Innholdsfortegnelse for 14-Oct-2020 i Country Life

1960 unpublished Waiting for inspiration? Residents of the Lincolnshire town of Grantham pass the time of day by the plinth of a statue of the county's most famous son, Sir Isaac Newton. The COUNTRY LIFE Picture Library contains 120 years' worth of photography and articles from the world's leading architectural and gardens experts. We are delighted to note that works are again available to license or purchase in print form, from £35 plus VAT. Please email enquiries to clpicturelibrary @futurenet.com…

PEOPLE who buy country estates in Norfolk tend to take a long-term view and most of the county’s great landed estates have been owned by the same families for generations. Although it’s not uncommon to see large country houses being offered for sale in the county with a small acreage of amenity land or parkland, only rarely does a substantial farming estate with an historic, Grade II*-listed manor house come to the open market in this part of the world. Today sees the launch in COUNTRY LIFE of the 600-acre Wood Hall estate near the village of Hilgay, five miles south-west of Downham Market, 31 miles from Cambridge and 45 miles from Norwich. Owned by the same family since 1878, Wood Hall has been home since 1974 to the…

DO you think Roald Dahl was the only person in the land to pronounce the flower’s name correctly? Dahlias were not named after him, but after Anders Dahl, one of Linnaeus’s Swedish pupils in the late 18th century. Not a bad accolade, I reckon. Young Dahl must have been pretty hot stuff to deserve such an honour. At this time of year, dahlias are every bit as spectacular as the BFG or James’s Giant Peach and it is hard to believe that, in the latter part of the 20th century, they were regarded as infra dig; far too common to be planted in gardens regarded as tasteful. Dahlias belonged on allotments and in kitchen gardens with chrysanthemums—something to be grown for exhibiting in flower shows. It was COUNTRY LIFE’s…

I wonder whether David Roberts (1796–1864) and John Frederick Lewis (1804–76) got thoroughly fed up with one another. Like Mary and her lamb, everywhere that Roberts went, Lewis was sure to go. Roberts was Edinburgh born and trained and his early subjects were Scottish. The Londoner Lewis then discovered the Highlands in 1830. Their paths diverged a little when Roberts toured Normandy and Lewis Italy, but both also worked on the Rhine. On David Wilkie's advice, Roberts went to Spain in 1832, as did Lewis, then to Egypt and Palestine in 1838, followed by Lewis in 1842. Luckily, there was a difference in their approach to similar subject matter. Lewis came from a family of printers and lithographs were made from his Spanish and Constantinople sketches, but Roberts, despite a…

OH what a wonderful thing to be, a nice obedient busy, busy bee,’ goes Arthur Askey’s famous music-hall song. The trouble is that bees turn out not to be very obedient. Indeed, it seems there are two sorts of honey bees, each of which works entirely differently. Of course, they all have the same job of collecting food for the hive, but they don’t respond to orders, they go their own way. One lot are creatures of habit. Once they have found a good source of nectar and pollen, they return to it again and again and eschew any attempt at finding fresh opportunities. The other lot are identical, except for their taste for adventure. These are the discovery bees, which may go occasionally to the recognised source of food,…

NORTHERN IRELAND still enjoys a largely undeveloped coastline, and the combined counties of Antrim and Derry include no fewer than three almost contiguous coastal AONBs. The most celebrated, perhaps, is that associated with the Giant’s Causeway, but there is also the spectacular cliff-lined headland of Binevenagh and, the largest of the three, Antrim Coast and Glens, between Larne and Ballycastle. The varied geology of this area was shaped by a lava flow some 55–60 million years ago. It created a plateau that rises to three peaks, Knocklayd (1,686ft), Trostan (1,804ft) and Slemish (1,434ft). The plateau is an exposed landscape with large areas of blanket bog, the habitat of red grouse and hen harriers, as well as insect-eating butterwort and common blue and large heath butterflies. Cut through the plateau during…

ON February 13, 1689, in the culminating episode of the Glorious Revolution, William of Orange and his consort, Mary, formally accepted the offer of the English crown in the Banqueting House at Whitehall Palace in London. Among the conditions attached to this offer was the demand that they should rule jointly, although it was understood that William would enjoy complete executive authority. The arrangement bestowed some hereditary legitimacy on the succession, because Mary was the daughter of the deposed James II. In addition, William agreed that his sister-in-law, Anne, and her descendants would inherit the throne. According to the Bishop Burnet, reminiscing in 1705, the new King was in poor health, having spent the preceding few weeks in St James’s Palace without exercising. Despite his triumph, he increasingly withdrew to…

COMFORT has always been one of the most cherished attributes of furniture made from rattan: ‘It has been thought inadvisable to have one of the famous Dryad chairs in the editorial offices of The Aeroplane, lest visitors might be tempted to stay too long to the detriment of the daily routine,’ wrote the editor of The Aeroplane magazine in 1916. The slender-stemmed vinous palm native to South-East Asia has proved its versatility for centuries, a quality it demonstrated via its contribution to the war effort. Dryad, the leading British rattan workshop of the day, shifted production from rattan chairs, tables and loungers to items required for the First World War, including baskets for observation balloons, stretchers for wounded soldiers and shell and ammunition casings. I am not sure exactly when…

FEW readers of COUNTRY LIFE will need any reminding what, in Plato’s view, was the mother of invention. Nor, for that matter, how many of necessity’s progeny have been spawned over the past few months as we’ve scrabbled around trying to keep the show on the road. Some, it has to be said, seemed more like a positive step than a compromise, such as ordering table service in pubs via an app (although perhaps not quite so positive if you are the poor, footsore bar staff). Then there are the advantages of working from home, albeit a pleasure tinged with a nagging sense of guilt. In many industries, the need to socially distance has seen the rise of the webinar, which, for the uninitiated, is effectively a Zoom call…

