Innholdsfortegnelse for 22-Feb-2023 i Country Life

Published 1922 June 3 A guard stands watch over the entrance to Dover Castle, Kent, framed in the 1220s passage of Constable’s Gate, the largest gatehouse in Britain. This scene clearly delighted both photographer and editor because three versions of it were printed on a single double-page spread. The guard obligingly moved into a new position for each. 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…

Transported to Highgrove Highgrove in Gloucestershire has inspired two ideas from British companies —perfumers Penhaligon’s and Halcyon Days, known for its enamelled chinaware. Penhaligon’s Highgrove Bouquet, £155 (www.penhaligons.com), is inspired by glorious summers in the garden, evoking Highgrove’s Tilia ‘Petiolaris’ (or weeping silver lime tree). ‘The fragrance conveys the magic of Nature and has an element of feel good and comfort, as it captures the fleeting and elusive scent of blooming, sun-warmed silver-leaved lime,’ explains Julie Pluchet, who crafted the fragrance. Halcyon Days’s Highgrove Wildflower Meadow collection comprises English fine bone china, silk accessories and an enamel box with a pretty design inspired by Highgrove’s ever-changing meadow (above), originally hand sown with Miriam Rothschild’s Gloucestershire Farmers’ Nightmare Mix in 1982. Left untamed, it has since become a haven for…

BARBARA VAN TEEFFELEN and her partner, Giles Godfrey, bought Keythorpe Hall in Leicestershire just over 10 years ago. Having renovated it, they now run the house as a fully catered let for up to 20 guests, with an on-site team that cooks with locally sourced produce, much of which is grown in the nearly two-acre walled garden. The adjoining bedroom had been altered in the 1920s and, during work to restore the room to its original shape, the couple removed a boxed-in chimney to reveal hand-painted wallpaper featuring leaves, flowers and butterflies. ‘We knew we wanted to replicate its look, then we found this design by Watts of Westminster, which is very similar,’ explains Miss Van Teeffelen (020–7376 4486; www.watts1874.co.uk). The next find was the freestanding shower in antiqued brass…

Suffolk, £2.75 million A classic Edwardian mansion, Cransford Hall sits in some 15 acres of gardens and parkland in the Alde Valley, near Saxmundham. Originally built as a private residence in 1910, the property has also seen use as a care home and boarding house, but has since been remodelled for family use. Excitingly, Cransford Hall and its 15,800sq ft of accommodation are unlisted, meaning that prospective owners can remodel and refurbish with relative ease, making this an attractive purchase for those looking to create their own home without having to actually build it. Inside, the property boasts 12 principal bedrooms across its four floors (all serviced via a lift, if necessary), as well as four impressive reception rooms. Outside, the gardens and grounds are a mixture of formal…

Hot Caesar salad with lemon-marinated chicken Method Place the chicken breasts on a chopping board. Cover with a piece of clingfilm or greaseproof paper and hammer with a rolling pin to tenderise until the breasts are between a quarter and half an inch thick. Put them in a freezer bag with the lemon juice, herbs, olive oil and some seasoning. Close the bag and then massage it to mix around the flavours. Refrigerate until ready to cook—for at least an hour and up to 24 hours. Make the dressing by processing all the ingredients in a blender until smooth. Refrigerate until ready to serve. Heat a griddle pan brushed with olive oil to a high heat, then reduce the temperature to medium before adding the chicken breasts and romaine…

Tudor Children Nicholas Orme (Yale, £20) IN May 1520, the civic authorities in York were obliged to put a stop to children going about the city with rattles on the days before Easter. The church bells were silent on Maundy Thursday and Good Friday, so children had traditionally been engaged to use rattles, or ‘clappers’, to summon people to worship. Just like today, however, it seems that some of these children, or youths, were taking things too far, evidently making a nuisance of themselves. Childhood was certainly recognised in Tudor England. Children occupied their own space in the world This small, but delightful, insight into the relations between adults and children in the 16th century is somehow typical of the material drawn together in Nicholas Orme’s new volume.…

For all the latest news, visit countrylife.co.uk Churches join race to net-zero CHESTER CATHEDRAL has installed 206 roof-mounted solar panels, the most ever fitted to a British cathedral, it was announced earlier this month. The panels, which are positioned on the south roof slope of the nave and quire and east slopes of the south transept, are already producing electricity and were paid for via a successful fundraising campaign. Chester Cathedral is Grade I listed and the plans received the blessing of the Cathedrals Fabric Commission, which considers applications for works to cathedrals in England. The introduction of the panels to the church roof was ‘not without its challenges’. Architects and historic-building consultants Donald Insall Associates were retained to carry out the work, which involved protecting the fabric of…

