Innholdsfortegnelse for 14-Jul-2021 i Country Life

The Spanish ship curse THE dangerous waters around the Channel Islands have caused countless shipwrecks over the centuries, but legend tells of a pack of no-gooders from Jersey who used lights to lure Spanish ships not to safety, but to a stretch of dangerous rocks. Their plan was to wreck the ships and loot their treasure. An old man aboard one of the Spanish ships realised their ruse and pleaded with the ‘salvagers’ to save his daughter, also on board. When they refused, he cursed them to drown within a year. The group laughed the threat off, but when they gathered on the anniversary of their misdeed, thinking they had escaped the curse, a freak storm dragged them out to sea, where they all died. The tale is illustrated in…

I AM standing at the foot of a towering eucalyptus tree, watching light dart and flutter as the breeze moves through the leaves. The scent that wafts on the wind reminds me of massage rooms in luxury resorts, but I am more relaxed than I have ever been on a massage table and I am doing nothing more than paying close attention to the trees and flowers, birds and insects of the wood I find myself in. I am ‘forest bathing’. The concept was first developed in Japan as an attempt to revive burnt-out townies. People were brought to the forest to recuperate and studies were made to assess the impact on heart rate, cortisol levels and mental health. The positive results saw the trend taking off in neighbouring Korea,…

St Martin £2.9 million Minutes from the pristine Fliquet Bay in St Martin, La Heche is a pretty 19th-century property with five handsome bedrooms and three excellent reception rooms, a sun room and an eat-in kitchen; further accommodation is available in the two-bedroom apartment next door. Outside, a smart heated pool leads onto an acre of mature gardens and grounds. Knight Frank (01534 877977; www.knight frank.com) and Fine & Country (01534 840022; www.fineandcountry.com) St Aubin £12 million Not only is Grey Gables considered one of Jersey's finest properties, but it's also home to one of the island's best private gardens. Located within easy reach of the airport and close to the beach at La Haule, this handsome Arts-and-Crafts house has been refurbished to exacting standards and provides spacious…

A‘BENEVOLENT’ buyer is sought to save Kinloch Castle on the Isle of Rum—which Betjeman called ‘an undisturbed example of pre-1914 opulence’—put on the market by NatureScot (formerly Scottish National Heritage (SNH)). Lancastrian multimillionaire Sir George Bullough built the turreted, red-sandstone house in 1897–1900 on the Inner Hebridean island to host stalking, fishing, shooting and high-society decadence and the rooms are still as they were in its heyday, with a Steinway grand complete with scratches from dancing ladies’ heels, four-posters, a sprung-floor ballroom with gold-damask walls and even a vintage dental surgery. The world’s last functioning orchestrion remains in situ, a complicated instrument that belonged to Queen Victoria and emulates a 40-piece orchestra, which alone requires a £50,000 restoration. Intestine-like pipes of sophisticated Edwardian plumbing can be seen, together with decaying…

Quiz of the week 1) In which country was England cricketer Ben Stokes born? 2) To the nearest 100, for how many days did Edward VIII reign as monarch? 3) Who sang the theme song for the ‘James Bond' film GoldenEye? 4) Often referred to as ‘Big Ben', what is the proper name of Westminster's iconic clock tower? 5) Which blue-flowered herb is traditionally served in Pimm's? Word of the week Sardoodledom (noun) A contrived, stereotypical or objectionable theatrical work 1) New Zealand 2) 300 (326) 3) Tina Turner 4) Elizabeth Tower 5) Borage (‘Borago officinalis’) Riddle me this: Stop imagining the room/ imagine a door or window Time to buy The Freddie Cheese & Beer Box, from £45, The Cheese Geek (www.thecheesegeek.com) Annie children’s dress in Tansy Floral, £40,…

• Use a sheet of shortcrust pastry to line a 10in tart tin. Prick the base, then blind bake in a moderately hot oven for 20 minutes. • Remove the base from the oven and pour in a whisked mixture of 300ml of double cream, 100g of ground almonds, two eggs, 1tspn of vanilla-bean paste and 4tbspn of honey. • Halve fresh figs and arrange, cut-side up, in a circle on top of the tart. Bake for 35 minutes. • Drizzle honey over the top and serve warm with ice cream and a few fresh figs. An easy pudding to make at the last minute, this also works well with raspberries, apricots or rhubarb, depending on the season.…

