Image courtesy of Viscountess Violet Garnock

About the Event

In this personal and reflective talk, Viscountess Violet Garnock shares the story of growing up at Belvoir Castle and how a childhood shaped by history, landscape and responsibility ultimately informed her professional path.

Violet will explore how her early experiences of life inside a working historic house fostered a lasting fascination with heritage, storytelling and the evolving role of privately owned estates in modern Britain. She will also reflect on the creation of the Duchess podcast, which she co-founded with her mother between 2020 and 2022 and which reached an audience of more than 2.5 million listeners. Through these conversations, she began to understand the public's powerful appetite for authentic access to historic places and the lives lived within them.

These formative experiences led to the founding of HeritageXplore, an experience and membership platform designed to inspire a new generation of visitors to discover and spend time in some of Britain’s finest independently owned historic houses.

This talk offers an intimate perspective on heritage not as a static concept, but as a living, evolving ecosystem shaped by present-day challenges, realities, and the fine line between preservation and innovation that heritage must balance every day in the 21st century. 

This event will feature a 45-minute talk and a 15-minute Q&A session at the end.

Attendance at this event is free and open to both members and non-members.