I didn't want them to suffer cos they came from a big family.

Wasn't their fault.

But then I was rushing them everywhere.

So, I wish deep down now,

I'd just stayed at home and cuddled them more

and just sat and watched films and read books.

What makes you say that?

When Josh went to Eton, particularly,

I felt I lost him totally.

Very...drifted, and we were quite close when he was little.

And with the others, I was just... Seemed intent on getting them

a good education, giving them every opportunity I didn't have

and forgotten the bit in between.

Happy Birthday!

Hip, hip, hooray!

I was a really attached child.

I think quite quickly after going through prep school,

I was told that I was quite the opposite, so...

Um, and...

Yeah, I don't feel a strong family attachment.

I think I've always had a tighter relationship with friends,

and that makes sense as someone who grew up

in a house full of friends, really.

Over the generations, my family's kept moving forwards,

even if it's sometimes been a painful process.

So, that's our line of the family.

All of us are descendants of John Junior, the upholsterer,

my grandfather.

John Junior's older sister was called Edith.

She was 16 when her mum went into the workhouse.

So, like her brother John, she was old enough to get a job.

Edith, who is my...nan...

she, through Mrs Hunt again, our saviour...

..finds her work.

Finds her work in service,

cos there's not a lot of opportunities.

I mean, you know, you was either in the service

or a woman of the night, so to speak.

She worked for a family for about eight years

until she met her husband.

Enter Mr Starkey.

This photo was taken at her wedding.

Edith was 25 when she got married and gave up her job.

That's Lavinia on the right, Edith is in the middle

and her new husband Jonah Starkey is on the left.

Jonah was more than 20 years older than Edith

and he died nine years after they married,

leaving Edith to bring up four young daughters on her own,

including my mum, Elsie.

They all lived in cramped housing in Paddington.

It's beyond recognition now.

I think a lot of houses were like that.

They were old, and after the war they were just pulled down.

Yeah.

Yeah, very nice.

'Me and my husband Ray, we live in East Acton,

'which is a couple of miles from Edith's home in Paddington.'

Did you see our nameplate?

-Oh, yeah, have a look at our plate.

-Come on, I'll show you.

Our name plate, E and R, look at it.

E and R with a crown.

"Evelyn Reigns," that's what it says.

It don't say Eve and Ray, it said, "Evelyn Reigns."

THEY LAUGH

Yeah. Oops.

I've got a lovely picture of Shannon.

Bring your camera upstairs.

This is a picture of our daughter Shannon

in fancy dress.

That's not her normal Saturday get-up.

She said, "Mother, you never showed them that, did you?"

I said, "I did."

We've always stayed pretty close to our roots.

Tell me about your work.

Yeah, me, yeah. I worked at a wholesalers up the road here,

not far from here, in North Acton.

Yeah, I was there 32 years at Makros.

And I say, my dad only had one job in his lifetime.

My mum worked.

When she was able, she had an early morning cleaning job

and then they would go back in the evening and clean, again,

the offices or whatever.

Shannon only had one job from 16 to 43.

Post Office.

So, we're a bit boring. Stick-in-the-mud people.

We've been lucky.

-Been lucky.

-Yeah. We was fortunate.

Me and Ray, we're just plodders.

I think you can tell that, with our jobs.

You know, you plod along.

I've lived in this house nearly 60 years.

Plod along with it.

You know?

I mean, at the end of the day, I mean, it's quite nice.

But it's a council house.

I mean, we could sell this

and buy something really nice. You know, really up-to-date.

Lovely kitchen and whatever.

We'll plod along a little bit further, I suppose.

In our family we have a saying,

"It's all about the man you choose."

Pull your trousers up, Ray.

'I'm Cheryl Steward.

'When I was younger, unfortunately, when it came to men,

'I took after my great-great-grandmother Lavinia.'

100 years on, I found myself in a relationship that

was all too similar to the records of Lavinia and John's.

Getting chilly again now.

I can relate to Lavinia on some of the aspects of, like,

not being able to speak up and, um...

like, the bedroom door would look like a jigsaw puzzle.

And why did it look like that?

Um...my partner used to punch it, basically.

So...

Looking at that list, how many of those things happened to you?

Basically, being grabbed by the throat,

threatened with a knife...

being hit.

Well, yeah, he didn't knock my teeth out, still got them.

Thankfully.

But, yeah, there's a few things on there

that I can sort of relate to.

