THE stately home Cowdray House has been transformed from a family home into a bespoke luxury venue offering a “stately blend of glamour and warm hospitality”.

The reopening of the ancestral home of Viscount Cowdray was marked with a reception attended by guests including Bianca Jagger, fashion designer Edina Ronay and Argentine diplomat Alicia Castro.

Until recent years, the enormous house was the family home of Viscount Cowdray, Lady Cowdray, his second wife, and their children Eliza, Emily, Catrina, Peregrine and Montague, aged between 26 and 17.

But after Lord Cowdray said he did not want the house to be a “noose” around his heir Peregrine’s neck, the family moved out to a smaller house on the 16,500 Cowdray Estate near Midhurst, and put Cowdray House up for sale in 2010 for £25 million. The family also held a three-day auction of treasures including furniture and paintings, which realized £7.9million.

However, the house, set against a backdrop of the rolling countryside and Cowdray Park Polo Club, the home of British polo, failed to sell, and instead has been transformed into an “exclusive use” venue for country house retreats, corporate events, weddings and other private celebrations.

The “complete upgrade” has been steered by Marina, Lady Cowdray, a sculptress with an interior designer’s eye for detail, who has “harnessed Cowdray House’s architectural heritage and her personal appreciation of it as a family home full of heart and soul”.

As well as 11 bedrooms, Cowdray House has a dining room, drawing room, morning room, library, billiard room, guest bedrooms and bathrooms. But perhaps the most spectacular room is the dramatic Buck Hall, which boasts a vaulted wood-panelled ceiling, gigantic stone fireplace topped off by a stretch of stained glass windows, portraits of generations of the Cowdray family, and an upper level with arched minstrels’ galleries. It can host up to 150 guests for a sit-down event.

Its reception rooms have “retained their original character”, and the bedrooms “completely meet the expectations of guests accustomed to a five- and six-star country house hotel experience”.

The estate is run as a “very enterprising holistic estate”. Eliza, who was once married to Richard Branson’s nephew Ned Rocknroll, now the husband of movie star Kate Winslet, introduced elements such as holistic agriculture, permaculture and ‘mob grazing’, and sister Emily, a vegan, produces cold-press juices.

The Cowdray Estate’s chief executive Jonathan Russell said: “This new initiative for Lord and Lady Cowdray’s former family home is a tremendously exciting one. For just over 100 years, the life-blood of Cowdray House has been to entertain and gather together family, friends and kindred spirits. It is very energising to be tapping into this pulse once more by making the house available for exclusive-use private events.”

He added that Cowdray House is bringing “glamour” to the recent trend of the owners of stately homes making their homes available for exclusive-use private entertaining.

Beds are kingsize, bedrooms ensuite, bath products luxurious, telephones and TVs are state-of-the-art while Wifi “can be taken as granted”. Cowdray also has its own helicopter landing pad nearby, and there are indoor and outdoor swimming pools, a croquet lawn, a bowling alley, a cricket pitch and a stick-and-ball polo field.

Cowdray House, with its architectural gems and its position in Capability Brown parkland, is a “natural magnet” for fashion shoots and other filming.

Lord and Lady Cowdray are also “finding new and vibrant uses” for outmoded or redundant properties on the estate. Lady Cowdray has spearheaded the unveiling of the Renaissance Art Studio in a hexagonal space in a tower of the Cowdray Ruins, the remains of the Tudor house semi-destroyed by fire in 1793. It’s the venue for an autumn programme of five-day art workshops with a Renaissance theme, led by Cowdray’s artist-in-residence David Cranswick.

Lady Cowdray said: “Having considered how best to re-energise this extraordinary building, the Tower Room’s cue to retreat and its Tudor heritage pointed the way to its resurrection as an art studio with a focus on the Renaissance period.”

• For details about Cowdray House events, including residential packages built around Christmas Day and New Year’s Eve, which are tailored on a bespoke basis with pricing on application, phone 01730 812423 or email houseevents@cowdray.co.uk. For details about the Renaissance Art Studio and courses, contact David Cranswick on 07801 430194, email cranswickart@gmail.com or visit cowdray.co.uk/events.