The program highlighted her practical, hands-on approach to running the historic estate. Viewers saw her cleaning gutters, preparing pheasants alongside her grandchildren, and fixing electrical problems well into her sixties.
Her daughter Zara summed up her mother’s remarkable abilities, saying: “[She] can drive a tractor better than any man I’ve ever seen and can reverse it through a narrow gap with a trailer on the back of it.”
Early Lessons and Personal Reflections
During the series, Dame Shan spoke candidly about her upbringing and the responsibilities she learned at a young age.
“From a really early age, I was encouraged by everyone on the estate to be able to put my hand to whatever I could,” she said. “Whether that be searching for eggs, picking raspberries or sitting in the tractor.”
Despite her deep attachment to home life, she recalled being sent away to boarding school in Sussex as a child. She described the experience as “awful” and said it left her feeling “extremely homesick”.
