Innholdsfortegnelse for 27-Sep-2023 i Country Life

Phoenix, Arizona, $8.95 million (about £7.1m) Located on more than 1¼ acres on the edge of the Phoenix Mountains Preserve, this three-bedroom, three-bathroom, split-level property occupies 3,200sq ft. The Circular Sun House—also known as the Norman Lykes House—was the last home Wright designed before he died in 1959. One of only 14 circular homes the architect masterminded, the project was finally completed in 1967, overseen by his apprentice, John Rattenbury (who also went on to manage a renovation of the property in the mid 1990s). Constructed from concrete, the monolithic home was drafted to complement the curves of the surrounding landscape. Wright designed the building as a series of overlapping concentric circles, creating a distinct floor plan that flows seamlessly from one room to another and offers unobstructed views of…

IT’S eight years since COUNTRY LIFE first visited Shilstone to discover how the surviving fragment of a historic manor house and its landscape had been magnificently revived to create a modern country house. At that time, the building had been both completed and furnished, but the project was still fresh. Now, the landscape and gardens have matured almost beyond recognition, beautifully integrating the house within its intimate valley setting below Dartmoor (Fig 7). Over the same period, the interiors have also developed and been loved to life. Of themselves, such changes might justify a return visit. In this case, however, Shilstone has also acquired one outstanding new interior that merits individual attention: the first-floor drawing room at the head of the main stair. It was always intended as the culminating…

AT some point in the creation of the new Rolls-Royce Spectre, the company’s first-ever all-electric car, a difficult meeting must have taken place. ‘Chaps, the car’s feeling great, but there’s one thing—it’s too fast,’ someone in product testing must have told the engineering team. ‘Can you make it slower?’ ‘Slower?’ the incredulous reply from the engineering team presumably came. ‘You want it to be… slower?’ ‘Yes, indeed. It’s a great engineering accomplishment, but I’m afraid it made Derek spill his Champagne.’ 'The Spectre is a Rolls-Royce first and an electric car second' Now, although some details of this exchange are—ahem—artistic re-creations, Rolls-Royce genuinely does use the Champagne test as its benchmark for a smooth ride: if the car surges and jerks violently enough for a passenger to spill their…

Clockwise from top left: Danger Horn necklace, £10,800, Tasaki (020–3967 3730; www.tasaki.co.uk); Mabé Pearl Sun ring, £8,040, Elizabeth Gage (020–7823 0100; www.elizabeth-gage.com); Secret Garden pearl and diamond yellow gold bracelet, £28,500, and Roulette earrings, £10,700, Boodles (020–7647 1360; www.boodles.com); diamond necklace with pearl drops, price on application, Chopard (www.chopard.com); Joséphine Aigrette ring, £7,520, Chaumet (020–3917 6250; www.chaumet.com); Lacrima Soirée bracelet, £18,400, Bucherer (020–7952 2730; www.bucherer.com); Iris baroque-pearl pendant, £1,590, and belcher chain, from £1,315, Cassandra Goad (020–7730 2202; www.cassandragoad.com); gold and diamond leaf pin, £16,620, Elizabeth Gage (as before). Vintage Barbour coat stylist’s own (www.barbour.com)…

Find the best properties at countrylife.co.uk THE launch onto what is now a buyer’s market of three fine historic houses with exceptional gardens and grounds should help to boost country-house sales in the west this autumn. Ashley Rawlings of Savills in Wimborne (01202 856873) is handling the sale, at a guide price of £2.25 million, of charming, Grade II*-listed East Lambrook Manor in the pretty village of East Lambrook, a mile from South Petherton and five miles from Ilminster. The former Somerset hall house, built of brick and hamstone under a tiled roof, dates from the 15th century, with later alterations and additions in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. It stands in 2¾ acres of famous cottage gardens created by gardening legend Margery Fish between 1938 and 1969,…

PROFESSIONAL gardeners like to assert that there is never a quiet time in the garden, that even at the height of summer and in darkest winter there is plenty of work to do. I can testify that this is often true: I am witness to the hard work that the gardeners at Glyndebourne put in year round to ensure pristine, flourishing gardens. But, at home, I garden for my own contentment, not for others, and I know that, thankfully, there are times of the year when I can relax and enjoy myself. The only job I do conscientiously through the summer is the deadheading. It is a great source of pleasure to remove spent flowers and imagine the new blooms that will soon appear. It is a job without…

1899 December 9 Published This photograph was taken to illustrate the gardens of Abbotsbury Castle, Dorset, seat of the Earl and Countess of Ilchester, both enthusiastic plant collectors. It shows one of the new pools in the garden with a carefully posed model pointing into the distance. He appears repeatedly in the set of pictures, once as a fisherman. 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 red-deer-antlers motif is the ubiquitous emblem of the Exmoor National Park, but the indigenous pony, uniformly a mealy-nosed, stocky bay with a double coat and ‘toad’ eye to protect against harsh weather, is also a much-loved element. The enchanting herds that graze the moor comprise about 12.5% of the world’s population of some 4,000; the gene pool is finite and the Exmoor is categorised as ‘priority’ by the Rare Breeds Survival Trust. Each year, the herds are rounded up to be inspected for Exmoor Pony Society (EPS) registration. The EPS was formed in 1921, but preservation of the local herds began a century before when the Royal Forest of Exmoor was sold to the industrialist John Knight, who created fields, enclosures and roads across the bleak landscape. Fortuitously, the…

