Innholdsfortegnelse for 9-Aug-2023 i Country Life

1935 Published September 21 Peacocks preside over the loggia at Valewood Farm, West Sussex, the weekend cottage of the designer Oliver Hill. The loggia was created out of a Tudor byre and served a ‘bathing pool’. Hill and the anonymous photographer worked on the shoot with unusual care, dressing the same views in different ways. 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…

THE life of a steeplejack is not for everyone. The profession has a long past—one panel of the Bayeux Tapestry shows a figure working on a church roof—and a daunting job description. The dictionary definition of the role is ‘a person whose work is building, painting, or repairing steeples, smokestacks, etc’, but this tells only half the story. By climbing exposed steeples, towers, monuments and chimneys with the aid of little more than rungs and ropes, steeplejacks put themselves into situations that would turn the average individual’s knees to jelly. This has been the case for centuries. In the Middle Ages, itinerant steeplejacks journeyed where the work took them, carrying out daredevil tasks on spires and cathedrals. The trade really boomed with the onset of the Industrial Revolution, when vast…

IF you’ve never received a coveted invitation to dine or even stay in one of the UK’s grand country houses, there’s now an easy way to get your foot—literally—in the door. In recent years, estates, the majority still privately owned, have been throwing open the doors to their homes to one and all. Even royalty is at it—when The King was Prince of Wales and Duke of Cornwall, he stayed in Restormel Manor near Lostwithiel, part of the Duchy estate and a holiday let available to the public that can accommodate up to 18 people. In Wales, holidaymakers could, until recently, choose between two cottages that adjoined the royal couple’s Welsh home—the Llwynywermod estate in Myddfai, Wales, when His Majesty was not in residence. (Earlier this year, The King announced…

AT the RHS Chelsea Flower Show this year, Charlotte Harris and Hugo Bugg took home not only a gold medal for their thoughtful design for the Horatio’s Garden charity, but also won the top award of Best in Show. The garden was a distillation of one that the team is designing for patients of The Princess Royal Spinal Injuries Centre in Sheffield, South Yorkshire, incorporating many of the features seen in SW3, which will open next year. The Chelsea judges were given the opportunity to move through the lush luxuriant planting in a wheelchair, following a beautiful and immaculately smooth terrazzo path, to experience what it will be like for patients. 'It was immediately obvious that the garden had masses of potential' A similarly considered approach—and pristine finish—underlies the studio’s…

THERE’S nothing silly about a fool. The pudding that is, not the idiot. Because this gloriously simple medley is an English summer classic, light, lithe and lovely, a dish that skips and gambols, frolics and cavorts. If it were a book, it would be The Code of the Woosters; a play, Hay Fever; a film, The Belles of St Trinian’s. OK, with all that fecund fruit, and lashings of lusciously concupiscent whipped cream, things can get a little, well, saucy. But nothing to frighten even the most upright of maiden aunts. ‘The old English fools,’ declared P. Morton Shand, ‘strawberry, raspberry, blackberry, blackcurrant, gooseberry, rhubarb, etc are unequalled if cream is not spared.’ There is never any stinting on the cream. We’ve been eating them for quite some time, too,…

For all the latest news, visit countrylife.co.uk Birds on the brink AVIAN influenza, now in its third year, has devastated sea birds, with population loss estimated at tens of thousands in the UK alone. According to the RSPB, 21 out of the country’s 25 breeding waterfowl species have tested positive for the virus since October 2021. ‘About 30,000 adult black-headed gulls —10% of the UK breeding population—have been lost since mid April,’ says Claire Smith, the charity’s senior policy officer for avian influenza. ‘Numbers of positive tests in peregrine are also high. It is thought great skuas, who were badly hit in both 2021 and 2022, are down 90% in some colonies.’ About 30,000 adult black-headed gulls have been lost since mid April The RSPB is carrying out population…

SOME of my happiest holiday memories are to do with shells. Gathering up empty cockles and limpets with my nephews to stick on sandcastles on Holkham beach in Norfolk, looking for the smoothest oyster shells on the beach at Whitstable in Kent after a jolly seafood lunch and spending glorious afternoons on the Cornish coast seeking out whorled, thick top-shells, glinting with mother-of-pearl where they had been worn down by the waves. It’s estimated there are about 600 species of marine mollusc around the UK and, although some places—Barricane Beach in Devon; Shell Island in Gwynedd; the Solway Firth in Scotland—are famed for their molluscs, it is rare to find a strand in the UK that doesn’t offer something of interest for an eagle-eyed beachcomber. Here are a few of…

Find the best properties at countrylife.co.uk MORE than 500 years of mixed fortunes are encapsulated in three historic Irish estates that have recently come to the market. James Butler of Savills in Dublin (00 35 31 618 1300) is handling the sale of two of them: the picturesque, 448-acre Belle Isle estate overlooking Lough Erne in Co Fermanagh and the thriving, 751-acre Barne residential and farming estate in Co Tipperary’s Golden Vale, for which he quotes guide prices of £7.5 million and €13.5m (£11.6m) respectively. Following the Flight of the Earls in September 1607, when the Gaelic Earls of Tyrone and Tyrconnell set sail from Donegal to seek Spanish support in their long-running conflict with the English Crown, James I declared the estates of the refugee earls forfeit and…

