Innholdsfortegnelse for 18-Oct-2023 i Country Life

1912 Unpublished A children’s gymnasium at Laverockdale, Colinton, near Edinburgh, forms the centrepiece of an attic nursery suite. The house was enlarged in 1912 for the Ivory family by Robert Lorimer. The owner was a collector, hence the miniature chairs and the Japanese scrolls on the walls, a reflection of the Aesthetic taste of the moment. 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…

AN English character pervades our historic buildings, in town and country. This statement can readily be proved by asking any educated British audience—of COUNTRY LIFE readers, as it might be—to distinguish between photographs of an English village, castle, church, high street, farmhouse or country house and their equivalents in France, Spain, Germany, or any other European country. The audience will recognise their own every time. If the Englishness was not real and recognisable, this would hardly be possible. Thus there is no doubt that it is there: defining it, however, is rather more difficult. There are overarching forces that helped shape this tradition, in particular the influence of the Crown. Our kings and queens have historically tended to employ—and also thereby helped to create—the outstanding craftsmen of every generation. Their…

MY Norfolk terriers are a hardy little pack,’ reveals Sarah, Duchess of York, whose dogs welcomed the two corgis belonging to the late Queen to their ranks last year. ‘All five have unique personalities that bond together with such loyalty and love. They are feisty and confident, with incredible sporting instincts, always game for an adventure.’ Noting that the sweet eyes and ever-wagging tail of this plucky terrier can be utterly disarming—‘don’t let them fool you, no rodent is safe in the garden’—the Duchess adds that the devotion of Norfolks means her pack is never far from her side. ‘Norfolk terriers have a sense of wanting to make sure you are in harmony,’ she says. ‘They will follow you around and sit on your lap and not move until you…

DESIGNED for a sociable family, this kitchen forms part of a new-build extension to a listed 17th-century manor house in the Cotswolds that replaces a structure added in the 1980s. Working with Fleming Architects, interior-design studio Sims Hilditch was called upon to make the most of the room, introducing elements to ensure the scale of the space feels comfortable. At the centre of the kitchen, a large island is where friends and family gather. ‘It was important to get the proportions of the legs exactly right, as they needed to have sufficient strength and personality to enhance the presence of the island,’ explains creative founder Emma Sims-Hilditch. The strong statement created by the island is countered by the gentle tones of the Neptune Henley cupboards painted in Flax Blue (01793…

Wiltshire, £2 million Built in 1824 by Robert Abraham as a Protestant Free School, The Lodge in Mildenhall has since been converted into a tasteful and distinctive four-bedroom home in the shape of the Cross. The village of Mildenhall is something of an idyll itself, surrounded by the North Wessex Downs AONB, on the River Kennet and only a mile away from the market town of Marlborough. The entrance to the house is situated in the central node, which also contains the staircase to the first floor, where you will find three bedrooms. The ground floor contains the kitchen/breakfast room, sitting room, drawing room and principal bedroom suite, with each room occupying a wing of the cross. There is also a basement/laundry room with further storage space, extending the…

THIS December, the West Indies face a touring England side for three one-day internationals and five T20 games in part of the Caribbean known loosely as the Windward Islands. For the British, the Windwards encompass Grenada, St Lucia, St Vincent and the Grenadines, and Martinique. In Spain, the Islas de Barlovento also include Antigua, Barbados and Trinidad. English fans following the team to the Caribbean may be in for a big surprise: ‘It is very different from going to watch cricket at Lord’s—it is music, dancing, rum drinking and merriment,’ says James Burdess, head of Caribbean and Latin American sales at Savills. England touring the West Indies is always a huge event—more than 5,000 members of the Barmy Army descended on the Caribbean during the most recent visit. Mr Burdess…

Flourless chocolate hazelnut cake with chocolate hazelnut ganache Method ▸ Preheat your oven to 160°C fan/180°C/350°F/gas mark 4 and line the bottom of a loose-bottomed 25cm (10in) cake tin with baking paper. ▸ Use a microwave or a bainmarie to melt the butter and chocolate together until smooth. Stir through the cocoa powder, ground hazelnuts, caster sugar, coffee, vanilla and salt, then mix again until combined. Beat the eggs in a separate bowl and then whisk them into the cake batter. ▸ Pour the batter into the prepared tin and bake for 40–45 minutes. The cake should still have a wobble in the middle, but be more solid around the edges. Remove from the oven and cool completely in the tin. ▸ Once cooled, remove the cake from the…

The Britannias: An Island Quest Alice Albinia (Allen Lane, £30) A LICE ALBINIA begins her sparkling new book by outlining a problem with conventional histories of Britain. They are written, she writes, ‘as if the large island in the centre is what matters’. Even the official terminology—the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland—neglects so much by focusing on the ‘mainland’. The author wants to offer a corrective, to tell the story of a nation of islands, rather than of an island nation. Her quest follows a decade of collected ‘voyage tales’. Over 14 chapters—and her youngest daughter’s life so far—she amasses autobiography and archipelagic anthropology, travelling from the largest atoll to islands since engulfed by Britain. Having lived in—rather than on—Orkney, as well as journeying by…