IT is the only time I have walked out of a restaurant with a pair of my father-in-law’s trousers over my arm. For a significant birthday, The Doctor (as he is known) had arranged for me to have a specially woven Harris tweed version of his own venerable sporting suit and he was loaning me the original as a template. Although I am only the laird of a modest Highland hill farm, I have always loved the concept of having my very own ‘estate tweed’. When, many years ago, he bought her Hebridean croft, The Doctor was given by old Mrs Macmillan a traditional length of homespun she had woven there herself in the outhouse and he has worn it proudly ever since. Over the decades that I have been…

The graves of those we loved, How beautiful they lie; From every care and strife removed; Beneath heavens canopy. ‘The Churchyard’, John Clare IT was a family affair, a gathering of my wife’s clan, and the route took us within a couple of miles of Helpston. So, not for the first time, and probably not for the last, I visited John Clare’s grave. Not quite a pilgrimage, but a paying of respects, because we can never pay our dues to Clare, the one true voice of Nature from the English countryside (‘We will not plunder music of his dower’, July 12). It spoke through him, he was its tribune. ‘I found the poems in the fields/And only wrote them down,’ Clare once penned, a statement usually parsed by literary critics…

The best country clothing in town Located on Pall Mall, Farlows, purveyor of fine fieldsports clothing and accessories since 1840 and holder of a Royal Warrant, has a new autumn/winter collection that has a host of technical innovations. ‘We strive to create only the best accessories, garments and fabrics and are incredibly proud that nearly all of the items in this season’s field-wear collection have been made in the UK,’ notes product manager Jack Gregorie. Featuring, as you might expect, an array of tasteful, Scottish tweeds (woven at Lovat Mill in Hawick) and chunky roll-neck jumpers in pleasing autumnal hues, there’s also a selection of elegantly cut loden gilets, breeks and coats, milled at Leichtfried in Austria. Ingenious touches include rubberised coat buttons to prevent scratching gun stocks, fleece-lined…

THE owners of this 16th-century farmhouse in Hampshire wanted to create a larger kitchen to accommodate their growing family. Because planning restrictions prevented the removal of internal walls to increase the size of the existing kitchen, the couple decided to convert the granary that stood next door. ‘The granary had been subdivided into bedrooms in the 1980s, so our first step was to strip out the partitions and reveal the full character of the ancient beams,’ says Bruce Hodgson, founder and creative director of Artichoke. However, some of the supporting struts of the timber frame created obstacles by jutting into the room and its stone plinth created an extra element to overcome. ‘We used a scanning system to build a three-dimensional model of the space and worked very closely with…

Cornwall, £3 million As one of the most desirable villages on Cornwall’s south coast, the chance to own property in St Mawes is getting rarer and rarer. Ever since meltwaters from the previous ice age carved out the immense natural harbour (claimed to be the third largest in the world), the village has been attracting tourists keen to take advantage of the spectacular coastal location. There are few better places to appreciate the natural splendour of St Mawes than Tresona, a four-bedroom home dating from the 1930s that boasts almost an acre of gardens and grounds and makes the most of its spectacular views of the harbour and Falmouth Bay. Set over two floors, the property is finished to an exceptionally high standard, with plenty of large windows throughout,…

Pear, rosemary and sea-salt focaccia Method ▶ Add the flour, sea salt and yeast to a large bowl. Pour over the water and mix to form a sticky dough. Take a clean large bowl and add a generous splash of olive oil to the base, then swirl it around a little to coat. Put in the dough, turning it around, so it’s covered in the oil. Cover the bowl with clingfilm and refrigerate overnight. ▶ The next day, deflate the dough and roughly shape it into a ball, then leave it to undergo a second rise, at room temperature in the same bowl, covered with a clean, dry tea towel. ▶ Heat your oven to 200˚C/400˚F/gas mark 6. Line an oven tray, roughly 32cm by 22cm (12in by 9in)…

For all the latest news, visit countrylife.co.uk U-turn over gamebird licensing A PROPOSAL to license the release of game-birds in Wales for the 2024–25 season has been withdrawn, it was announced by Natural Resources Wales (NRW) last week. The licensing scheme, first announced in March, was described by the Countryside Alliance as a ban on game shooting ‘in all but name’ and was met with fury by various other countryside organisations; at the time, NRW insisted that the plans were ‘not a consultation on whether or not shooting live quarry should continue to be allowed in Wales’. However, following 42,000 responses to the consultation, NRW has decided that having a licensing system in place for the 2024–25 season would not be possible. It has instead suggested that ‘should licensing…

