Innholdsfortegnelse for March 6, 2024 i Country Life

Boston Manor House, Brentford, Greater London A property of the London Borough of Hounslow BOSTON MANOR, Brentford, was put up for sale after the First World War in the face of the inexorable expansion of London. In 1924, it was purchased by the local council and preserved within its immediate setting. Last featured in COUNTRY LIFE in 1965, after it had been repaired by Donald Insall & Partners, this splendid example of a 17th-century suburban country house subsequently fell into serious disrepair. It has now been recovered from that state and its interiors represented in exemplary fashion by a team led by Harriet Pillman of Purcell for London Borough of Hounslow. The house was built in the early 17th century for Mary Reade, widow of Sir William Reade, who inherited…

WHEN Dr Samuel Johnson and James Boswell came down out of the hills to the west coast and Loch Duich on their Highland tour in September 1773, they paused at Auchnasheal. You won’t find it on today’s maps, but, then, Auchnasheal was ‘a kind of rural village’ of 20 huts. There they rested and the good doctor divvied out a shilling’s worth of copper coins to the children. For the modern traveller reaching this point, near Shiel Bridge, it is tempting to follow the flow of traffic hurrying along the ‘Road to the Isles’ to Kyle of Lochalsh and over the bridge to the Isle of Skye. Yet a more leisurely deviation to the left onto the single-track road to Glenelg, followed by Johnson and Boswell, will pay handsome dividends…

WE shape our buildings; thereafter they shape us,’ said Sir Winston Churchill in 1943. He was referring to the House of Commons, which had been badly damaged in a bombing two years before. But he could have been referring to any building, large or small, where we choose to make our homes and which do so much to affect us both practically and emotionally. The reason COUNTRY LIFE launched its Top 100 was to shine a light on the breadth and depth of creativity and expertise available to anyone planning to build or transform a home. What is exciting is not only the arrival of new talent, but also the evolution of established practitioners embracing the possibilities of evolving technology. Not only do the best architects and designers preserve traditional…

Dramatically delicious leek, saffron and seafood pie Method ▸ Preheat your oven to 200˚C/400˚F/gas mark 6. ▸ Pour three tablespoons of boiling water over the saffron threads and leave to infuse. ▸ Melt butter in a large frying pan and add the thinly sliced leeks. Cook until softening and then sprinkle over the flour. Mix until combined. Pour over the wine, reduce by half, and then pour in the stock. Simmer again for a few minutes and then add the spinach and herbs, followed by the cream and saffron threads, with their liquid. Cook to reduce and for the sauce to thicken. Turn off the heat and stir in the lemon juice and zest. ▸ Pour half the sauce into a pie dish and then arrange the raw fish on…

THIS morning (for anyone eagerly reading their newly arrived COUNTRY LIFE), I should be aboard a Eurostar on my way to TEFAF in Maastricht, so here are a few of the things that I am hoping to see during the next couple of days. The fair will be open to the public for six days (March 9–14). A few years ago, exhibitor numbers went well above 300, which was definitely too high; this time, there are about 270 from 22 countries. That ‘about’ may be relevant, as, thanks to a new feature, some dealers will be exhibiting in two places at once. It was not easy to envisage this ‘Focus’ section from the initial announcement: it is intended ‘to coalesce pioneering artists of different mediums and periods under one banner,…

Interwar: British Architecture 1919–39 Gavin Stamp (Profile Books, £40) IN the grand narrative of architectural history, it has long been conventional to think of the period between the two World Wars as being chiefly remarkable as the moment at which a conservative Britain—unwillingly thrown by the trauma of global conflict in 1914–18 into break-neck social, economic and political change—engaged for the first time with Modernism. This magnificent new book, post-humously prepared for publication, demonstrates how hopelessly inadequate—even inaccurate—this view is. ‘Stamp’s ability to present clearly for a general audience was as unusual as it is remarkable’ It also shows what an extraordinary diversity, richness and quality of architecture this period has to offer. Merely in terms of building types, the catalogue of creations includes government buildings (at home and across…

Future Publishing Ltd, 121–141 Westbourne Terrace, Paddington, London W2 6JR 0330 390 6591; www.countrylife.co.uk THE English language offers plenty of words and phrases that describe being current: ‘cutting edge’, ‘of the moment’ and ‘up to the minute’ are only three. There are fewer, however, that refer to those aspects of life that are timeless, perhaps because it’s a quality that isn’t considered worthy of note or even desirable. Or maybe it’s an adjective that is confused with tradition, which can have negative connotations in some contexts. This week, COUNTRY LIFE publishes its eighth Top 100 (page 95) that shines a light on architects, garden designers, interior designers and craftspeople with a track record of excellence in their respective disciplines. Many work in a classic style, some contemporary, most in a…

Dressing for the gallows I WRITE in response to the recent correspondence from Julie Bradley, who mentioned that all of the official hangman’s ropes were made in Hailsham (Letters, February 14). There used to be a saying that described a noose as a ‘Bridport cravat’ as there was a large rope-making industry there. Perhaps hangman’s ropes were made there as well? Ivo Hesmondhalgh, London Back in the saddle YOUR closing line heartened me that life is an ongoing adventure (Country mouse, February 21). I suffer from the same afflictions—reading glasses and damaged hearing due to shooting and loud rock music—but I can still spot a high-curling pheasant in good time and I’ve resorted to bifocal polarised sunglasses to spot the fish. I’ve also got back in the saddle—after a gap…