Name of the game THE watercolour that is reproduced here was painted by Charles Earle in 1873, the foundation year of Yarlet, the Staffordshire preparatory school. Nearly 150 years later, the nature of the apparently sporting activity in the foreground remains an unsolved mystery—any reader ideas are most welcome. Nick Tarling, London The woman who saved the birds I READ with great interest your feature on little egrets (‘Pale into significance’, June 23), but was disappointed that there was no mention of my ancestor, Etta Lemon (right). Etta was a true heroine, who campaigned for 50 years against the huge slaughter of wild birds to provide feathers for ladies’ hats. Her battle triumphed with the passage of the Plumage Act of 1921, which saved the birds from endless destruction. Her…

Method Take a deep, cold bowl half full of double cream (an old punch bowl is perfect for this purpose). Whip the cream slightly, but do not make it too stiff. Then, drop into it as many strawberries as it will hold, the smaller ones being put in whole, the larger cut up. Stir as you go, mashing slightly, and when the cream really won’t cover another strawberry, leave it to stand for an hour. It will then be a cold level pale-pink cream. Crust it over with dredged white sugar and serve forth in June [or July], on a green lawn, under shady trees by the river. Ingredients StrawberriesDouble creamCaster sugar…

WRITING in Country Life (April 3/10, 1997), the magazine’s former Architectural Editor the late Giles Worsley referred to stately Grade I-listed Trafalgar Park, near Salisbury, Wiltshire, as ‘the Flying Dutchman of the property world, endlessly seeking an owner and being sold on while the fabric slowly decayed’. The fine country house built by John James of Greenwich in 1733 for City grandee Sir Peter Vandeput was nevertheless described as ‘an estate agent’s dream, a house that always seemed to come back on the market’. Sir Peter died in 1748 and, four years later, Standlynch Park and its surrounding estate were bought by William Young, later Governor of Dominica, and sold by him to Henry Dawkins MP, who added the north and south wings designed by John Wood the Younger of…

MY father was very fond of fuchsias. He said the beautiful black fruits were delicious and that he’d like to pick enough to make some fuchsia jam. I don’t know whether he succeeded in jamming them, but I do remember that he ate them like strawberries, with sugar and whipped cream. If you are a greedy or curious foodie, you, too, will have looked at the fruits and berries of plants in your garden and wondered if they were edible—could you make something of them with an interesting and original taste? Often, the answer is yes. But you have to know what is poisonous, plus what is edible, but not worth the effort. Take medlars, for example. They’re one of those old-fashioned trees that aspirational gardeners like to grow, but…

IT has taken a long time for John Nash to emerge fully from his brother’s shadow. The younger sibling of Paul has for years suffered from younger-brother syndrome, as did his contemporary Gilbert Spencer, Stanley’s brother. Comparisons are inevitable and, in the Arts particularly, make it hard to follow in the wake of an older, better-known sibling. The differences between the Nashes were far greater than any similarities. Paul was an ambitious international Modernist and John, despite being born in London’s Earl’s Court, was a low-key English countryman whose interests were music, gardening, fishing and painting—roughly in that order. The ever percipient Walter Sickert put his finger unerringly on the characteristics that differentiated them, describing Paul as having his poet’s ‘head in the clouds’ and John ‘like the child a…

ALMOST a year ago (August 12, 2020), I wrote of my admiration for Charles Napier Hemy (1841–1917) as a painter of water. His grandfather was a German military bandsman called Hemming who had come to Britain in 1797 to join volunteer and militia units commanded by the Duke of Buccleuch. He married a Miss Napier and settled in Newcastle, where their son, Henri Friedrich, became a music teacher, bandleader, organist and composer of hymns and dances—the tune Jingle Bells has been attributed to him. Two of Henri’s 10 children were musicians and three marine painters. In 1852, the family emigrated to Australia aboard SS Madawaska, giving unusual middle names to Thomas, a painting son born at sea, but the living was not good for musicians in Melbourne and they returned…

THE National Trust has turned to a 19th-century watercolour of the Killerton estate in Devon to develop a landscape vision for the next 50 years. Thought to have been painted by Sir Thomas Dyke Acland, whose descendants gifted Killerton to the Trust in 1944, the work, rediscovered during lockdown, shows thriving grounds thick with mature trees and hedgerows, broken up by scrubland nurturing Highland cattle. The charity now intends to re-create an environment that, albeit rather different, is as wildlife-rich as when Sir Thomas put brush to paper in 1860–80. ‘The estate as it is now may look green and beautiful, but the reality is that so much of the wildlife that was [there] when the picture was painted has been lost,’ says project manager Paul Hawkins. In a bid…

