David PICKERSGILL has a photograph of Wellbeck Abbey on Geo-graph, taken in June, 2012. The Abbey is a privately owned property by descendants of the Duke of Portland. Home of the School of Artisan Foods and the Welbeck Abbey Brewery.
Archduke Franz Ferdinand of the Austro-Hungarian Empire visited Welbeck Abbey just months before his assassination. He had been out shooting game with his host, the Duke of Portland. The Archduke and his wife Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg, had spent the week with King George V and Queen Mary at Windsor. Accepting an invitation from the Duke of Portland to stay at the palatial Welbeck Abbey, the couple arrived by train at Worksop, Nottinghamshire, on 22 November 1913. They were met that evening by limousines to take them to Welbeck Abbey. Waiting for them was an illustrious guest list; the Austro-Hungarian ambassador, the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire, Lord Curzon, the Marquis of Titchfield, Lord and Lady Salisbury and ex-Prime Minister Arthur Balfour. During his stay the Archduke had a brush with death which could have turned these later events on their head. As recalled in his memoirs Men, Women and Things, the Duke of Portland was out shooting pheasants with Franz Ferdinand when:
"One of the loaders fell down. This caused both barrels of the gun he was carrying to be discharged, the shot passing within a few feet of the archduke and myself. I have often wondered whether the Great War might not have been averted, or at least postponed, had the archduke met his death then and not at Sarajevo the following year."
Despite the narrow escape, the couple stayed for a week before continuing their travels.
