Every house has a story. At Innes House, it hangs on the wall.
Climb the main stairwell and you pass generation after generation of the family who have called this estate home — faces looking out from centuries of portraits, each with a life behind it. In this short film, Edward Tennant walks the staircase and introduces them.
A staircase of ancestors
The portrait stairwell is one of those parts of the house guests tend to slow down for. It isn’t a gallery in the formal sense — it’s a family record, added to over time, arranged as much by circumstance as by design.
Edward introduces the figures who shaped the estate: what they inherited, what they built, and what they passed on. Some are known for their public lives, others for the quieter work of keeping a house and its land going through changing times.
What custodianship means
The word the family uses is custodian, not owner — and the distinction matters.
A house of this age isn’t finished, and it never will be. Roofs, walls, woodland, gardens: each generation takes on the work of the last and hands it to the next, ideally in better shape than they found it. That thinking runs through everything at Innes House, from how the estate is managed to how it’s shared with the people who come here.
Today Edward and Zoë Tennant are the current custodians. Their role is the same one their predecessors held — to look after the place, keep it alive, and make sure it has a future rather than only a past.
The past, still shaping the present
Opening Innes House to guests is part of that. An exclusive-use house isn’t a museum; it works because people use it, fill it, and make new memories in rooms that already hold a few centuries’ worth.
The portraits on the stairwell are a reminder of that continuity. Guests who stay here become, briefly, part of a much longer story.
Watch the film above, and if you’d like to see the house for yourself, get in touch to arrange a visit.