Farmers see red over green plan ANEW ‘environmental module’ proposed by the farm-assurance scheme Red Tractor has drawn heavy criticism from farmers after it was announced last week. The scheme, known as the Green Farm Commitment (GFC), will enable ‘farmers to make commitments and track their own progress across five key areas for environmentally focused farming: carbon footprinting; soil management; nutrient management; waste management; and biodiversity’, according to the organisation. Farmers reacted with fury to the proposal, accusing supermarkets of passing the cost of them reaching net zero onto farmers. Speaking to Farming Today, farmer and author Joe Stanley acknowledged that farmers are ‘incredibly keen to move in a more sustainable direction as food producers and stewards of the environment’. However, he added that ‘the natural-capital services that the…

Felix Francis is an author. He will give a talk about his latest book, No Reserve, at Parabola Arts Centre, Cheltenham, on October 26 at 7pm Mankind has painted horses since the Stone Age, but only with the invention of photography have artists been able to portray a horse accurately in motion. George Stubbs, the master of equine anatomy, famously painted the horse Baronet in a characteristic “flying gallop” with all four legs off the ground at once, its front ones sticking forward and its rears outstretched behind–a posture that is actually impossible (unless the horse is Devon Loch and we all know what happened to him!). Here, Munnings does not paint horses in gallop, but, nevertheless, he superbly captures the anticipation of the forthcoming contest–the rippling muscles and the…

Did you know? Bakewell’s sheep were predominantly white and black fleeces were not accepted until 1986, but the black Leicester Longwool has grown in popularity and has a separate flock book THE magnificent Leicester Longwool, which is categorised as ‘at risk’ by the Rare Breeds Survival Trust (RBST)—there are fewer than 500 registered ewes—is Britain’s oldest improved breed of longwool sheep. It owes its original ‘improvement’ to the dynamic agriculturalist Robert Bakewell (1725–95), a far-sighted and independent-minded Leicestershire farmer. Bakewell’s aim was to make the Leicester Longwool much more commercially viable, valued for its meat, as well as its ringletted fleece. He travelled far afield in his quest to find bloodlines that would create a more compact physiognomy—the old type had a more rangy, long-legged conformation—and an animal that would…

I’M standing alone, thigh deep in a sparkling, peat-tinted Scottish river, fuelled with the anticipation of that tug on the drifting line, followed by the exhilarating passage of play, the first sight and the successful landing of the king of fish, the Atlantic salmon. Once you’re hooked, the desire to be on your own on a deserted riverbank—an experience at once thrilling and peaceful —only gets stronger, which is why it has beguiled fisher folk for hundreds of years. It’s the fish that drives this obsession, the wonderful Salmo salar. As shoals of fry weave at your feet and, a yard away, a mighty silver-scaled giant leaps—as does your heart—you find yourself marvelling at the salmon’s incredible life cycle. These migratory fish are anadromous: they hatch out in freshwater, but…

THE delightful Goodens Gold, an award-winning ale, is made at the Flower Pots brewery five minutes from where we live. On the outskirts of the village, a vineyard produces grapes used to make delicious Raimes sparkling wine. Lately, it’s been easier to shop locally for food and drink than it is to find furniture. That wasn’t always so: from the 1870s to the 1930s, the building in our garden where I’m writing was a saw shed, where timber was cut before being fashioned into windows, doors, furniture and coffins. Being hyperlocal in one’s buying habits was woven into the warp and weft of life until globalisation did for it. The hyper-smart version of hyperlocal is furniture made from timber grown on your own land, as was the case on…

IF anyone can complain about building work overrunning it is Prince Albert II of Monaco. It all began in 2015, when painters discovered fragments of unfamiliar paintwork in the vaulted Hercules Gallery, which transpired to be lime-based plaster used in frescos. Specialist restorers began to remove the 19th-century decoration with scalpels and lasers, a risky and painstaking process that ultimately revealed a series of hidden Italian Renaissance scenes. ‘They feature mythological men, women and animals and would have been catalysts for discussions about culture and philosophy,’ explains Christian Gautier, who has led the restoration project. In 2016, the project spread to another group of state rooms when an electrician discovered coloured paintwork on the back of loose fragments of plaster; the restorers subsequently uncovered an enormous mythical medallion, complete with…

MELKINTHORPE is one of those places that you would only visit if you had a good reason. The hamlet is six miles south-east of Penrith and the reason people travel there from far away is the remarkable nursery-cum-garden known as Larch Cottage. It is a place of dramatic beauty that has become a site of pilgrimage for gardeners from all over Britain. Never have architectural ingenuity, horticultural beauty and commercial plantsmanship been so perfectly combined. Larch Cottage is one of a terrace of properties along the no-through road that is Melkinthorpe’s only access. It is said to have been the abode of Cumberland’s last highwayman. The cottage has a red Royal Mail box in its wall that dates from the reign of Queen Victoria. There is nothing to hint at…

