According to the Daily Mail, (here), management of the Queen's Scottish retreat Balmoral Estate are considering hosting live music concerts to help pay the bills.
The 50,000-acre estate in Royal Deeside, Aberdeenshire, costs around £3million a year to run and attracts more than 70,000 visitors when it opens as a tourist attraction between April and the end of July. However, the income they bring only meets around half the estate’s costs.
Last month it was revealed in a report by the Public Accounts Committee that the Queen’s finances were shrinking while the royal palaces were in urgent need of repair. In 2001 the Queen’s “reserve fund” was confirmed at £35million but has shrunk to just over £1million, and this year the monarch's advisers have been reviewing ways to strengthen her financial affairs, and MPs said the Queen should rent out her palaces and homes to help pay for repairs.
According to the newspaper the estate – privately owned by the Queen and paid for by her – is looking into outdoor concerts in the spring and early summer before the Royal Family arrive for their annual stay.
Balmoral hosted it's only open-air concert in 2006 to mark the Queen’s 80th birthday whicuh was headlined by the Welsh mezzo-soprano Katherine Jenkins and attracted a crowd of more than 4,000.
Balmoral's own website says the picturesque grounds around the castle are available for hire, pitching, "Balmoral provides the perfect setting for your event, with wonderful scenery and the castle providing a magnificent backdrop. Whether you are planning a charity event, gala dinner, training course, team-building exercise, car rally, conference or even a concert, we can assist. Our events field is the ideal location for an outdoor function with full marquee facilities and parking nearby."
Many stately homes like Scotland's Kelburn Castle, Hampton Court Palace, Knebworth House, Bowood House, Harewood House, Blenheim Palace, and Kedleston Hall, have hosted outdoor summer events, as a way of helping to cover the bills.
In recent years royal residences have also hosts live events including Clarence House, Windsor Castle, the Tower Of London, and last year Buckingham Palace hosted the Coronation Festival.
In the article Gary Marsden, visitor enterprise manager at Balmoral, tells the newspaper, "We are open to any suggestions suitable for the location. We are not planning to stage concerts ourselves – it would be up to others."
Whether promoters like Scotland's own Geoff Ellis would be interested in the offer of the venue to host a music event, we will have to wait and see.