Innholdsfortegnelse for 1-Mar-2023 i Country Life

1920s Unpublished This photograph is labelled Port Eliot, which must be a mistake. If it is in the UK, it may perhaps be taken at Slough, where Citroën—advertised on several of the hoardings—set up an assembly plant. The photograph is presumably intended to illustrate industrial sprawl. Eddie’s Snack Bar with ‘teas day & night’ still doesn’t appeal much. 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…

CHISWICK HOUSE holds a significant place in British architectural history as the former home of Richard Boyle, the 3rd Earl of Burlington, 18th-century Palladianism’s chief advocate. The building, completed in 1729 in the style of a country villa on the Italian Veneto, influenced the style of architecture in this country for decades. The gardens, laid out at about the same time by Burlington, with the aid of Charles Bridgeman and William Kent, are similarly central to the development of English landscape gardening. Usually occupying a less elevated position in the story of the west London property is a later owner, William Cavendish, the 6th Duke of Devonshire, the creator of the Italian gardens and instigator of its now internationally recognised collection of early-spring-flowering camellias. The 6th Duke was a garden…

BRITAIN’S farmers are facing a watershed. As the Basic Payment Scheme (BPS), which has provided a financial cushion and prevented many from going bust, plummets on a sliding scale to zero in 2028, food producers and guardians of this green and pleasant land are being encouraged (or cajoled) to put environmental improvements firmly on their agendas (many already do). Farmers who have never previously let hedgerows run riot to provide habitat for nesting birds, beetles, butterflies and dormice will be keeping their hedge cutters parked up; instead of planting crops to within inches of those hedges, they may now decide to make them butt up to several yards of wild field margin, perhaps composed of uncut tussocky grass that offers a home to bank voles, shrews and field mice. If…

WHEN Susie Atkinson and her husband, Justin, bought a home in Hampshire in the late 1990s, they added an extension to the main building to create a new family-sized kitchen and living room. Originally, these two rooms were separate spaces, but, ‘as time went on, I realised that a lot of light came from the sitting room, so we decided to knock through to allow more to come into the kitchen—after all, it was where everyone gathered,’ explains Mrs Atkinson. At the same time, she decided to add tongue-and-groove panelling to the walls and beading on the ceiling. ‘It seems like a strange thing to do as the ceiling heights aren’t high in this room, but it worked, because the detailing added some interest and stopped the ceiling from feeling…

London SE26, £3 million If you go down to the woods in Sydenham today, you will find the magnificent Pavilion, a ‘one-of-a-kind’ four-bedroom family home set in the leafy grounds of Beltwood House. As well as offering 2,500sq ft of living space over its three floors, the property boasts a cinema/multimedia room, huge open-plan living areas and its very own contemplation pool. Potential purchasers also have access to the gym and spa at Beltwood House itself. As desirable as the property is its location in the wooded suburbs of south-east London, surrounded by good schools and pubs, as well as being within walking distance of Dulwich & Sydenham Hill Golf Club. Hamptons (020–3369 4375) Suffolk, £1.85 million Situated in an acre of gardens surrounded by woodland, Oak View Place…

Coming full circle RICHARD GROSVENOR, 2nd Marquess of Westminster, has been vindicated: this year sees the grand revival of a groundbreaking innovation he introduced to London more than 150 years ago. As the second half of the 19th century dawned, the peer commissioned architect Thomas Cundy III to build Belgrave Mansions (above), a palatial building overlooking what is now Grosvenor Gardens, SW1, with a view to turning it into the capital’s first serviced mansion block, inspired by Europe’s hôtel meublés. Cundy, too, drew from Continental tradition, shaping the architecture in French Renaissance style (Edward Walford, in his 1878 Old and New London calls the then newly built mansions ‘lofty and handsomely constructed houses’). The Marquess’ idea proved a sensation. In 1868, the British Almanac and Companion noted the ‘peculiarities’ of…

DOWN at East Street Market, a lady on crutches stands by the fish stall in the Saturday-morning sun. ‘Harrington’s, that’s my local,’ she says to the trader in the white coat. ‘No,’ the lady standing next to her replies, ‘the pies there don’t taste as nice.’ ‘Anyway, how you been, girl?’ the trader asks, as he hands over a pint of whelks. ‘Well it was my brother’s inquest last week,’ the lady on crutches replies, ‘they said he didn’t do it on purpose, so that’s something.’ By the time I get to the front of the queue, the shrimps are gone, so I ask for half a pint of prawns and, as Brian fills the pewter tankard—his name is printed on the street vendor’s licence, pinned above the weighing scales—I…

For all the latest news, visit countrylife.co.uk THERE was an inevitability to the recent announcement that Glyndebourne would not undertake its usual tour this autumn. The East Sussex-based opera company, which has expanded its work in recent decades to include community projects and annual visits to locations such as Liverpool and Cambridge, was among the list of performing-arts organisations that have fallen victim to unexpected funding cuts. The changes are part of the biggest shake-up of Arts Council England (ACE) support since austerity measures were introduced after the 2008 financial crash, affecting a range of disciplines —particularly opera. ‘The maths was, sadly, quite simple,’ says Stephen Langridge, artistic director of Glyndebourne. ‘Our funding has been halved [from £1.6 million to £800,000] and we can no longer afford to go out…