DESPITE my best intentions to commit more fishing this year, it turned out to be a bit of a lean season, with the family diary preventing trips to Iceland, the Oykel and the Pere Marquette (yes, I know where to find sympathy in the dictionary, thank you!). In Scotland, I struggled through that heatwave and managed to blank on three of the Big Four salmon rivers. At one stage, the nearest thing I had to the fun of playing a fish was reeling up the extension cord of our vacuum cleaner. However, I remain once again grateful for small mercies—specifically, the redeeming features of fishing for native brown trout in the Highlands and Islands lochs, which remains one of our rare, truly wild angling opportunities. There are reckoned to be…

THE horse box draws into the kennels and George lets horses and hounds out. There is no need to ask how it went. He is hunched over and clenched with anger and sorrow, like a boy at a funeral. The great conservative philosopher Edmund Burke described rural society as being made up of little platoons. This platoon, my platoon, has received a devastating blow to its morale. ‘Those whom the Gods would destroy, they first make mad.’ For Sophocles’s Greek deities, we now have to substitute our new masters in the Edinburgh Parliament, who are every bit as capricious. October 3, 2023 was for us the day the Scottish Enlightenment died; its tribunes described it as a great day for animal welfare as the Scottish Hunting with Dogs Bill came…

I REMEMBER a conversation from long ago during which I expressed a desire to write. ‘I’d rather be a participant than a spectator,’ my companion responded, somewhat disparagingly. However, for those privileged to write about fieldsports, the roles of participant and commentator are often combined. That is especially true of hunting, where riding strange —frequently brilliant and, occasionally, downright dangerous—horses across country or tramping for miles behind a pack of beagles is all part of the job. There is no fieldsport more suited to our green and beautiful countryside, nor more compatible with Britain’s cool, damp climate, than hunting with a pack of hounds. From dew-drenched early September mornings to frigid February afternoons, when black hedges beckon beneath snow-flecked skies, scent lies stronger here than anywhere else on earth. I’ve…

WHEN you first start to learn to Spey cast, it is like patting your head and rubbing your tummy at the same time. The cast seems an inexplicable conflict in the brain and it has caused me to mutter more swear words than anything else in my life. A balletic movement of loops and lines, it was invented in the 18th century and its eponymous river flows through the 22,000-acre Tulchan estate, near Grantown-on-Spey. Flanked by whisky distilleries, Tulchan has hosted shooting and fishing parties for three British kings, the US president Theodore Roosevelt, banker J. P. Morgan and railway financier William Vanderbilt. It is an extraordinarily special place, where purple-clad heather moors rise steeply above the graceful river. If you climb over one hill, you look down towards Deeside…

Find the best properties at countrylife.co.uk DESCRIBED by selling agent Ed Stoyle of Savills in York (01904 617821) as ‘one of the most magnificent country houses in all of Yorkshire’, Grade II-listed Arthington Hall stands in 22 acres of gardens, grounds and ancient woodland on the banks of the River Wharfe, some nine miles from Harrogate and eight miles from Leeds, looking west over the valley to the arches of the Arthington Viaduct, with Ilkley Moor in the distance. Mr Stoyle quotes a guide price of £7.5 million for the hall, the Classical façade of which conceals a modern family home of rare distinction, following a root-and-branch restoration carried out by the current owners in 2014. Originally built in the mid 15th century, the hall stands on the site…

Bequia, $3.5 million (about £2.97m) A five-acre retreat in a truly magnificent setting, The Great Lodge lies at the heart of Hope Lodge on Bequia, the largest island in the Grenadines. Featuring an expansive main living area furnished with teak floorboards, a full-height greenheart ceiling and sliding glass panels, a separate smaller sitting room, a chef’s kitchen and a chic, fully stocked bar, it is a wonderful place for family and friends to gather. Outside, the mahogany terrace wraps around the house and coral steps take you down to the impressive 45ft infinity pool. Two master lodges in the grounds—The Guest Lodge and The Family Lodge—each offer spacious bedroom suites, sitting rooms and verandahs. Lush tropical gardens surround the house and staff accommodation is located at the entrance to the…

I HAVEN’T nosed around behind other people’s garden sheds, but I suspect that, if I did, I would find, as I do behind mine, a jumble of precariously stacked old plastic pots. I try to create some kind of order by stacking similar sizes together, but such is the range of shapes and sizes that disorder soon returns. Most can’t be recycled; nurseries and garden centres don’t want to reuse them for fear of spreading disease and one never needs them in the garden, however enthusiastic one is about propagating plants. I think we’ll be stuck with them until plastic recycling improves. In the past few years, some plant producers, sensitive to changing consumer attitudes to plastics, have started selling plants in recycled plastic pots that can be put into…

IT says a lot about Stephen Sondheim that Old Friends at the Gielgud is the third anthology to be compiled from his musicals. Side by Side by Sondheim was the first and was produced by a young Cameron Mackintosh in 1976. Sir Cameron has devised the new show, which was first staged in May 2022 as a tribute to the composer-lyricist shortly after his death. It proved so popular that it demanded revival and now offers one of the most exhilarating pieces of musical theatre you could hope to find. Why does it work so well? One reason is that Sondheim never repeats himself: he was, as his biographer David Benedict says in the programme, a radical working in a form routinely seen as reactionary. All his musicals, from…