National Trust shines light on inner life of 18th-century ‘lady of the house’

In the painted portraits it is all serenity, happiness and domestic bliss . But behind the smiles of 18th-century “lady of the house” Sabine Winn is a different story: one of isolation, loneliness and marital anguish.

The National Trust is to tell, for the first time, the story of Winn at the country house where she lived for 30 years and which brought her profound unhappiness – Nostell, a Palladian mansion near Wakefield in West Yorkshire .

Simon McCormack, Nostell’s property curator, said the inner lives of people who lived in England’s historic houses were often not deeply explored.

“We have tended to present quite a narrow narrative, one of everything is fine and all the cracks are papered over. But actually, the cracks are quite interesting and are interesting to visitors.”

He said a country house was like a novel, with all sorts of “avenues and cul-de-sacs and ebbs and flows”.

The life of Winn and her family has echoes of Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca , with added EastEnders.

She was born in Switzerland in 1734 and met Sir Rowland Winn when he was on the Grand Tour. They fell in love, married and lived in London for several years before moving to Winn’s family home in Yorkshire in 1765, a place she described as “one of the most desolate and ill-fated corners of the universe”.

She clearly had misgivings but so did the Winn family, who did not believe a “foreigner”, who could not speak English, could run the house.

Country houses were not just homes but public displays of wealth, status and taste, and Sabine was expected to manage things flawlessly.

Despite her efforts, she never mastered English and her husband was rarely there, away on business. “I want to live only for you, yet I am always without you,” she wrote in 1769.

After moving to Nostell in 1765 she is not thought to have left Yorkshire at any time until her death in 1798.

McCormack said Sabine had been “isolated and stranded” and struggled to fit into the role and responsibilities of such a grand country house.

There were numerous financial and family problems along the way, not least with their two children.

Sabine was said to have cosseted her son so much that Winn’s family tried to have him removed from her care. Her daughter brought “shame” by marrying a baker.

Nostell has one of the biggest and most diverse collections of Chippendale furniture in the world and there are pieces on display that shine light on Sabine’s story.

To deal with the challenges of her life, Sabine often retreated to her dressing room, which was her private sanctuary. For the new display the room has been rearranged and includes the ink-stained Chippendale secretary – a desk and bookcase – where she wrote countless letters to her husband in their long-distance relationship.

“I shall no longer act tactfully if you do not come back this week,” she wrote in one. “In the name of God return to your senses and show that you have feelings of your own.

“The truth is that you love London a good deal more than you do your wife.”

Winn would sometimes respond by promising her a new pet.

Other furniture on display includes Sabine’s large Chippendale clothes press and her husband’s Chippendale writing and shaving table with razors, pomade pot and a tongue sponge, a Georgian attempt to counter bad breath.

Elsewhere, a mahogany apothecary’s counter, supplied by Chippendale, shines light on the health struggles the couple had and Sabine’s interest in sickness remedies and cosmetics.

The Sabine trail includes letters she wrote, the books she read and a newly acquired miniature of Winn that he gave her, it is thought, as a love token.

Curators say the challenges Sabine faced at Nostell – the language barriers, the strained family relationships, her worries over physical and mental health – are all concerns that resonate today.

At the end of the trail, a film shows people involved with the local wellbeing group Mindful Movers discussing the story of Sabine and how they see parallels in their own lives.