Debbie Wiseman is a composer and conductor, who has been commissioned to create two new pieces for The King’s coronation on May 6. Her compositions for Viking Cruises are available to view online, on Viking TV Picasso’s Cubist style is so clear in this painting. Although I love the bright colours and abstract shapes, you can also clearly see the clarinettist on the left, the guitarist in the middle and the singer on the right holding the manuscript paper. The shapes overlap and it speaks to me as a musician–the way one idea often overlaps another in a composition and you form musical shapes that naturally flow from one instrument to another. It’s so lively and inspiring and I find something new in the painting every time I see it…

THE important debate about new housing—how much is needed, where to build it and how to design it—continues to rage. Discussion of the issue, however, commonly generates more heat than light, with politicians, developers and local communities often making irreconcilable demands of each other. It doesn’t help, either, that coverage is usually framed in national terms, so the points of note in specific projects easily lose focus. More helpful, therefore, is to try and look at the experience of a single county, Dorset. It’s the more interesting because it is here that one of the most debated of all recent developments that tried to break the mould—Poundbury, begun in 1993—is now nearing completion. The earliest phase of Poundbury (Fig 1), on the undistinguished western edge of Dorchester, is generally low…

IS that it? After seven years’ anticipation or, perhaps, dread, the post-Brexit settlement looks remarkably like the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP): the same triumph of process over outcomes, the same over-engineered hoops for farmers to jump through and, apparently, the same legion of civil servants to administer ‘public money for public goods’ (and for public servants’ salaries). Critically, most farmers are scratching their heads and wondering how they will balance the books when the impact of free trade hits. History is repeating itself: the effects of the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846 were not felt until 1870, as the Crimean War, then the American Civil War, kept commodity prices high in the way that covid followed by Putin’s war are doing following Brexit. When more normal terms…

AS so often happens, the building of a new extension was the catalyst to take a fresh look at an existing garden. To this end, Liz Houghton, who has lived at Grey Gables, a 1904 Arts-and-Crafts house in Buckinghamshire, since 1998, contacted the plantsman designer Sean Walter. ‘My brief to Sean was to create a modern relaxed garden, that connected effortlessly with the house and new contemporary extension,’ says Mrs Houghton, the founder in 2009 of the fashion label Mint Velvet. ‘I loved the trend of indoor-outdoor living and wanted different spaces for different occasions at different times of the day as the sun moves around the house.’ This was essential, as Grey Gables sits on the top of a slope with the garden wrapping around the front and sides.…

ALPHONSE, a tiny atoll in the Indian Ocean, has a mystical place in the pantheon of fly-fishing. It is our Xanadu. It is on one of the remotest inhabited islands in the Seychelles: you typically have to fly into Mahé, the largest island, and spend a night there (I stayed at the Eden Bleu), before continuing on your journey the next day. Alphonse is surrounded by the most astonishing flats that brim with fish. It is like walking through an aquarium. It is also one of the most glorious islands to visit, even if you have not the slightest intention of ever casting a line across the sparkling azure waters. I know because I was accompanied by my wife, Rachel. This, perhaps, hadn’t always been the case. As the fishermen…

THE career of René Lalique (1860–1945) could almost have been crafted for collectors. He first made his reputation as a jeweller, supplying, among others, Siegfried Bing, whose shop, La Maison de l’Art Nouveau, gave the style its name, and his designs owed much to his apprenticeship with Louis Aucoc, who was already working in that manner. Glass always played a part and one wonders whether Lalique’s fascination with the material may not have owed something to his surroundings during two years of training at the Crystal Palace School of Art. Together with the work of the Belgian Philippe Wolfers, Lalique’s brooches, hair combs, pendants and necklaces, which are often unique pieces, are the most striking in the style. As Art Nouveau waned following its short dominance of European fashion, Lalique…

DIGNIFIED, almost stately, the Battersea Power Station holds court on the south bank of the River Thames, the stocky panels of the nearby buildings deferring like a respectful retinue to the fluted chimneys that soar like columns of a long-lost Greek temple above the ziggurat of the Boiler House. The plump pig that flew against the station’s black smoke on the cover of the Pink Floyd’s 1977 album Animals may have given way to a crown of steel and glass, but the Grade II*-listed power station remains a much-loved symbol of London. Quite a feat for a place that had originally sparked protests for fear it would be an eyesore. The man behind this remarkable shift in perception was Sir Giles Gilbert Scott, who turned the building’s lumbering bulk into…

