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<\/a>They invited friends and riders to polo weekends held on the magnificent polo ground, the first to be built in Barbados, opposite their house, and welcomed performers like Pavarotti and Kylie Minogue to their annual Holders Season, a mini Glyndebourne-meets-Glastonbury festival, established by Wendy 22 years ago. This year Holders Season was a very British celebration with Paul Merton performing a stand-up routine, an evening of music from the London Community Gospel Choir and and an act called The Fawlty Towers Dining Experience.<\/p>\nHowever, when the couple separated\u00a010 years ago Wendy, an opera lover and former model, took over the house that her husband, the grandson of Lord Beaverbrook inherited from his mother.<\/p>\n
\u201cHolders is now mine,\u201d Wendy asserts as we sit down on one of the comfy bamboo sofas on the huge verandah.<\/p>\n
Yet Wendy, whose looks belie her\u00a071 years, has kept this serene oasis with its stunning sea views, swimming pool, gazebo, various outbuildings and courtyard, going as both a home for her growing family; she became a great grandmother for the third time last April, and a business.<\/p>\n She has also converted a barn into a hi-tech recording studio which she rents to visiting artists, and offers five bedrooms in the main house and two in neighbouring cottage to PGs as she called them on a somewhat quirky B&B&L basis. \u201cThe nightly rate from US$125 is per person and includes bed, breakfast and laundry,\u201d she explains. \u201cI have to do their washing, I can\u2019t have people going home with dirty laundry.\u201d<\/p>\n And it didn\u2019t help last year when her son Jack\u2019s polo business was fleeced of tens of thousands of pounds by a businessman who left a trail of debts.<\/p>\n \u201cI am just about keeping above water,\u201d she sighs. She had the house reroofed in cedar shingle last year and called in the \u2018bug busters\u2019 to rid her mahogany sweeping staircase of termites.<\/p>\n Yet she is happy and single, and shudders at the suggestion of contemplating marriage again.<\/p>\n \u201cI am very happy with my life; in fact I feel I am enjoying a new lease of life.\u201d<\/p>\n Wendy lives in the main house, but is surrounded by her family. Her son Jack has a cottage in the garden, daughter Debbie, one of two children from her first marriage, lives nearby as does her granddaughter Astral with her three children.<\/p>\n \u201cI am a great believer in family,\u201d Wendy declares. \u201cWhen Jemma and Jodie come to stay with their children I just block out those weeks and the house becomes a family home again.\u201d<\/p>\n Some of Wendy\u2019s PGs as she calls them come for a few days and end up staying for several weeks. \u201cThey come and never leave,\u201d she laughs. \u201cI think they just love this mad house. They find us by word of mouth and are usually business people, polo players or friends of friends.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI just love gardening,\u201d she adds. During Holders season which ended at the end of March she strung lights through the trees, dangled chandeliers from the oaks and positioned pots overflowing with palms on the grass.<\/p>\n While she lives most of the year in her Caribbean haven she loves spending the summer months with Jodie and Jemma and their children in the English countryside. \u201cBarbados is very small and beautiful but you can suffer cabin fever.\u201d<\/p>\n Interestingly she still hasn\u2019t applied for residency on the island even though she has lived there for 42 years. \u201cI just renew my visa every few months,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n Paul Altman, managing director of Savills Altman Real Estate and past president of the Barbados National Trust says: \u201cPlantation houses represent the linkage of Barbados to its past. They have always been used as references in terms of determining the vernacular architecture of Barbados. For many years, plantation homes remained closely held. However, as families grew, it became less practical for them all to fit in to a single home. In many cases, some families sold the estate homes, particularly as the cost of maintaining them became prohibitive.<\/p>\n \u201cToday, plantation and heritage homes represent exceptional restored properties within real estate sales portfolios, with a few serving as museum homes. One example is Villa Nova, once the Caribbean home of Sir Anthony Eden, former British Prime Minister. It has hosted guests such as Sir Winston Churchill, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, Noel Coward and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair.\u201d<\/p>\n For information on property for sale in Barbados visit www.totallybarbados.com<\/a>. For more information on Holders House and\u00a0this year’s\u00a0music festival\u00a0visit: www.Holders.net<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a>She has certainly taken on a big job. Over the years Holders, which neighbours the fashionable Sandy Lane Hotel, has struggled to make itself pay; the concerts have run at a loss and some 300-acres have had to be sold off leaving just five remaining on the Holders estate.<\/p>\nEstablishing a music festival, organic farmer’s market and recording studio<\/h4>\n
<\/a>Apart from the annual festival\u00a0( 7-21 March) which has made Holders famous throughout Barbados she has initiated an organic farmer\u2019s market where each Sunday locals sell their home-made jams, juices and authentic British bangers on stalls laid out in her garden.<\/p>\n<\/a>Her oldest employee is 84-year-old Rachel Carpenter who joined Holders when she was just 20. \u201cShe worked for my mother in law. Now she works for me and then goes to live with my daughter Jodie in England for the summer,\u201d Wendy says, adding that her other long-serving employee Joan has been with her for 17 years.<\/p>\n<\/a>Holders dates back 300 years and was the former home of plantation owner Sir John Holder who is buried on the estate. It is one of a few plantation houses on Barbados that remains in private ownership and has a real sense of being first a family home and second a quirky B&B; the place is strewn with antique furniture, family photos, piles of books, bric-a-brac and a curious wall of hats inside the front door.<\/p>\nShe is the chatelaine in shorts<\/h4>\n
<\/a>She admits to loving her \u2018chaotic lifestyle\u2019, as a chatelaine in shorts running around carrying a clip board; \u201cI carry it everywhere; I have to write everything down as I have a terrible memory,\u201d she laughs as she darts between the tamarind and cherry trees to find some university students she was supposed to meet. And when she isn\u2019t holding her clip board, she is tending her orchids.<\/p>\n