FROGS elicit strong emotions. The abhorrence some people feel is so intense that it bears not one, but two medical names—ranidaphobia and batrachophobia (which encompasses all amphibians). Psychologists blame childhood experiences, but what did the harmless frog ever do to deserve rejection? For most children, at least in rural areas, the extraordinary process from spawn to tadpoles and frogs has always been among the most accessible of Nature’s annual miracles. It’s a wonder that has often captivated the Arts. From Aristophanes’s play The Frogs (where they provided a chorus as the Greek god Dionysus journeyed to the underworld) via Mark Twain’s first published success—the 1865 short story The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County—to Beatrix Potter’s 1906 Jeremy Fisher and Paul McCartney’s 1984 We All Stand Together, the amphibian has…

WHAT is the role of an interior designer? And what is the secret to doing it so well that you build a global reputation? Where does one find inspiration? How does one take a brief from clients and manage their expectations? How do you build a team and develop its skills? At this year’s London Design Week 2023, COUNTRY LIFE’s Giles Kime will explore these questions with Philippa Thorp, Henriette von Stockhausen and Brandon Schubert, who have all come to interior design through a variety of different routes and whose wide range of projects include the refurbishment of London apartments, country houses and coastal homes, as well as the design of an aeroplane, a gym and an entire house in the Bahamas. Where does one find inspiration? How do you…

Georgie’s Garden Flowers, Culmington, Shropshire The idea of setting up a flower-growing business from home struck Georgie Fordham when she was sitting on a beach in Cornwall in the summer of 2020. It occurred to her how hard it was to buy nice flowers locally, as opposed to imported gerberas and scentless roses. ‘I loved the idea of British-grown, seasonally available flowers, so, when I got back home, then Wappenham in Northamptonshire, I put in an order for loads of tulip and narcissus bulbs and planted them in the garden, to supplement the herbaceous perennials in the borders. That winter, she took a two-week intensive floristry course with Judith Blacklock in Knightsbridge, followed by a six-week online course with the inspirational American florist-grower Erin Benzakein, at Florets Farm in Washington,…

JOHN EGERTON CHRISTMAS PIPER was one of the 20th century’s great polymaths. A watercolourist in the romantic tradition of Turner, Girtin and Cotman, he was also a pioneer of abstract art in Britain, designer of stained glass, textiles, tapestries, ceramics, stage sets and costumes; a printmaker, muralist, writer, photographer and ‘firework master’, as a current exhibition at the Portland Gallery, London SW1, highlights. He was also a medievalist, who, in an article for Architectural Review (October 1936) declared that the ‘purely non-figurative artists of some of the early Northumbrian and Cornish crosses were the forebears of the pure abstractionists of today’. If there is one pre-eminent strand that runs consistently through Piper’s work, it is his enduring love of Northern European sculpture, from the Dark Ages through to the 15th…

LIFE as head of a boarding school doesn’t allow for much spare time. Many live on site and their weekends and evenings merge into the working week. The job is all-encompassing. However, despite these restraints, most recognise the importance of carving out time for themselves. ‘When I became deputy head, I bought a set of golf clubs,’ volunteers Mark Lauder, headmaster of Strathallan School in Perthshire, ‘but when I became head, I bought a cement mixer.’ Mr Lauder grew up in a family that built things, so when he bought a 17th-century parsonage in Cumbria, he decided to set about the renovations himself, including laying paths and repairing drystone walls. ‘Working on your own house is both an investment and therapeutic,’ he explains. ‘It’s totally different to being a headmaster.…

Nicholas Lyons is the Lord Mayor of London. On March 30, he will host the annual Lord Mayor’s Big Curry Lunch, which raises funds to support Armed Forces veterans finding employment. Tickets are on sale now Men of Destiny was painted in 1946, after the upheaval of a civil war and two World Wars. It is a brilliant example of the expressive, figurative style that epitomised the second, distinctive, phase of Jack’s creative life. The thickly applied paint in vibrant colours is mesmerising. The painting speaks of the nobility of the simple fishermen at Rosses Point, the glowering sky giving way to a sunlit horizon suggesting a more optimistic future. It is particularly poignant to me as my father was writing the biography of Jack’s brother, William, when he died,…

