Innholdsfortegnelse for 14-Jun-2023 i Country Life

MADRESFIELD COURT must be one of the most mysterious of all the houses in England. Tucked away in a quiet corner, between the Malvern Hills and the meandering River Severn, it has lived, largely quietly, for nearly 1,000 years, occupied by the same family—the Lygons—for 29 generations, only emerging occasionally to play a role on the national stage. Walking in a large circle around the house, as I am doing today, reveals little. Its Elizabethan façade is protected by dense planting, including many spectacular pines. Each entrance is marked by a neat, half-timbered lodge and long views are obscured by the gentle contours of the landscape. It has lived for nearly 1,000 years, only emerging occasionally on the national stage Yet I find the place irresistible. The Worcestershire countryside…

THE English goat is surely one of the prettiest of all breeds, with its delicate white facial and lower-leg markings and black eel stripe, which probably trace back to the Bezoar goats of the Caucasus, from which they are thought to be descended. Yet it has become the rarest British goat breed, plummeting in numbers during the 1930s when the breed association was disbanded (it was later re-formed, in 1978). This was largely due to the fact that cross-breeding with Swiss goats to increase milk production, which started in the late 19th century, became so successful that the original was in danger of dying out. In 2004, a group of breeders set up a society to preserve the Old English goat (a smaller, hairier, less commercial version of the English…

YOU never forget your first sip. Of raw milk that is, fresh from the cow, simply filtered, cooled and bottled. No pasteurisation, homogenisation or standardisation. Meaning it still contains the full complement of vitamins, minerals and natural digestive enzymes. As well as providing the most lusciously creamy mouthful of pure dairy delight; rich, sweet and voluptuously full bodied. If the average supermarket pint is Dorothy in Kansas, all drab monochrome, then raw milk is the moment she steps into Oz and the screen erupts into dazzling Technicolour. For someone who was ambivalent about milk, the raw stuff was a revelation. And that revelation came courtesy of Steven Hook, a fourth-generation Sussex dairy farmer, way back in 2011 at Selfridges, in London. A manager of its Food Hall had tried his…

WHAT brings inspiring interior design to life like nothing else? Well, actual interior design, of course, in all its three-dimensional, tactile, multicolour glory. The fact that opportunities for ordinary mortals to see the latter are rare was identified half a century ago with the launch of Kips Bay, the most successful and long-lived show-house in the US. Although there was an attempt to establish something similar in London, it never caught on, which makes last week’s unveiling of the second WOW!house equally as exciting as the first. With 18 rooms occupying more than 5,000sq ft, it’s a challenge to make generalisations about a project of such depth and breadth, from the panoramic vistas of the entrance foyer that was dreamt up by Mark D. Sikes (whose client list included the…

WHEN one thinks of the garden at Serge Hill, what comes to mind is a handsome, white-painted Regency villa, its generous windows and comfortable verandah looking down over rolling Hertfordshire parkland—these days, hazy with long grass. A trio of rocking chairs nestled under a spreading strawberry tree create a sense of comfort, everything is settled and calm. And then there is the Walled Garden at the side of the house. Nothing prepares the visitor for the scented, surging, fairy-tale profusion they have entered. Everyone gasps as they begin their journey along one of its staggeringly beautiful garden paths. You are in a shimmering painting of pale mauve, dark purple, electric green and stately, sky-rocketing whites and yellows. Who has seen mullein used in this way before: a heady upward-dashing cocktail…

PERHAPS the earliest ecological green shoot in the British art business emerged tentatively in 2002, when one of Sworders’ partners, the surveyor Robert Ward-Booth, persuaded his colleagues that, rather than seek another industrial site for expansion, the Stansted Mountfitchet auctioneer should create an unprecedented building of its own. Five years later, the business proudly opened its new complex, with what was then the largest straw-bale building in Europe, on a four-acre slope running down to the Cambridge Road, half a mile north of the Essex village. The outsides of the compressed bales were lime-rendered and the insides lime-plastered. Rainwater was directed from the cedar-shingle roof to flush lavatories and, together with a biofuel woodchip boiler and solar panels, provided much of the hot water and the heating for the…