NOT even these unprecedented times can dent British appetite for a property abroad. Whether it’s because growing numbers of people think that, if they have to work from home, they may as well do so in the sunshine or because the pandemic gave many of us a new urgency to carry out stalled plans, agents are noticing a strong interest for many international destinations. As an example, Jelena Cvjetkovic of Savills reports a 55% increase in enquiries over the past year, with peaks of 61% in the Alps and record months for the company’s South-West France and Algarve associates. Among the most popular locations are traditional favourites, such as Italy (especially Tuscany), Portugal (the Algarve), France and Barbados (the latter helped matters along by introducing a new visa that makes…

FOR Rachel Pedder-Smith, a fascination with tiny, deceased objects began at a young age. By the time she was nine, she had accumulated several collections of dried insects, scouring the fields close to her home in rural Suffolk for dead bodies, which she took home and pinned to polystyrene in neat, annotated rows. She collected butterflies and hornets, but bees were by far her favourite. ‘I was transfixed by bees, by their being so colourful and both furry and shiny, which to a child was fascinating,’ she remembers. I was transfixed by bees, by their being so colourful and both furry and shiny That early childhood passion, combined with an artistic talent, led to a career that has seen Miss Pedder-Smith’s work exhibited at Tate Britain and sought after for…

Kit Kemp is an interior designer and author. A trustee of Fine Cell Work, she is also the founder and creative director of Firmdale Hotels ‘I love the romance and working simplicity of this painting: the calmness of the riders and the raw power and energy of the horses –you can almost hear them snorting and blowing and the thudding sound of their hooves kicking up the dusty straw; the impulsion and exuberance of the mounts as they leap and bound with mere slips of girls riding in headscarves with their sleeves rolled up. Lucy Kemp-Welch is best known for painting work horses, whereas Munnings was more of a society painter at that time and probably better known’ John McEwen comments on The Straw Ride IN the First World…

SLOWING down in traffic on the A34 near Oxford, an apple core thrown from the car ahead describes a perfect arc before landing on the verge. In a few years’ time, the resulting seedlings will join the growing numbers of ‘wildings’ thriving on the country’s roadsides. A recent study conducted in Scotland and the North of England has shown that these domestic trees from forgotten lunches are in danger of destroying Britain’s last wild apple. Malus sylvestris, literally ‘forest apple’, is the ancestor of all cultivated apples from which some 6,000 named varieties have been bred, but it is now reduced to a scarce species of old hedgerows and ancient woodland. Unlike the roadside wildings, the true wild crab apple prefers its own company and a wood will often contain…

AS more people choose to holiday at home and discover the beauty of Nature and culture on their doorstep, the search for alternative, mindful and immersive experiences is on the rise. Coastal retreats and Cotswolds hangouts are perhaps the obvious options and the idea of exploring Wales’s myriad spiritual spaces might not be on your radar, but it should be. Stepping into an ancient church, often the oldest building in a village, it can feel as if time has stood still. ‘These are “thin places”, where the gap between this world and another seems to narrow’ There’s something about the atmosphere of these places that you can’t quite put your finger on. Perhaps it’s the shadows, the patina, the musty smell, the cold stone or the mysterious carvings and stained…

HERMÈS and Gucci both started out focusing on equine accoutrements and retained their equestrian heritage when they moved into the fashion industry, although Hermès still sells fine gear for horse and rider. Hunting, horse-racing, dressage and polo were historically prestigious sports for the elite and the horse is seen as a symbol of luxury, money and power. You only need look at the car industry, with Ferrari, Mustang and Porsche using the horse as iconic logos.…

ANYONE who inherits a substantial house or garden needs to work out how to manage it, not only from day to day, but also in the longer term. This was the challenge that faced Victoria Nye and her husband, Martin, in 2000, when she inherited Cadenham Manor in Wiltshire from her grandmother. The garden at Cadenham is unique—an extensive masterpiece laid out in the 1950s in the French style and planted with the roses and herbaceous plants popularised by Graham Stuart Thomas. Almost no one in England was making big gardens in those difficult post-Second World War years when groundcover was all the rage—and certainly none designed in emulation of the gardens of the châteaux of the Loire. Mrs Nye has known Cadenham all her life. She understood from the…

IT was an even greater pleasure than I had expected to visit the Petworth Park antiques fair in mid September. There was doubt about its opening almost to the moment that it did, but circumstances—and the weather—were kind. Business was done across the board, including a rare Regency four-fold screen (Fig 1) from William Cook, and it was moving to feel the real joy of exhibitors and visitors once again doing something that they loved, in the traditional way. For many of us, it may be some time before we experience that again. When, eventually, our current stop-start way of living gives way to a more predictable existence, we are unlikely to go back fully to our old ways of doing things, when online was only one method among…

FOR centuries, the shad was one of Britain’s favourite fish, a staple food of medieval and Tudor royal households. Resembling a large herring and commonplace until 200 years ago, it was known by many nicknames, including the May fish, king of the herring and the bony horseman—the latter soubriquet referring to its mass of needle-like bones. Once, the fish spawned in its millions in the Severn and other rivers, but numbers plummeted dramatically in the Victorian era. Today, the few anglers who accidentally land a shad are compelled to return it at once: the twaite shad and the allis shad were listed as two of England’s seven rarest fish by the Environment Agency in 2015 and both are now protected species. The twaite shad (Alosa fallax) and the allis shad…