R OH UNLOCKED, the Royal Opera House (ROH) and Covent Garden’s month-long festival of free pop-up performances, live music and workshops, began on Saturday. Highlights include immersive folklore theatre from Little Bulb, a history trail of the area via window installations, including one at the ROH Arcade with pointe shoes reimagined by Roksanda, Erdem, Simone Rocha, Rejina Pyo, Halpern and Liberty. The Royal Opera Chorus, ZooNation Youth Company and soprano Anush Hovhannisyan will perform, with dance workshops based on the Royal Ballet’s Romeo and Juliet and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Meanwhile, the ROH is running curriculum-linked schools programmes and a series of performances to thank the NHS, including La bohème and The Nutcracker, to which workers and their families will be invited. ‘As the ROH resumes performances, we are delighted…

I LATELY heard a shrill scream which I imagined must be from a rabbit in distress, but found it came from a large frog, bearing on its shoulders a young one. I should have thought it a female carrying its young had I not remembered hearing a theory that young frogs kill the adults by strangling them. I detached the young one with considerable difficulty, so tenacious was its hold on the other’s throat. Only a few days ago I found a toad with a young one in the same position and equally difficult to remove. I have no doubt now that frogs can scream. What I should be interested to know is if the young do habitually kill adults of the species by jumping on their backs and choking…

Is the mandarin duck an exotic immigrant or a long-lost native? This is the conundrum raised by Pleistocene fossil remains in beds on the north Norfolk coast; among bones of numerous aquatic bird species, there ‘appears to be a mandarin'. If so, the ducks flourished in the prehistoric oak forests and wetlands, but disappeared in a period of glaciation, never to return of their own accord. The mandarins at large today are descended from Chinese imports and are thrilling to see. Shallow lakes with nearby woods suit them, as they perch in trees and nest in the cavities, the ducklings being urged by their mother to take a perilous leap soon after hatching. The male mandarin is as exotic as a Rio Carnival performer, feathered in ginger, purple, shimmering blue,…

I WRITE to congratulate Annie Tempest on capturing one of the many joys of growing old (Tottering by Gently, June 30). In those halcyon days before lockdown, a group of villagers from our parish were discussing the delights of getting dressed—in particular, the inability to get both legs into underpants without hopping or needing support. Thus were born the Pant Olympics. First held in 2018, each participant has to enter a hoop on the ground and get into a pair of outsized pants (over shorts, of course). This was against the clock, with points deducted for a leg refusal, foot faults, stumbles or falls. The result was a sore head, several sprains, a bad back and the knowledge that the ability to dress oneself exactly correlates to your age. Perhaps…

1898 Published, December 17 A gentleman leans on his cane to survey a floral sundial beside the moat at Broughton Castle, Oxfordshire. The gnomon is of yew and the numerals and letters perhaps picked out in neatly trimmed box plants. The inscription reads: ‘One light to them that lye in darkness and guide our feet into the way of peace.' Every week for the past 125 years, COUNTRY LIFE has documented and photographed many walks of life in Britain. More than 80,000 of the images are available for syndication or purchase in digital format. To view the archives, visit www.countrylifeimages.co.uk and email enquiries to licensing@futurenet.com…

‘No surface was spared decoration, from tables, chairs and beds to doors and fireplaces’ THE seeker of Bloomsbury Group connections along the South Downs, from the River Ouse at Lewes to the Cuckmere valley at Alfriston, doesn’t have to search far. There are the enchanting murals of Vanessa Bell and her son Quentin, and of Duncan Grant, in the flinty East Sussex downland church at Berwick, the ancient tithe barn at Alciston, which features in Virginia Woolf’s posthumously published novel Between the Acts, and Monk House, Rodmell, where she lived with Leonard Woolf from 1919 until her suicide in the waters of the Ouse in 1941. Posterity, however, has decreed that the most significant contribution the Bloomsberries made to the local heritage is the interior of Charleston Farmhouse, which sits…

TAITLANDS in the Yorkshire Dales was a youth hostel during the second half of the 20th century and had fallen into disrepair by the time it was acquired by Emma Sharp in 2008. Subsequently, she and her husband, Martin, restored and revived it as a country house. In early 2021, they sold the renovated Taitlands to a private owner, ensuring the future of a fine early-19th-century Greek Revival house designed by the Websters of Kendal. Its repair has been a notable conservation success. In the 20th century, many country houses were acquired by institutions. They were seen as inexpensive accommodation for a range of corporate, educational, charitable and religious uses; numerous fine buildings became schools, convents, nursing homes, offices and similar. This utilitarian takeover provided a lifeline at a time…