IN architectural terms, Winchester College is perhaps chiefly celebrated for its outstanding core of late-14th-century buildings created by founder William of Wykeham, Bishop of Winchester. These are all buildings of rare significance—as discussed last week—and remarkable for remaining in continuous use for education for more than six centuries. Their powerful presence, with courts and gates of stone and flint, have remained the core and anchor of the college as it has evolved. The story of the college’s later development, however, is no less fascinating or remarkable. This article looks at the buildings spread across its wider campus, which extends from the shadow of the Cathedral Close to the north, towards water meadows to the south and into the town to the west. Sometimes, the new architecture creates bold contrasts with…

NINE o’clock sharp on a cold morning and I am absorbed in geometry. Angles and planes, perpendiculars and horizontals, sines and cosines. A year ago my horse, in his keenness to sample cultivated Rosa ‘Constance Spry’, pushed over a section of the dry-stone wall that separates the paddock from the garden. My farmer’s fix to fill the resultant gap—two posts wham-banged in, a section of stock fence and a strand of barbed wire—has successfully prevented ingress into the herbaceous border by the equids and livestock that pass through the paddock. And, small bow of professionalism, it’s one up on the sheep-farming neighbour who tied his collie in front of a ‘glat’ as he warmed himself at The Crown. But the stock fence-filler is an eyesore. Less Gertrude Jekyll, more something…

From left: Tassel collection Akoya pearl and white-diamond necklace set in 18-carat white gold, price on application, David Morris (020–7499 2200; www.davidmorris.com); Haute Joaillerie earrings with pear-shaped cabochon emeralds and diamonds set in 18-carat white gold, price on application, Chopard (020–7046 7808; www.chopard.com); Tassel collection necklace with Akoya pearl, freshwater pearl and diamond in white gold, £16,000, Yoko London (020–7025 0777; www.yokolondon.com); Tassel collection earrings with freshwater pearl and diamond in white gold, £7,000, Yoko London (as before); Imperial Impératrice white gold and emerald tassel earrings, £20,160, Fabergé (07780 112319; www.faberge.com); fabric courtesy of Gainsborough (01787 372081; www.gainsborough.co.uk)…

Find the best properties at countrylife.co.uk BETWEEN the Fens, the vast Thetford Forest to the west and the Broads to the north, you will find south Norfolk’s Breckland district, the name of which means ‘abandoned field’. It is a sandy wilderness of heath and dry grassland set amid the rich farmlands of East Anglia, where, for centuries, the land was ploughed by itinerant farmers who moved on when its fertility dwindled. Now a precious habitat for some of Britain’s rarest flora and fauna, it was to this isolated area that the Modernist writer Virginia Stephen, later Virginia Woolf, came to find solitude and inspiration following a bout of the recurring mental illness that would plague her for the rest of her life. In the summer of 1906, Virginia and…

VISITING a friend in hospital recently, I came across what passed for a garden. It was a sad affair, with more concrete than plants and, squeezed between the hospital wings, it had little light and no view. For a patient, it would not give peace or comfort, rather, the opposite—it was likely to lower their spirits. Quite different from Horatio’s Garden, next to the spinal-injuries unit at Salisbury District Hospital in Wiltshire, which was opened in 2012. From what had been the hospital car park, patients can now look across a swathe of perennial grasses and sanguisorba lined with an apple walk, to a view of distant chalk downland. As one patient said: ‘It’s such an inspirational place, it gives you hope and takes away the darkness of being…

THE Auction Room markets itself as Twickenham’s first 21st-century boutique auction business, offering the lowest commission rates in London. It was launched in 2021, perhaps not the most auspicious time, and was an offshoot of The Swan auctions and antiques centre at Tetsworth, close to the M40 in Oxfordshire. Its first sale of the year was on January 31 and it produced by far and away the highest price of the firm’s short career. This was £227,864 for a console table (Fig 5), which had carried an upper estimate of £2,000. It had come from a house in nearby Sheen and had been owned by the portrait painter Norman Hepple (1908–94). At some point, the vigorously carved marble-topped table had been well, but a little unsympathetically, gilded and painted.…

STANDARDS of singing across the nation’s cathedral and collegiate choirs are generally as high as they’ve ever been, with girl choristers now offering a welcome dimension. Yet these establishments no longer take for granted that queues of prospective choristers will snake back from their doors. In terms of raw numbers, the presence of girls has boosted total chorister numbers to perhaps record levels, but this hides a concerning trend in recruitment. The word from one cathedral is that recently only two boys applied to be auditioned for six places on offer and a mere eight girls for five places. ‘It’s a real issue generally,’ says Clive Marriott, chairman of the Choir Schools Association (CSA) and headmaster of Salisbury Cathedral School. ‘Choir schools are having to be more agile. The CSA…