For all the latest news, visit countrylife.co.uk Labour sets out stall for the countryside THE countryside ‘does not belong to the Conservatives,’ said Peter Mandelson, as he set out the stall for Labour’s ambitions for the next general election and beyond. At the Future Countryside conference at Hatfield House, Hertfordshire, last week, the Labour peer said rural votes were ‘up for grabs’ and emphasised not only his, but the party’s, links to rural England in a speech to several hundred conference delegates, which included farmers, campaigners, environmentalists, policymakers and business leaders. Lord Mandelson was keen to remind those present that, despite poor rural returns in recent years, the Labour party had taken a very pro-countryside approach in the past, especially after the Second World War, adding that the ‘countryside…

Letter of the week Green planning WHY is it that, in the current age, attaching the word ‘green’ to anything makes it right? Here in beautiful unspoilt mid Wales, a scheme involving the erection of dozens of 220m-tall (720ft) wind turbines and the associated 65km (40 miles) of 27m (88ft) pylons is considered to be fine, as the company proposing it has added ‘green’ to its name. Forget the designated areas of SSSI on the Radnor Forest that would be lost, forget the additional wind farms that will be built along the pylon route right down to South Wales. Don’t worry, it’s green! When the obvious answer is for the turbines to be offshore or for tidal-power schemes, no, let us ruin one of Britain’s remaining areas of…

1907 Published A woman on the threshold of Quenby Hall, Leicestershire. She seems to be holding the door rather than opening it. This photograph was taken by Charles Lathom for English Homes, a series of illustrated books published by COUNTRY LIFE. By the time Quenby was photographed for the magazine in 1911, the ivy had disappeared. 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…

WIND turbines have long been objects of controversy. The erection of large, prominent and moving manmade structures in the landscape has seemed shocking to some. To make matters worse, wind farms have necessarily been erected in remote areas loved for their wild beauty. Attitudes towards them, however, have undoubtedly softened in the past few years. A widespread acknowledgement of the reality of climate change and, more recently, the massive spike in energy prices caused by the war in Ukraine have done a great deal to shift attitudes. Certainly, if we are to enjoy affordable power and reduce our carbon emissions, wind is clearly a hugely important future source of clean energy. Whether we love or loathe them, therefore, they are a fixture for the foreseeable future. There is no better…

Prof Sir Dieter Helm FARMING has no option—it will have to be sustainable, otherwise it will not be sustained. Proportionately, it is the biggest carbon emitter and responsible for much of the pollution in rivers. Put simply, it has to produce food, achieve net zero and protect biodiversity and rivers. That does not mean a return to some arcadian past. Science is crucial in this transition. Agriculture is increasingly a digital enterprise, mapping crops, soils and baselines for natural capital. Big data, AI and robotics are taking over and, with them, new skill sets and new kinds of farmers. Genetics are replacing the traditional plant and animal breeding. Meanwhile, carbon credits, rewilding and anti-meat campaigns grab the headlines. The Wild West of carbon credits lacks serious system and land-use planning,…

WRITING in COUNTRY LIFE of The Manor House, Sandford Orcas, near Sherborne, Dorset (March 3 and 10, 1966), a house he describes as ‘one of the most charming manor houses in the West of England’, the magazine’s then Architectural Editor, Arthur Oswald, maintains that ‘often the most enchanting of Tudor houses prove to have been those that were deserted by their owners in the 18th century and turned into farmhouses’. He explains that ‘although farmers might not be the best of custodians, they were unlikely to make more than minor alterations themselves, and most landlords would have been content with the minimum of maintenance. So the house would remain unchanged’. The manor house “stands by the church, a friendly neighbour of the House of God” Thus it was that,…

THE usually mild-mannered 18th-century curate Gilbert White suggested that house crickets ‘may be blasted and destroyed by gunpowder discharged into their crevices and crannies’ when they became ‘noisome pests’ in houses. If that sounds drastic, the author of The Natural History of Selborne had other remedies. ‘Cats catch hearth-crickets, and playing with them as they do with mice, devour them,’ he wrote. He also recommended setting down phials half-filled with beer or other liquids in their haunts ‘for, being always eager to drink, they will crowd in till the bottles are full’. These days, however, the critters have a much more positive, albeit somewhat low, public profile. Although the Talking Cricket (renamed Jiminy in Walt Disney’s sanitised Hollywood cartoon) is killed by Pinocchio in Carlo Collodi’s original story of 1883,…