No-one gives anyone the right to hit anyone.

My daughter was born in '87, so...

My oldest daughter.

So, it is literally like just 100...

Basically, 100 years between it, so...

As to what happened to me, that's what happened to Lavinia.

Back in 1887, Lavinia had no options.

It was just the workhouse for her.

Thank God things were different for me.

There is much more help now than what there was then.

Basically, the only sort of help I did need is basically being,

sort of, rehoused down here, so...

..22 years ago, I plucked up the courage and I got out.

I moved from London to Southampton.

From then on, life just got better.

Right, well, that's the kitchen.

This is the lounge.

I've got pictures on the walls

which are of my daughters and my grandson.

This is Georgina, this is Francesca and this is Samantha

when they were babies.

And this is what they're all like now, basically.

Yeah, I did my driving lessons.

Got a job.

Then went on to do my PCV licence,

so I can drive, like, double-decker buses...

coaches and stuff like that.

Little old ladies used to get on the bus saying,

"You look too small to be behind that wheel."

But, yeah, that was fun.

I was proud of myself.

I'd got myself out, built a whole new life for myself and my girls.

Then I got together with Darren...

..and it's basically the kind of stability

that Lavinia could have only dreamed of.

You could say that all of us who have descended

from Edith and John Junior have Florence Hunt to thank

for going against the charity.

Because without that leg up,

who knows where we might be.

'As for Florence's own circumstances,'

it would be hard to imagine a more different world.

Her family's fortunes revolved around a huge inheritance.

'This is me, Tatiana.'

What relation is Florence to you?

My great-great-great-grandmother.

The story of Florence's family is all about the family home.

A 300-acre Elizabethan estate in Shropshire called Boreatton.

When her husband died, Florence inherited next to nothing.

The family estate went to the oldest of her 11 children.

It went to Rowland, my great-great-grandfather.

The trouble is they get to like her so much I can't imagine them

behaving very well for anybody else.

This is my dad, Rowland Jr, and my mum Julia.

They live in a small village, in Hampshire, where I grew up.

Florence Hunt was my great-great-grandmother,

and, therefore, mother of my great-grandfather Rowland.

You're called Rowland, as well.

Do you think you're similar?

Beyond his name, erm...

I think I do share some similarities and, um...

obviously they would be the love of country sports,

which I've carried on.

He would, in his younger years,

have spent most of his time hunting to hounds.

JAZZ MUSIC

He was a master of fox hounds...

game shooting with both shotgun and rifle...

before he signed up for public duty.

A famously good shot,

Rowland was recruited to the elite Lovat Scouts

and went to battle in the Boer War.

It would be the beginning of a proud military tradition.

Rowland's son was Philip, my great-grandfather,

who was a fighter pilot in the First World War.

Philip was, actually, fascinatingly,

shot down by the Red Baron in the First World War.

MACHINE-GUN FIRE

My dad's father was a vice admiral in the Navy.

My dad was in the Navy for 25 years.

So, yeah, strong military background.

Nowadays my dad Rowland still keeps his hand in with the military,

only he does it running a business from the family home.

Well, the main bit of the business,

we repatriate sailors when they are sick and injured.

They might be anywhere in the world.

They might be in...Buenos Aires, or India, or Rotterdam,

and they might have fallen down in their ship,

or they might have got sick,

and somebody has to rescue them and take them home.

Were you, given what the generations above you in your family have done,

ever tempted to join the military?

No. Not even slightly.

The generations before me were all in the military, but I am not.

It was either going to be PR or journalism for me.

PR paid more, awful truth, so, yeah, I went into that

and fell into financial services and find it incredibly interesting.

So, that's our family.

We've moved from Shropshire landowners,

in Florence's day, to the military, to the City.

But that's because Florence's son Rowland did a surprising thing.

In 1915, he sold the family estate to his younger brother.

Do you think that big country houses are a blessing or a curse?

Curse.

Why's that?

There was a famous saying, I can't remember who it was...

If you really hate someone,

leave them an old family house in your will.

Because it's about £300,000 if you want to replace the roof,

the insurance is a nightmare,

most of them are sinking, they fall apart.

If you don't have money it's a hindrance.

For our family, selling the house would turn out to be a good move.

We were freed up from the responsibility of looking after it.

And we could do what we wanted with our lives

But what about Florence's other son,

the one who bought the family estate?

The small boy in this photo is called Richard.

He's the one who bought the family estate from his brother Rowland.