THIS project began as a blank canvas. ‘Structurally, the house was in perfect condition, but in terms of coming up with a scheme, we were starting from scratch with four white walls,’ explains Susan Deliss, who is known for her skill at bringing rooms to life with striking combinations of colour and pattern. The brief for this project was to create a room that was fresh and smart without being too formal. The starting point was choosing a limited colour palette of blue and green, with accents of pink to inject some warmth. The sofa and armchairs were designed by Mrs Deliss. ‘I like to have a mix of furniture with legs and a sofa with a skirt. Too much fabric can end up feeling claustrophobic, but, equally, too much…

London TW10, excess £15 million On the gentle slope of Richmond Hill, Grade I-listed The Wick is a secret Georgian paradise that feels like a country house, albeit hopping distance from the heart of the capital, enjoying as it does the only view protected by an Act of Parliament. Lush terraced gardens meander down to an idyllic swimming pool and pool house, with the Thames elegantly curving in the distance. There are five bedrooms, two en suite and with dressing rooms, in this 8,500sq ft property over four floors that, as well as an entrance hall and reception and dining rooms, has a vinery, conservatory, dumb waiter, former billiard room (now a studio or office), dog room, breakfast room, vaulted kitchen and storage vaults. Unsurprisingly, the view from the…

IT takes a certain confidence to move a mini digger into an established walled garden. There are the existing plants to consider, not to mention the sense that what is there already forms part of its history. But Victoria Wormsley is a designer with an eye for what works and she could not live with the tall shrubs that blocked the view of the walled garden from the house. The Old Rectory in East Woodhay lies on the upper slopes of a hill with a lovely open view over a small valley, with copses and meadows to the north-west. It was built on the site of an earlier and rather handsome gabled parsonage that, in 1828, was deemed beyond repair and swiftly pulled down to make way for a smart…

The home in the Marne in which the most recent French Old Master discovery was made must be sizeable, as the rooms are tall enough for pictures to have been ‘skied'. In any event, the dingy 18in by 22½in oval painting was hanging high up and unregarded when Antoine Petit of the local auctioneers in Épernay arrived to carry out a probate valuation. He could see quality through the dust and discoloured varnish and a yellowish palette that suggested a name to him-which was confirmed when the painting was brought down and ‘Fragonard' discovered written on the back of the frame. That frame proved to be the original made by Jacques-Charles-Denis Chartier, a Parisian mâitre-menuisier, or master carpenter and frame-maker, who died before 1782. M. Petit took the painting to…

BY the time you’re reading this, the England men’s football team might be European champions for the very first time. Or they may have lost to Italy. Either way, for the past month, Gareth Southgate and his band of merry men have inspired a nation that has been turned upside down for 18 months. ‘It’s coming home’, the song says, but what is ‘it’? Football? Certainly, but also perhaps ‘it’ is that long-awaited normality, the feeling that perhaps this pandemic is receding and that we can jump into strangers’ arms when Sterling scores again. ‘It’ is the sound of 60 million people singing a carefree Sweet Caroline. ‘It’ is real life, although England making a major final hardly feels real. Tennis came home, too, as Wimbledon opened its doors for…

Dated doodles Sketches in the margins of a 1,000-year-old book of Old English poems and riddles made by Anglo-Saxons have been discovered by researchers from Exeter Cathedral and Exeter University The art of the love letter Passionate missives written from Sylvia Plath to husband Ted Hughes in the 1950s have come to auction at Sotheby's; bidding is open until July 21 Crustacean compassion New laws could bring about a ban on crabs and lobsters being boiled alive, with the Lords proposing amendments to the Animal Welfare (Sentience) Bill last week Green shoots Spent cartridge cases can be collected and recycled in bags to fit 21,000 as part of a new scheme from British Game Alliance and Agri.Cycle, to be launched at The Game Fair Counting wings Butterfly Conservation's Big Butterfly…

TWICE-ROUND-THE-WORLD solo pilot Polly Vacher, writer Carolle Doyle and a poodle called Nelson are currently bouncing about in a trap driven by donkeys Wizard and Muffin to raise money for research into multiple sclerosis. Donkathon, their month-long journey, began in Oxfordshire and, after 200 miles, will end on July 25 at the pilgrimage Church of St Melangell in North Wales. Readers can follow their journey via a daily blog, which tells tales of well wishers rushing out of their houses to offer donations and stroke ‘the boys’, plus the Dutch barns and stables they’ve stayed in, including at Ragley Hall, Warwickshire. ‘We’re travelling between eight and 10 miles a day and Wizard and Muffin are doing so well, having been through rigorous training,’ explains Mrs Doyle. ‘We focused on hills,…