The Language of Trees Katie Holten (Elliott & Thompson, £16.99) IT would be surprising if trees, like other forms of life, did not possess some means of communication. We are perhaps at the very beginning of being able to understand it, although surely we will never be able to hold any kind of conversation. This book explores the idea of a relationship between trees and humans, alternating between celebrating the mystery of tree growth and lamenting the ignorance of human attitudes to trees and tree cover, with familiar disastrous consequences. Half the book is made up of illustrations, delicately printed in the romantically named Pantone 357 U, more familiar to my eye as the sort of Brunswick Green used for steam locomotives, Coalbrookdale garden benches and Amy Johnson’s…

AT a time when most people realise and concur that the Nature around us is disappearing at an alarming rate, it remains unfortunate that we cannot agree on how to put it right. It seems to me that the entire debate about who and how best to manage our land is more toxic than ever: whether it is about rewilding, intensive, regenerative, organic or hill farming, hunting, shooting or fishing, there is dissent even within each tribe. If we don’t start acting soon, the inertia will continue until we witness not only the decline, but the extinction, of many of the species that we say we care so much about. How do we move forward? The most sensible thing we could do is talk to—instead of throwing bricks at—each…

Peter Brathwaite is an opera singer, radio broadcaster and author. His book Rediscovering Black Portraiture is out now 'As a British Barbadian, I feel a deep connection to Bazille’s exploration of Afro-European identity. The model signals her Caribbean heritage with a madras head wrap, typically worn in Dominica, St Lucia and the French Caribbean. Rooted in laws that forced enslaved women to cover their hair, the madras head wrap was later reclaimed as a public declaration of black femininity. Here the combination of the head wrap and modern Parisian attire, suggests a blending of cultures with symbolic power. Bazille painted this work a little over 20 years after the French abolition of territorial slavery. To me, it reads as a plea for social equality and justice in a society that…

ON the surface, Waikiki Beach and Woolacombe Bay have little in common. The first is a glitzy strand backed by tropical palms and Hawaiian high-rises, the other a salty-aired stretch of Devon coastline lined by beach cafés and sand dunes. Waikiki has hula-dancing shows; Woolacombe has ranger-led rockpool walks. But what bonds the two places is what’s happening under the surface —literally—where the topography of the seabed and the swell of the waves turn them both into world-class surf spots. We’re not blessed with loads of amazing sporting facilities, so, for children growing up here, our facilities are the beach and the sea For the initiated, the surfing scene in north Devon has long been a gift to relish: locals and surf tourists have been riding the waves here since…

IN May, a book was published titled Broken: Mending and repair in a throwaway world. It tackles the reality that we live in what the author, Katie Treggiden, describes as a ‘single-use society’, where fashion is fast, disposability is the norm and it’s easier to replace than to repair. She traces the linear take-make-waste model that has dominated Western economies back to the Industrial Revolution and champions the need to transform it into something more circular for the good of our planet, and ourselves. Mending—or the desire to have things mended—is both generational and attitudinal. For some, it’s instinctive. My mother-in-law, born in 1938, has never needed to be lectured about the importance of looking after resources (we’ve come to blows about using margarine to make white sauce; I pointed…

THERE isn’t a building in the country that can’t be heated effectively with heat pumps,’ says Will McCarthy, senior consultant at ISO Energy in Horley, Surrey, ‘and it’s a myth that it can’t be done. It can be made to work, as long as it’s designed and installed correctly.’ The pressure is on to reduce carbon emissions and heat pumps have emerged as an energy-source antidote to the old fossil-fuel guzzling gas and oil boilers, endorsed by the Government offering grants of £5,000 or more to potential takers, as long as a new system meets certain standards. Yet, the response has been lacklustre, a curiously British phenomenon that means a significant lag behind other countries. ‘It will take time to catch up with the rest of Europe,’ adds Mr McCarthy.…

THE death of Norman Stevens, at the age of only 51 in 1988, was a great loss not only to art, as a forthcoming exhibition, book and catalogue raisonné will demonstrate, but to anyone who came across him; his Times obituary stressed his concern for ‘a friend in difficulties, an artist neglected, or for the public good’. His widow, Jean, remembers his ‘great sense of humour’ and his love of gardens and conservation: ‘He was always getting people together to protest about old buildings being knocked down.’ At Rugby Mansions, London W14, where the Stevenses lived latterly, he turned the communal backyard into a garden, with a fountain by Ainsley Yule and wall sculpture by Nigel Hall; it is named in his memory. Catalogues raisonné tend towards practicality, but the…