Sholto Kynoch is a pianist and the founder and artistic director of the Oxford International Song Festival (October 13–28) 'I sometimes wonder if Caspar David Friedrich is a bit predictable, trite even. But then I find that, for me as a musician, his paintings resonate in the same emotional space as a Schubert song: awe and comfort, striving and reconciliation, grandiosity and intimacy, all side by side. The colours give such a strong sensation of winter and cold, but in a way that makes you long for it: it’s a similarly visceral experience to music. I don’t share Friedrich’s Christian faith, but the message that Nature and simplicity rule over crass mortal ambition is a powerful one' Charlotte Mullins comments on Winter Landscape IN a snowy landscape shrouded by…

IF you want something done right, do it yourself’—so the saying goes, but I don’t suppose whoever first espoused this (especially if it was Napoleon) ever took it upon themselves to train a gundog. We’ve all been there: it’s the first drive on the opening day of the season and your young, over-zealous dog has—yet again—developed selective hearing and disappeared into the distance, leaving you with a hoarse throat and flushed cheeks, as you reflect glumly on all the hours, blood, sweat and tears that you’ve put in to training him since he was a puppy. This all-too-familiar scenario is why, for many, buying an older, pre-trained gundog from a respected trainer and breeder is an appealing alternative. An experienced professional not only saves house-training and socialising a puppy, they…

WHEN glamorous French businesswoman Claire Mercer Nairne went on her first date with future husband, Sam, she sat down at the wrong table and began talking to a stranger, who eventually said: ‘You are very charming, but who are you?’ The lines were duly uncrossed and, in 2006, she moved into Meikleour, Sam’s ancestral Tayside estate, bringing a wedding dress and a skiing outfit to compensate for the poor central heating in the house. Since then, the fortunes of the place have been transformed. To open this year’s salmon-fishing season on January 16, Claire kindly asked me to perform the ceremonial first cast (together with actor Burn ‘Game of Thrones’ Gorman) and we celebrated with a magnum of Pol Roger. I was learning that the chatelaine of Meikleour is…

CONTRARY to urban myth, Robert Kime and I were not related and I dread the occasional look of disappointment when someone discovers I’m not the nepo baby they thought I was. However, I suspect it was an assumption that he was my father that helped me secure a summer internship at The World of Interiors magazine. Kime must have suspected it, too, because years later, at his shop on Museum Street, he laid a hand on my shoulder and, with a grin, invoked the Gospel of Matthew with the words ‘This is my son, with whom I am well pleased’. Little of what has been written about the man who did so much to influence the more esoteric end of English taste helps to deepen understanding of his work.…

MARCHANTS HARDY PLANTS is quietly tucked away on a small Sussex lane, the two-acre site drifting gently into surrounding farmland and the distant smudge of the South Downs. It looks unassuming, yet this nursery is extraordinary. Marchants does not offer a mail-order service; you must visit in person and, pushing through the small gate, you are instantly wrapped in colour, vigour and exuberance that would rival a flower show. There are no militaristic alphabetical rows, no forlorn-looking imports. The brick raised beds, about knee height, are stacked with flowering plants in generous pots, artfully put together for contrast in colour, form and texture: a golden Calamagrostis brachytricha interlaces fingers with Oenothera lindheimeri, as crimson tips of Panicum virgatum ‘Shenandoah’ pick out the deep red in Persicaria ‘Blackfield’ and Sanguisorba ‘Cangshan…

THE door of the Marianne North Gallery at Kew Gardens in west London opens and three visitors make their way in, sun hats askew, looking a little battered in their checked shirts and shorts. Their jaws drop. Whatever they were expecting when they sought respite from this summer’s lone day of muggy heat, it wasn’t the barrage of colours that explodes from every wall. Here are the blowsy flowers of a giant Amazon water lily, rich white with pollen or spent and pink after the insects’ harvest; there is a bilimbi, its trunk festooned with small purple flowers. Asian orchids burst pink and alluring from a tangle of tropical leaves. The fiery blooms of the Indian coral tree clamour for attention from an inner door’s lintel and, in a corner,…

Eric Ravilious Ella Ravilious(Thames & Hudson/ V&A, £14.99) ERIC RAVILIOUS disappeared from the radar in 1942, on a lost search mission flying over Iceland, yet his idiosyncratic images remain instantly recognisable and increasingly popular among those who look back fondly to the 1930s revival of Romanticism. His jolly pub façades, brick rectories, greenhouses, bathing machines, iron bedsteads, biplanes and downland chalk figures project a nostalgic view of Englishness that continues to delight. The recent boost to his reputation owes much to a series of exhibitions and publications, notably by Alan Powers and James Russell. This latest book comes from the artist’s granddaughter, appropriately curator of architecture and design at the V&A Museum, which owns many of Ravilious’s works, and reproduces 10 plates alongside Ella Ravilious’s comprehensive texts. Ravilious…