The couple chose to live separately although they had four daughters and a son together: Harpur Crewe served as a deputy lieutenant for Staffordshire in 1871 and was a High Sheriff of Derbyshire in 1900[1] but he largely stayed away from the public eye and spent time on amassing his natural history collections.

He was seen as something of an altruistic monocrat, mixing great thoughtfulness and generosity towards his tenants and employees at his two seats – Calke Abbey in Derbyshire and Warslow-Longnor in Staffordshire – with aloofness and arbitrary behaviour towards his own family.

Although some of this was subsequently sold to meet heavy death duties, much remained at Calke, only coming to light sixty years later.

He considered Calke Abbey as a bird sanctuary and did not allow the entry of motor cars into the estate and electricity was not installed even in his daughters' lifetime, and only after his death was the ancient plumbing system replaced.

A possible explanation for this intense dislike of the modern world is that Sir Vauncey had been privately educated at Calke in his youth, and did not attend any public school or university.

There were no further surviving heirs of the 1st baronet in the male line and, on the death of Sir Vauncey Harpur Crewe in 1924, the baronetcy became extinct.