I AM always amazed by the codswallop that garden experts write—ponderous statements of fact that I know from my own experience to be complete bunkum. Here’s an example: ‘Never water plants in sunshine because you’ll scorch the leaves.’ Utter nonsense. Here’s another: ‘Plant garlic among your brassicas to scare away aphids and cabbage-white butterflies.’ Try it if you wish, but it doesn’t work. Nor do marigolds. The truth is that aphid infestations vary enormously from week to week and garden to garden. You never know whether or when one will turn up. Some years, I find very little greenfly activity; at other times, it arrives when I least expect it. Last year, blackfly attacked a mass of thistles that I had forgotten to pull out, but ignored my roses almost…

THE document drawers in David Thelwell’s Hampshire home are full to bursting with his father’s sketches, oil paintings and finished cartoons, even when many are being exhibited. Such is the legacy of Norman Thelwell, beloved for indignant children on hairy ponies, prescient pollution satire and affectionate jibes at the pomposity of rural society. Yet his artistic skill is not commemorated only in countless books and prints, but in the work of the rest of his family, his late wife, Rhona, his son, David, daughter, Penny, and granddaughter Kate. It was in Nottingham in the late 1940s that Norman and Rhona attended the same evening art class. Rhona recorded in her diary ‘met a nice soldier at the bus stop’ and they were married in 1949. Both children emphasise their mother’s…

THE highest point in south-eastern England is Walbury Hill in West Berkshire, in the North Wessex Downs AONB. As we reach its summit and its glorious 360-degree views, my friend and I agree that we have rarely done a circular walk as perfect as this one. In a few hours, we’ve walked on orchid- and butterfly-strewn downland, through wooded lanes and a peaceful nature reserve and wound our way through the fascinating, scattered community of Inkpen. We’ve been intrigued, all day, by the evocative names of the farms and lanes and delighted by a series of wildlife surprises. Our walk starts and ends at Walbury Hill, site of an iron-age hill fort where ramparts run alongside a path that descends to Inkpen village. As we walk, we count butterflies, glad…

MOST birds do it, bees certainly do it, yet even the most educated flea doesn’t do it. What’s that? Well, design and build their own des-res. As with humans, an animal’s home is its castle, a place of shelter and security in which to live and raise the brood. If a beast’s, bird’s or bug’s abode is primarily a sanctuary for survival of the species, the scale and complexity of animal architecture must make even Norman Foster and Richard Rogers go jade-eyed. It is fitting that Britain’s oldest landowner, Brock the badger, excavates its manor home in the very earth of the isles. Badgers, with their short limbs and sharp claws, are born to dig; indeed, the animal’s name is likely derived from the French bêcheur, meaning digger. I once…

A NEW book, Charm School: The Schumacher Guide To Traditional Decorating For Today, offers a fascinating insight into an aesthetic vein that runs deep within American decoration. Written by former journalist Emma Bazilian and art director Stephanie Diaz, both of whom are too young to remember the wilder excesses of the 1980s and so are well placed to bring a fresh perspective on the minutiae of the subject, from chintz, florals, checks and stripes to toile, skirts, slipcovers and bed hangings, with plenty more in between. In its celebration of designers such as Tom Scheerer, Suzanne Kasler, Celerie Kemble and Caroline Gidiere, the book demonstrates that US decorators remain more committed to decoration with a capital D than ever before. 'Lancaster brought American vitality to stuffy British houses' Although Britain…

Buckinghamshire, £2.75 million With some 3½ acres of gardens and grounds, Grade II-listed The Old Rectory is another fine example of a traditional Georgian family home with its archetypal symmetry, high ceilings and tall windows. Sympathetically restored over the years, the property hides a modern family home behind its stuccoed and painted façade. A spacious property of some 4,700sq ft, the home offers six bedrooms and four principal reception rooms over its three floors. A highlight has to be the kitchen/breakfast room, a light-filled, dual-aspect space, with large floor-to-ceiling sash windows that overlook the terrace and front drive. Outside, the extensive gardens are very formal in nature, both to the rear and the front of the house. The property benefits from a ha-ha, which was restored by the current…

OPINION was always divided. Some saw the wild climber known as old man’s beard as the Devil’s plant, because it sought to choke others. The ‘old man’ was Satan himself and regional names for it included Devil’s guts, Devil’s twine and hag rope. Early Christians, however, said the plant had sheltered the Holy Family on their flight into Egypt, variously referring to it as virgin’s bower, lady’s bower, maiden’s hair and shepherd’s delight. Most famously, perhaps, it was known as traveller’s joy, a name quoted by John Gerard in his 1597 Herball, where he enthused that ‘it maketh in winter a goodly shew, covering the hedges white all over with his feather-like tops’. A member of the Ranunculaceae family—and hence an unlikely relative of the buttercup —our wild clematis occurs…

GER LUIJTEN, who was born in Tilburg, Netherlands, in 1956 and died suddenly in Amsterdam last December, was one of the art world’s most impressive people. To scholarship, curiosity and a clear eye, he added the passion that is essential to a great museum curator. He was also a charming and skilful diplomat. His career began in 1987 in the print room of the Boijmans Van Beuningen Museum, Rotterdam, before he moved to the Rijksmuseum, where he became head of the autonomous Rijksprentenkabinet in 2001. He was the editor of the Hollstein series—the indispensable catalogue raisonnés of Dutch and Flemish engravings—and a member of the board of directors of the Rembrandt Association in The Hague, but it was arguably in Paris that he made his greatest mark, as director…