Innholdsfortegnelse for 24-May-2023 i Country Life

1907Unpublished The farmyard at Brympton d’Evercy, Somerset, with a granary elevated on staddle stones to deter rats. The buildings look derelict rather than picturesque, which is probably why the photograph was not used. Nevertheless, the surface of the courtyard has been sufficiently well worn to be clear of weeds and require repair with rubble infill. 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…

EVERY day, across all corners of the countryside, alarms ring out at ungodly hours as a vast army rises to donate that most precious of commodities—their time—to one of Britain’s 170-plus heritage railways. Whether to serve refreshments, pull ancient points levers, tend floral displays, blow whistles or sandblast ancient, rusting components back to life, they do it free of charge and for the love of trains. All of the ‘lost lines’—which were mainly, although not all, victims of the cuts by one Dr Beeching, a short-term chairman of British Railways (BR)—have been reclaimed by enthusiasts steadfastly keeping them open in the face of redevelopment and a frail economy. There may be comical comparisons with The Titfield Thunderbolt, a 1953 film in which villagers fought against a BR closure, but their…

WE can recognise and give credit where credit is due, to the debt of taste we owe Europe, but we have taste, too,’ said Billy Baldwin, the most inventive and distinctively American of American decorators, who pioneered a style that married comfort and simplicity like no one else. It was a skill that served him well; he ‘did’ for the Kennedys, Paul Mellon and, famously, for Cole Porter at his Waldorf Towers apartment. Forty years after his death, Europe owes a debt to Baldwin. Although the slipper chair originated in bedrooms of the 18th-century haut monde as a place to perch when putting on shoes, he reinvented it for American beau monde 200 years later (Greta Garbo and Barbara Hutton were also clients). The masterstroke was making it big…

UNLESS fluent in the native tongue, organising builders in Portugal, making an emergency call to a plumber in Greece or navigating the French legal system can be exasperating, especially if the project management is being executed from a British base. Alternative ownership opportunities offer turn-key solutions to the hassle of property maintenance and are ideal for those without unlimited holiday time. Co-ownership (also referred to as fractional ownership) feels more like a personal investment in a home than a timeshare and can allow access to multiple international locations, perfect for those who can’t commit to a specific country. For individuals who value a sense of community, safety, and a wealth of services in beautiful settings, resort ownership is an appealing alternative. Abruzzo, Italy, from €95,500 (about £84,500) Situated in the…

Olive oil and carrot Swiss roll with cream-cheese filling Method ➤ Preheat your oven to 160˚C fan/180˚C/350˚F/gas mark 4 and line a Swiss-roll tin—about 23cm (9in) by 33cm (13in)—with baking parchment. ➤ Whisk together in a large bowl the flour, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, salt and sugar. In a small bowl, whisk together the eggs, vanilla and olive oil, then stir them through the dry ingredients. Add the grated carrots and gently fold them in. Pour into the prepared tin and bake for 15–20 minutes or until cooked through. ➤ Dust a clean tea towel with icing sugar. When the cake is cooked, invert it onto the sugared tea towel. When the cake is still warm, very gently use the tea towel to roll it up from the long side.…

Farming to the fore A LANDMARK food summit intended to tackle issues such as food-price inflation, supply-chain issues, domestic investment and self-sufficiency in food production has received mixed reviews (Agromenes, page 75). The summit, titled Farm to Fork and hosted by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak at No 10, Downing Street, arose from a commitment made by Mr Sunak to the NFU last year and was designed to ‘convene the whole supply chain together’ to discuss the measures needed to ‘build resilience and transparency’ in the sector. Defra Secretary Thérèse Coffey was also in attendance, as were farmers, lobbyists, trade bodies and supermarket representatives. After the meeting, the NFU was cautiously optimistic, with president Minette Batters noting ‘the number of cabinet ministers present shows the ambition for cross-departmental coordination to…

Christopher Jackson is a poet, artist and member of the Finito Education management team. His latest book of poetry, An Equal Light, is out now Poor Chatterton. This is not only a wonderful picture, but a lesson to artists. Try not to die in a garret. In the wake of lockdown, the image of isolation seems pertinent. Outside of poetry and painting, my work now is helping young people with their careers. I never pass this painting without thinking on the virtues of compromise in life. It’s a macabre picture, with marvellous details: the expensive-looking trousers, especially. It has a tranquil sympathy that tells us that other options were available. The hero of the picture isn’t Chatterton; it’s the pot of flowers on the windowsill Charlotte Mullins comments on…

THE construction of Castle Drogo was a task of daunting complexity. As we heard last week, Lutyens conceived a gargantuan modern castle for his client, Julius Drewe, on a remote and exposed site (Fig 1). The original plans were considerably reduced in ambition, but the project still required scores of masons, carpenters and labourers for 20 years. Considering that four of those coincided with the First World War, the miracle is that it was ever finished. In this, the hero of the piece is John Walker, Drewe’s agent on site, without whom Drogo would not have been built. A Yorkshireman, Walker had previously been Clerk of Works at various country houses, including Welbeck Abbey in Nottinghamshire, which, from 1905, was being rebuilt after a fire. He appears at Drogo in…