‘Husbandry has made the land we love–even in some of the wildest of places’ THREE cheers for the South Downs National Park. It has realised that being fashionable isn’t synonymous with being right. It has taken a stand against rewilding and announced that it intends to be informed by ‘reNaturing’ instead. Neither word is attractive, but the difference matters. The fashion for rewilding implies that somehow the world would be a better place if only we’d leave it all to run wild. ReNaturing recognises that humans are part of Nature and that the world is at its best when we play that part properly. However, we shouldn’t forget that rewilding has been a valuable corrective, nor that rewilders often get to the same place out of necessity when they realise…

Although other hands contributed, the prime creative spirits behind Charleston were Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant (right, with Vanessa cutting Lytton Strachey's hair as Grant, Roger Fry and Clive Bell watch), who lived and worked together at the property until Bell's death. Bell was a central figure in the early gatherings of what would become known as the Bloomsbury Group. Her sister, Virginia Woolf, described her work, much influenced by post-Impressionist painters, as ‘firm as marble, ravishing as a rainbow, and like sunlight crystalised'. With Fry and Grant, Vanessa was a co-director of the Omega Workshops, set up in 1913 in London's Bloomsbury as a design enterprise selling artist-designed furniture, fabrics and household accessories. It aimed to incorporate ideas about modern art, including bright colours and more simplified forms, into…

‘This hardy little dog has a nose for adventure and the courage to follow it’ IN the summer of 2019, Lorraine Kelly invited 100 guests and their dogs to join her at London’s ITV studios in a bold attempt to break the Guinness World Record for the most dogs sitting down simultaneously for 30 seconds. The presenter’s Border terrier, Angus, was naturally a principal focus for the cameras. ‘Of course, all the dogs did it beautifully and sat down together,’ Miss Kelly recalls. ‘That is, except for Angus, who stubbornly refused to sit until the time was up. That was when he plonked himself down on his bottom with a cheeky grin.’ This brazen mischievousness is a charming quality of the Border terrier, one of many that has won the…

IRISES, bluebells and forget-me-nots have long demonstrated that blue and green look beautiful together,’ points out Nina Campbell, who has recently launched Parvani, a fabric and wallpaper design featuring peacocks, flowers and paisley shapes in a blue and green colour-way (020–7225 1011; www.shop.ninacampbell.com). ‘I was taught that they shouldn’t be seen together, except on a faerie queen,’ she says, ‘but you only have to look at the Black Watch tartan to see that it’s perfectly fine to mix them. It’s the tonality that is most important,’ says Mrs Campbell. She particularly likes the addition of an acidic green into the mix, which adds a sharpness to a scheme. ‘What’s much more challenging is pairing red and green. It’s difficult to avoid that sort of scheme looking too Christmassy.’ ‘I’d go…

THANKS to a new generation of floral designers, dried-flower arrangements have come a long way since baskets of statice and helichrysum gathered dust in church halls. These days, brides often ask for aisles to be decorated with sprays of dried grasses and seedheads and their use in bouquets and buttonholes, as well as on wedding tables, is increasing. At home, statement vases of soft feathered grasses make dramatic decorations for a hall or dining room all year round, filling the gaps in the seasons when fresh flowers are hardest to find. Most surprising is the number of things that can be used when dried. Catkins (picked before they shed their pollen) and grasses of all kinds, but also Virginia creeper, old man’s beard and mimosa, the little button-blooms of which…

SUNSHINE is essential, in moderation, of course. Henrietta Norton from Wild Nutrition advocates 30 minutes of sunshine on the skin each day, between 11am and 3pm for the ideal dose of benefits. Her Natural Glow supplements harness the power of the sun and boost melanin production, which contributes to an even skin tone and better levels of protection (always wear SPF). Her secret ingredient is melaline, extracted from sheep’s wool, which is rich in keratin and melanin—the closest match to humans’ own. The benefits of sunshine last twice as long as a synthetic form (Wild Nutrition is all natural, so the body will absorb its products easily), producing the mood lifter serotonin and supporting sleep and bone density. £90 for 30 days (www.wildnutrition.com).…