He's Florence's youngest son and he's also my grandfather.

This is me, Tim.

This is someone I've had for a long time.

Her name is Sinead.

Sinead Mermaid,

and, as you see, she likes to dress up

-Florence?

-Yeah.

Who was Florence?

She was my great-grandmother.

It would have been nice to have met her, I think.

She might have been a bit scary, I feel.

But I don't know about that!

Did you get your times tables right?

You did your nines and you got them right? Well done!

Pasta for you.

This is Elizabeth, my niece.

She worked for 20 years in marketing.

Now she's a stay-at-home mum

and lives in Sussex with her husband and twin boys.

Florence was my great-great-grandmother.

And this is my seat.

My husband is not allowed in this seat.

And here is Lesley, who is also my niece.

It's got my horsey cushions

and it's just the right position for the television.

Florence is my great-great-grandmother.

This, uh, this is a picture, it's a sort of...

I think, it's a charcoal of Boreatton, as it was.

They pulled half of the house down to make another really big house,

which had 52 bedrooms.

Florence was supposed to be such a gorgeous girl

that she was going to marry the man

who could build her the biggest, most gorgeous house.

Half of it was taken down, the best half,

and, really, what I was brought up in was the servant's quarters,

which was still 20 bedrooms.

Sorry, you were brought up in this house?

I was brought up in this house.

My grandad didn't know it when he bought it,

but the house was going to be a mixed blessing for our family.

It's been a source of great pride but also excessive stress.

For us everything was going OK until 1945.

That was the year Richard died and the estate went to my father, Jock.

This is, erm, my father, a portrait of my father.

It's probably when he was at Oxford, I think.

He was very charming but he was... a bit of a character.

Jock was quite an eccentric. I think he lived in the past.

He was... He was of a different generation.

MUSIC: Walk That Mess by Tiny Bradshaw

My eccentric father couldn't have inherited Boreatton at a worse time.

I am going to relieve

two million people from income tax altogether next year.

And, just by way of balance,

to put a little bit more on the big incomes,

which could well afford to pay.

In 1945, the Labour government began to bring in new laws

to try to redistribute wealth.

Tax was up, inflation was up.

Life became very hard to run estates.

The responsibility to keep the show on the road was all on one man.

My father Jock.

He came up with these crackpot ideas of trying to raise money.

He did something with poultry, with turkeys.

He started a turkey farm there,

which was one of his, you know, schemes.

And it went horribly wrong.

He tried growing rhubarb.

The mushrooms were in the in the cellar, as well.

That was another... another failed venture.

He just enjoyed life,

he was still, almost, living the previous lives -

he hadn't moved on with society.

He didn't really know how to earn a living.

When the money dried up, it became quite apparent

that he couldn't make a go of things.

The only way he could finance the restoration of the property

and the maintenance of the property

was to sell bits of the land off, and properties off,

to make it pay.

But, by the late '50s,

the house was falling into disrepair.

Was it a nice place to grow up?

Not really. It was not.... It was very cold.

There were lots of stories about ghosts

and it creaked and it was dark, completely dark.

We didn't have electricity.

I've only ever stayed in Boreatton, Old Boreatton, once..

..and it frightened me so much I said I'd never stay there again.

My grandmother said, "She won't. She cried all night."

And it was just...just horrendous.

I used to sleep the other side of the tower.

My parents were in the front.

Absolutely no way they could hear me, as a little boy, if I was upset.

Boreatton, once a source of joy for my dad,

had now become a terrible burden.

He was going bankrupt at the time that I was a little boy.

He was always very angry,

and, for a little boy, that was difficult to understand.

He used to have a big chair at the table, and if I went near it,

he'd scream at me, when I was small.

I remember not being connected. At all.

It's affected me the whole of my life, really.

It was... Yeah. I think it... It wasn't...

It was privileged, a really privileged upbringing

but, really,

what was more important was love.

I needed to get away from home and everything it represented -

the stiff upper lip and the English class system.

So, when I was 18, I left home and trained as a doctor in London...

..but I was looking for something more,

and pretty soon I found myself on the other side of the world.

When I got to Australia, things were just so much more relaxed.

Just - people were who they were,

and you just accepted people for who they were when you met them.

There weren't all the unwritten class rules

that there are in England.

Do you ever think what you might want to say to him

if he was still around?

Just to let the love in, you know? Just... Just to loosen up, and...

and, loosen up and...and open up and open his heart and...and, er...

