A British-American couple shares what it's really like to live in and maintain a historic 16th-century English manor house check it out

Also known as Mapperton House, the grand family home in Dorset is owned by Luke's parents who are The Earl and Countess of Sandwich.

When Julie first met Luke, she had no idea he was part of the English aristocracy. She had grown up in Illinois and was oblivious to his noble title as a viscount until she saw it on his credit card.

"I looked at it and I said to him, 'Why does your name say Viscount Hinchingbrooke?' And from there we proceeded to have a long conversation about his family's illustrious past," Julie told Insider.

But since 2017, the couple — now married and known as Viscount and Viscountess Hinchingbrooke — have taken up an active role in running and maintaining the 2000-acre family estate.

The house can be considered 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries because it was expanded over time, Julie said.

"Most of these historic houses were built bit by bit. We've got the Tudor part of the house, the Jacobean part, and one side of the house is a Georgian facade," Julie said.

But the Mapperton grounds extend far beyond just the main Mapperton House — there are about twenty other buildings on the estate and the Montagus are technically landlords of and are responsible for them all.

"Think of Mapperton as a village. And in the village, there's always one main central house and around that, you'd have a community where people live," Julie said.

When Julie and Luke first took over the daily operations of the estate, their primary concern was making sure that it was sustainable.

"The cost of all of the repairs to all of the outbuildings, all of the farmland — there's so much that you have to do to keep the roof on," Luke said.

To ensure they had the funds to keep the estate running, they opened up more parts of the estate for events and short-term vacation stays. Luke estimates that they get about 15,000 visitors a year.

"The first question was, 'How do we generate more income?' And the first thing that we did was to create a better visitor experience by converting buildings, so we had a proper cafe and a proper wedding venue," Luke said.

They've hosted everything from concerts to plant fairs. Tickets for upcoming events can be purchased on their website. Visitors can also take a guided house and garden tour, which costs £16, or $18.55.

"Mapperton is basically lots of small businesses — the cafe, the wedding venue, the residential properties, the house tours, the yoga retreats," Luke said.

Occasionally, they also get requests to use the estate as a filming location, he added. Scenes from Netflix's 2020 film "Rebecca" starring Lily James and Armie Hammer, were filmed on the estate grounds.

"Filming is a helpful source of income, because it means we can properly restore a roof or something big and costly," Luke said. "Unfortunately, it doesn't happen all the time."

The kitchen was where their family spends the bulk of their time, and the couple wanted to modernize it with new appliances and cabinets, Julie said.

However, they did manage to keep an old stove that had been in the house since the 1950s, she added.

"Traditionally, people didn't have bathrooms. There might have been a water closet or a bath tub that was brought into their room to wash in, but the idea of a bathroom is a modern concept," Luke said.

On top of ensuring that each of their children has their own bathroom, the couple also wanted their guests to be comfortable, he said.

"Julie hosts yoga retreats here, and we wanted to be able to invite people who are part of the retreat to stay in the house and make sure that they had all the comforts that they were used to," he added.

That makes repairs especially costly and time-consuming.

"We can possibly add walls maybe, but we cannot pull down — we have to work with what we have," Julie said.

To repair any leaks in the old lead windows, they have to put scaffolding up and get a stonemason to carefully take the windows out, she said.

"You can't just repair that window in a day, because it has to go to the craftsman's workshop. And he's expensive because he's one of the only people who know how to do it," she added.

"Some of the paintings have to be restored. The furniture needs to be looked after, including the tapestries and the rugs. We try to pick a piece or a few pieces every year that need to be restored," Julie said.

"There's the normal maintenance work, which is what we expect. And then there's something really big that comes up that we don't expect," Luke said.

In the last five years, they've had to replace the whole water system for the village because it broke down, rebuild a greenhouse because a storm blew it in, and even replace the roof on a building, he added.

"We're constantly rolling our sleeves up. We're not lord and lady of the manor in the traditional sense," Julie said. "Not in the 'Downton Abbey' sense. That role has changed so much, it doesn't exist here and it doesn't exist in most other houses as well."