Hello, I'm Julie—an American who married into a five-hundred-year-old English house and has been trying to keep the roof on ever since.

I'm the 12th Countess of Sandwich, and home is Mapperton, a Grade I listed Elizabethan manor in West Dorset. I share it with all of you through Mapperton Live!, our YouTube channel—the good days, the leaks, the endlessly surprising things we find in the attics.

Right now I'm restoring the West Room. It's a bedroom that hasn't been touched in more than sixty years—the same curtains have hung at its windows since before the moon landing, faded pale on one side and worn to almost nothing where they fold. If we raise the funds, it gets hand-painted silk wallpaper, damask blinds and upholstery woven in England, and a beautiful old daybed reupholstered at last.

Every coffee you buy goes into that room. Nothing else.

Thank you for being here. It genuinely matters.

Julie x