Oh! You've made me weepy!

And, you know, give me a hug.

Like he did when... Before I left the last time.

My upbringing had left me with a lot to deal with.

And while I was settling in Australia,

there was a lot going on at home, too.

By now, the hall had been carved up into flats and rented out.

Then, in 1981, my dad died.

and everything went to my elder brother, Richard.

Now, I don't know what you... Come and look at this with me,

or something, one of you.

Now, that's a wig, that's nothing to do with it.

This is Civil War time. We were Roundheads.

But let me tell you, really, I'm a real loyalist now,

but we were Roundheads.

Like the house, this suit of armour has been in the family

for over 350 years.

So, was this a Hunt that fought in this?

Yes. Yes.

In the Civil War we managed to pick the winning side

and we got the estate on the cheap.

And I suppose we should, today,

we should hand in all swords and knives.

Oh, that's lovely. Could you turn round, Uncle Richard? That's lovely.

Elizabeth and her family

have come to visit my brother Richard at the estate.

Thank you. That's great.

All the generations.

Nowadays, it's owned by a family of hoteliers from Chester.

It's a beautiful setting, isn't it?

These are all the marriages, boys. When you've got two sides.

It's when two families have come together and got married.

They've both brought their family crest with them

and they've married together as one.

-It's so different now.

-It's beautiful.

I would never have wanted to live at Boreatton.

Quite honestly, it was left to me,

and the only thing to do was to sell.

It's not a place you can live in, unless you've got money to run it.

Could you imagine yourself living there?

-Living where?

-At Boreatton.

No. It would never be right for me.

-Why not?

-Oh, no, I'm...

It's not the sort of life I'd want.

There's nothing wrong with living in a big house

and being the lord of the manor and the rest of it - no.

In some ways, those days are gone.

But, er, no... I'm happy as I am.

The estate was sold after 400 years, or whatever it was.

Did they get a lot of money for it?

They got £50,000 for it.

Yeah, so these days...

It needed someone to love it

and put a lot of money into it, really, basically.

Are you sorry it's gone?

Not particularly.

My nephew and my son both have, sort of, dreams of buying it back

but, for me, I don't feel, I'm quite,

I'm well rid of it, basically.

For me, it's not important.

Like me, Richard's OK

with the estate being someone else's home these days.

But he has a deep connection to the place.

Oh, shall we open the door?

Is that a catflap?

It's been 20 years now since Richard's been inside.

Oh, this is great. I understood, thought, that wasn't here.

Oh, it's great.

-So which...

-We had a bigger bell than that.

-Did you?

That's where the butler would...

-Because they used the upstairs as a drawing room.

-Right.

The dining room was downstairs.

The butler would ring this ship's bell, it is.

-Well, we've got it at home.

-Yes.

Oh! It hasn't been...

It's beautiful. Wow!

No! Maureen's got it wrong.

It isn't the same but it's... It has... Oh, it's great.

It hasn't been changed hardly at all.

No.

Right. Gosh. It's so changed.

Now, this is how he's brought the kitchen out.

This is very interesting.

Wow!

It really has pleased me. It really has.

Cos I had ideas it'd been completely, you know,

the old characters had gone.

They haven't. For an old house, they haven't spoiled it.

Thank you.

You've made my day now. Well, more than my day.

My mother actually told me the other day that we could have lived here.

It was offered to my father.

So our whole lives could have been completely changed.

So, yeah. It just makes you keep thinking,

"Ooh! That could have been my bedroom."

How our lives would have been different.

It's nice to still see the little bits of family on it.

It's beautiful. And it's such a lovely setting.

It's getting me emotional again.

What do you think's making you emotional, Elizabeth?

Um...

I think it's the memories of... seeing it in a bad state...

..and then now seeing it's being loved.

But you just need money to do that, don't you?

I would like the Hunts to be seen as successful

and that we haven't let the Hunt side down

through the generations because, obviously,

130 years ago we were a very successful family.

We were aristocratic and, as society has moved on,

the generations have changed and we are who we are today.

Some people would see losing the house as a sign of our family

coming down in the world.

But I don't see it that way.

Neither does Richard.

He's happy in his new house a few yards from the estate.

It's the same for Richard's daughter, Lesley.

What a nice day for a drive. Hit the road.

MUSIC: I Want To Break Free by Queen.

In a strange way, selling the house has freed us up

to be the kind of people we want to be.