What part of London is home to you? I live in Camberwell in south-east London. It’s the capital at its best: wonderful Georgian homes mixed into a maelstrom of modern life and the sights and sounds of a younger, more diverse London. I love that the shops are always open, that I know my neighbours and that King’s College Hospital (Denmark Hill, SE5) is close by if anything serious goes wrong! You’ve seen more of London in the early morning than most people as a longstanding presenter of Today. What do you love about dawn London? What on earth are people doing at that time? I mean, I have an excuse; often, everyone else seems not to have seen it or to have forgotten it. The most poignant sight is…

THE mighty Clydesdale, with its profusion of silky feathering and striking white markings, hails from Lanarkshire and has one of the oldest equine breed societies, formed in 1877. The story begins, however, in the mid 18th century, when the 6th Duke of Hamilton and John Paterson of Lochlyloch pioneered efforts to improve local draught horses by importing Flemish stallions; a mare from the Lochlyloch bloodlines, dam of the stallion Glancer—or Thompson’s Black Horse—is thought to be the foundation to which all today’s Clydesdales can be traced. The breed was at its zenith at the turn of the 20th century, when most of Scotland’s 140,000 farm horses had Clydesdale blood and more than 20,000 were exported all over the world between 1884 and 1945. In 1911 alone, 1,617 stallions were exported…

YOU can do just about anything with a Jack Russell,’ declares Greg Mousley, of Meynell Sundance Jack Russell Terriers, a renowned breeder of 50 years. ‘They are the most intelligent canine ever.’ To prove his point, Mr Mousley’s best trick, when working as a professional mounted terrierman for the Meynell and South Staffordshire foxhounds for 35 years, was to carry a Jack Russell—Digger or Axeman—in a specially made bag when out hunting. ‘The dog sat in front of me with the bag resting on the pommel of the saddle,’ he explains. ‘I used to jump, too, no problem; we’d jump a gate, anything. They loved it.’ Those familiar with the breed may not be surprised by their resilience, tenacity and working instinct. Jack Russells are tough, rambunctious and highly intelligent…

PERHAPS best known to COUNTRY LIFE readers as the setting for the early collaborations between the architect Edwin Lutyens and the plantswoman and garden designer Gertrude Jekyll, the ancient town of Godalming, six miles south of Guildford in south-west Surrey, lies in a great valley of green meadows, with the River Wey meandering through and wooded hills rising all around, on the spurs of which the outlying parts of the town are scattered. At some point in the 11th century, the manor of Godalming was divided into two. The principal part was the King’s Manor, which was held by the Bishops of Salisbury from 1221 until the Dissolution and sold by Elizabeth I in the early 1500s to George More of Loseley Park, whose direct descendants still own the…

HAVING grown fewer potatoes each year for a while now, I’m feeling a renewed enthusiasm this year. In this time of high prices, it feels good to be growing more of one of the kitchen essentials again, but I’m not willing to compromise on flavour or a sense of fun, nor do I want to repeat any past mistakes. The first year I grew potatoes, I planted too many of too few varieties: a skipful of potatoes ready within a few weeks of each other is as good a recipe for domestic disharmony as I know. This year, I’m looking for a long steady season, eating appealing varieties that I’ve largely not grown before. Potatoes divide into three main camps: First Earlies, Second Earlies and Main-Crop varieties, maturing in turn.…

WHETHER we’re talking endless oceans, choppy channels or narrow canals, a holiday on the water is pure escapism. But once you’ve polished off a paperback and felt the benefit of fresh air, it can sometimes get a bit samey. The solution? To charter a private vessel with friends and/or family somewhere a bit unusual or with a bunch of engrossing sights and activities. Experiential travel is all the rage, especially when it’s you—and not the captain—calling the shots. Sasha King, founder of High Point Yachting, says it’s all the more fulfilling when charter companies work with the client to create bespoke itineraries. ‘Experiential trends are about getting to the heart of things and places that make us feel good and expand our interests. We recently booked a client on a…

SOMETIMES I claim to be a wild swimmer, throwing caution and everything else to the wind and the weather, and striding into lakes, rivers and the sea whatever the time of year. Sometimes, however, as right now, I’d rather be tucked up by a log fire thinking about wild swimming, but happily not doing it. What does the ‘wild’ in wild swimming actually mean? Does it have to involve cold water? I think not. Does a plunge count or should the activity involve several strokes and a few minutes of immersion? I think it should. And how wild does wild have to be? Are we simply talking about swimming in the great outdoors in fresh or salty water or should there be a frisson of risk or danger to…

The Earth Transformed: An Untold History Peter Frankopan (Bloomsbury, £30) HISTORY books are getting bigger—not only in size (although this book does run to almost 700 pages), but in ambition and scope. As are Yuval Noah Harari’s Sapiens and Peter Frankopan’s own 2015 blockbuster, The Silk Roads, this is a broad-brush, global history; it’s packed with relevant facts and detail, but also enables the reader to understand the bigger picture. The subtitle—An Untold History —suggests a totally new approach, although many of the specific examples included in the book, such as the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age, have previously been covered by historians. However, this is certainly the first time they have been brought together into a single narrative, each example set in its wider…