Find the best properties at countrylife.co.uk DESCRIBED by its previous long-time owner Sir Christopher Ondaatje as ‘the most beautiful spot on earth’, magical, Grade II-listed Glenthorne House at Countisbury, near Lynton, Devon, occupies a spectacular coastal location where Exmoor meets the sea on the north Devon/west Somerset border, with panoramic views over the Bristol Channel towards Lynmouth, Porlock Bay and Wales. For sale through the Exeter office of Savills (01392 455743) at a guide price of £7 million, the imposing stone house—an intriguing mix of Georgian and Victorian Gothic with a dash of Tudor—stands in 77 acres of deep combes and ancient woodland that run down to the shore, in sharp contrast to the heather moors of Exmoor at the top of the cliffs and the rocky beaches at…

DORSET is a county where you can still discover large tracts of unspoilt rural landscape. As residents love to say, it is ‘on the way to nowhere’ and it is unusually free from intrusion by major infrastructure: no cities, only a handful of medium-sized country towns; no proximity to airports; almost no large-scale industry; no motorways and the two major through-roads run along the north side and the south coast. The surroundings of Little Benville House, set on a rural lane between the village of Evershot and the small town of Beaminster, are quintessential Dorset. They were also a decisive factor in Gavin and Jo Bacon’s decision in 1994 to purchase the property. For many years, as they pursued busy careers, the potential they had discovered lay dormant. But, in…

FROG, bird’s-nest, bee, fly, monkey, late spider, lizard—if you think these are ingredients for a potent Hallowe’en brew, think again: welcome to Britain’s fascinating array of wild orchids. Orchids are the most diverse, most highly evolved flowering plants on the planet. With more than 30,000 species (compared with 6,399 mammalian ones), the vast majority are native to tropical zones. It was these that wealthy Victorians feverishly imported at great cost from the jungles of Asia and the Americas. Ever since, tropical orchids have overshadowed Britain’s native flowers, to the extent that many people today simply do not realise that we play host to more than 50 species. The first of Britain’s native-orchid flowers appear in early spring. On a few cliff tops along England’s south coast, stumpy plants with small…

THE Exmoor National Park’s sturdy native sheep is surely a breed for 21st-century farming. Developed from the local horned sheep that had been around on the moor for centuries, the Exmoor Horn combines the hardiness to withstand bleak, wet weather and sparse grazing on exposed hillsides with the ability to produce high quality meat and wool, thus having both conservation and commercial value. It has a gentle, bear-like face—aficionados describe it as a sheep that ‘looks you in the eye’—and is one of the least flighty hill breeds to deal with; when a ewe is crossed with a Bluefaced Leicester ram (Native breed, April 12), it creates one of the best mule types—a prolific breeder with little foot or teeth trouble that produces fast-finishing lambs and wool of a good…

Cornwall, £3.5 million When it comes to Waterhouse, we may as well start with the awards. Winner of the Best New Build in Cornwall in 2020? Yes. Winner of the Green Apple Award for Building and Construction 2020? Sure is. Winner of the Cornish Buildings Group Award in 2020? Absolutely. With panoramic views of the Camel Estuary, this passive house is set in the heart of the action just east of Rock and is a standard-setter for design and sustainability (EPC rating of B). With four bedrooms and four bathrooms, Waterhouse is more than merely a holiday home and offers some 4,600sq ft of living space, mostly to an open-plan layout, all finished to a high standard and with the latest tech. I could go on about the recycled-paper…

THE best gardening days start with many possibilities, but no fixed plan. These are the days when I can wander out, stopping perhaps to pull a few weeds from the gravel in the yard (never all of them at once—that would be too oppressive a task) and make for the bank, where there are always things to be done. And they will be done, but the point is that they don’t necessarily have to be done today. Gardening gives us an opportunity to escape the clock. When we garden, we can for a while leave behind an agenda constructed of appointments, timetables and telephone calls and allow ourselves to be taken over by a completely different calendar, a huge and pre-ordained one, circumscribed by the weather and, in particular, the…

Henry lll: Reform, Rebellion, Civil War, Settlement (1258–1272) David Carpenter (Yale, £30) HENRY III died in his palace at Westminster on November 16, 1272. Four days later, he was buried in the next-door Benedictine abbey, gloriously rebuilt under his patronage and consecrated as recently as 1269. Henry’s body, dressed in coronation robes, was initially laid to rest in the ancient tomb of St Edward the Confessor, situated before the high altar and the sanctuary’s magnificent Cosmati pavement, where Charles III was crowned on May 6 this year. This volume completes a truly magisterial account of the longest reign of the Middle Ages As David Carpenter tells us, Henry had doubtless instructed that he was to be buried in the robes, as he had never forgotten the significance of…