I really do enjoy driving on days like this.

Now you can see Boreatton, old Boreatton,

where my grandfather came from.

Looks lovely from here, doesn't it?

For ten years now, Lesley,

Florence's great-great-granddaughter,

has been working as a truck driver.

And she's loving it!

Yeah, lovely.

What do you think your grandparents or your great-grandparents

would've thought about what you do?

I think they... Yeah, I think they'd be, perhaps, taken aback -

but why not?

No, I think, I think they'd be, probably, pretty proud of me.

It doesn't bother me about status one little bit.

I am totally down to earth.

# I want to break free

# I want to break free

# I want to break free from your lies

# You're so self-satisfied I don't need you

# I've got to break free... #

People in Australia they don't really worry

where people come from,

they're just are interested in who you are, really, basically,

and I just felt completely at ease.

# Oh! And I want to break free. #

Yes. There were two liberations.

One was coming here, I suppose, and one was coming out as a gay man.

And so that was very difficult and many, many nights of...

of, er... Very many sleepless nights

but, in the end, I think it was the right thing for me to do.

This a party I went to in the bush.

The name of the party was, it was "Oklahomo party".

-Oklahomo?

-Oklahomo.

So, I think I had the feel of the party in that outfit.

I don't think, mostly, those sort of cowgirls wear furs

but it was very cold that winter, so...

And so this is our family.

Florence's descendants in the modern day.

Over the generations, we've had to work out who we are

and where we belong.

And the descendants of Lavinia Manley,

the family who Florence helped,

have been trying to answer these questions too.

How about Florence's kids?

What do you think happened to Florence's kids?

Well...

presumably they'd still be...landowners.

You just assume they're still upper-class, don't you,

because the money was there to keep them there,

if it stayed there.

I'm dying to find out, actually. I'm dying to find out.

Hello, I'm Cheryl. From the Manley side.

Wonderful Timothy.

On the 25th April 2015,

all of Florence's and all of Lavinia's descendants

met for the first time.

-What a surprise.

-You're a...

-No.

-You're a...

-The Hunt side.

Oh, you're the Hunt side! Somebody that I don't know, then.

No, well...

For both our families, things have changed quite a bit in 130 years,

but, in some ways, our families aren't too dissimilar.

I became a truck driver.

Oh, no!

-So I can drive...

-No!

..the artics and I've done it for the last ten years!

Oh, really? Well, my brothers Ronnie and Brian, they were big artic...

They worked for Express Dairy, it was then,

Well, that's who I started with, Express Dairies!

No!

It's difficult to pull myself out of the...the upper class...

..but my friends usually come from...

They're intelligent working class background, they come from.

So I suppose, I just think I'm right down the middle, really.

I like to have a little bit of a foot in either camp.

I mean, so to speak.

-What class would you say you are?

-Middle class.

Yeah.

But, again, I have - not issues, but perhaps it's a naivete

in thinking that there isn't such class system any more in the UK.

-Oh, lovely.

-Yes.

Just give us your address, we'll get copies.

He comes in.

-You are descended from John who's the upholsterer?

-Yes.

-Well, and, I suppose, the other John.

-And the other John!

Tell me what class you are.

Do you know, I said in front of my cousin Peter, I was classless.

He said, "Oh, come on, Denny - driving a BMW,"

whatever I've got, A1 Series!

Erm...

If it exists, lower middle, if that exists.

Is there such a class as normal class?

We're just everyday, everyday class.

I'm same as the next person.

It suddenly made me think for the first time,

-where would I be now had I gone to a...

-State school?

..a regular school.

Perfect. Hands in your pockets.

I don't really see myself as anything other than

a drifter in-between, like,

different worlds. or classes, or whatever you want to call it.

For some, changing hasn't been easy.

But when we finally met, we felt an amazing connection.

-I wonder what situation Lavinia...

-Yeah, exactly.

What sort of situation she would have been,

if it hadn't been for the charity.

And our similarities came out more than our differences.

There's no-one watching this.

Cos, at the end of the day, you know, what makes you better than me

just because you've got, you know, two million?

You know, and I've only got a million and a half.

But, yeah, no. We're all the same.

I've got two arms, two legs

and blood runs through my body the same as the man next door.

This way now. OK. Straight up at the camera.

# I want to break free

# I want to break free

# I want to break from your lies

# You're so self-satisfied I don't need you

# I've got to break free

# God knows!

# God knows I want to break free! #