Duke of Devonshire's income including from Chatsworth House revealed in new report

The House, shops, restaurants, garden and farmyard employed 300 in 2021/22 and had 574,000 visitors. In Derbyshire alone, activities are worth £97.6m and support 1,863 jobs.

The wider Devonshire Group makes money from hotels, restaurants, shops - including Peak Village - holiday lets, farms, visitors and housebuilding. It puts money into the economy via direct and indirect jobs, apprenticeships and support for local suppliers.

As well as Chatsworth, the Group includes Bolton Abbey Estate in North Yorkshire, Lismore Estate in County Waterford, Ireland, and Compton Estate in Sussex.

Andrew Lavery, chief financial officer, said: “As we move forward as a group, we anticipate that our economic impact will grow as a result of us making progress in four key areas: the natural growth of our own businesses and operations, continuing to make our land and buildings available to existing and prospective tenants to enable their businesses to grow and flourish, by converting ‘days to stays’ and a continued focus on local sourcing.”

The report – compiled with the help of the University of Derby – also showed the Group’s economic impact was £197m, supporting 3,379 jobs in 2019/20.

This fell nearly 30 per cent to £141m and supporting 2,539 jobs in 2020/21 before bouncing back strongly to £224m and supporting 3,338 jobs.

The report states: ‘We can deduce that the wider economic impact of Covid-19 on our business was in the region of £56m – much of which will have been felt in the areas local to our operations’.