Annunciation by Fra Angelico ‘I first saw the Fra Angelico frescos at the convent of San Marco in Florence in the summer of 1992. Among all the other great works of art in the city, these have stayed with me the most ever since. What makes them special is the setting. Each cell contains scenes from the life of Christ enlightened, the small window large enough to let in a flow of light, but too small to be aware of the world outside. What is most touching is that these weren’t painted for a general public, but purely to aid the reflection and contemplation of the monks within. My favourite is the Annunciation, where the curves of the cell roof are repeated through the frame of the fresco and onwards…

What else did she do? ● Dame Miriam, a self-taught entomologist, wrote the first description of the flea’s jumping mechanism; she kept them in plastic bags in her bedroom ● She held eight honorary doctorates and produced more than 300 scientific papers, including one on gull territorialism ● She campaigned for the humane slaughter of animals, for seatbelts and for free school milk ● She was a codebreaker for the Enigma project during the Second World War MIRIAM ROTHSCHILD’S gardening style was the very antithesis of manicured. Writing in COUNTRY LIFE, Mark Griffiths describes her as a ‘pioneer’ of organic and wildflower gardening who ‘dared to entertain the idea (heresy in the 1970s) that it was not only beautiful, but beneficial to find a corn poppy or a corn cockle…

THE spring selling season kicks off in some style with the launch onto the market of two enchanting country houses set in prime Home Counties locations, one an early collaboration between Lutyens and Jekyll, the other once linked to a Rothschild family estate. The timber-framed core of Grade II-listed Winkworth Farm at Hascombe, in the redesignated Surrey Hills National Landscape, two miles from Godalming and eight miles from Guildford, dates from the mid 1500s. It started out as a prosperous yeoman’s house and was occupied by yeomen farmers until the death of the last of these, John Baxter, in 1837. For the next 70-odd years, the house was divided up and used by farm labourers and their families. Extended in about 1774, it was remodelled in 1895 by Sir Edwin…

Shop of the month Fortitude Bakehouse, 35, Colonnade, WC1 SEVEN days a week in a mews behind Russell Square Tube station, a team of three bakers sip hot drinks when it’s still dark. They then pull on blue aprons and get to work: croissants filled with merguez sausages and chermoula, spicy Berber omelettes on rolls, chocolate and custard pain Suisse, and cinnamon sticky buns, among a panoply of other bakes, are set out before customers arrive at 7.30am. ‘My favourite time is at 6am on a lovely bright summer morning,’ says Dee Rettali, the owner of Fortitude Bakehouse, ‘where all feels right with the world and we enjoy the calm before the storm.’ This churning part of Bloomsbury—a skip from the British Museum—offers every type of customer: regulars collecting their…

The Gardens at Stancombe Park, near Dursley, Gloucestershire The home of the Llewellyn family GARDENS and especially their hidden buildings have always provided ample possibilities for both real and imagined clandestine liaisons. One such liaison was reputedly conducted at Stancombe Park, a secret Georgian garden ornamented by lakes and classical references. According to local legend, the Revd David Edwards, who lived at Stancombe from 1889, created a series of especially narrow tunnels leading to alcoves and grottos, eventually emerging close to the romantic waterside Doric temple, in which a bed is hidden in an alcove. All this he allegedly designed for amorous liaisons with his Romany lover: his corpulent wife, the story went, being unable to navigate her way to these lower reaches of the garden, thus leaving his secret…

HIDING, as Keats wrote in Endymion, ‘in desolate places, where dank moisture breeds’, mousey-smelling hemlock contains lethal alkaloids that can cause vertigo, shivers, muscle paralysis and asphyxiation. It’s a fittingly gruesome ingredient for the witches’ brew in Act IV of Shakespeare’s Macbeth: Scale of dragon, tooth of wolf,Witches’ mummy, maw and gulfOf the ravined salt-sea shark,Root of hemlock digged i’ the dark… Hemlock, for which there is no known antidote, is also a symbol of suicide and despair in Wordsworth’s eponymous ‘ill-fated’ Ruth, who, jilted by her betrothed, seeks solace in Nature and makes a flute of a hemlock stalk: That oaten Pipe of hers is mute,Or thrown away; but with a fluteHer loneliness she cheers:This flute, made of a hemlock stalk,At evening in his homeward walkThe Quantock Woodman hears.…

Buying power THE latest Knight Frank Luxury Investment Index (KFLII), released last week, makes for interesting reading, with art the main headline. Of the 10 most popular ‘purchases of passion’—jewellery, watches, handbags, cars, whisky and so on, whatever floats your boat—it is art that has increased in value the most in the past 12 months, up 11%, the only one to hit double digits, although all the gains came in the first half of the year. Over 10 years, art’s price increase is 105%. This year, jewellery is up 8%, followed by watches at 5%. Cars, on the other hand, are down in value by 6%, but still 82% up on 10 years ago. Whisky is down 9%, yet, with a staggering increase of 280% over the decade, all is…

FUTURE historians are bound to ask: ‘What on earth happened to British democracy in the early 21st century?’ How could Jeremy Corbyn have led the Labour Party and how could Liz Truss actually have become Conservative Prime Minister? Neither understood the essence of the party they led: social-democratic Labour and pragmatic one-nation Conservative. Instead, both were dogmatists and both were elected by party members dominated by small handfuls of diehard supporters. The moderates upon whom both Labour and Conservatives depend to win a majority have generally ceased to be members of political parties. Labour’s situation has improved through the current widespread dislike of the Tories, yet Rishi Sunak is still hobbled by a party membership largely unrepresentative of either Conservative voters or of the wider electorate. Last week’s pictures of…

THIS month’s most famous piece of weather lore is ‘in like a lion, out like a lamb’. Sadly, March is rarely that predictable and the weather pattern is equally as likely to be the other way around, with late cold fronts swinging in to mess things up. This is an extremely changeable month that can often seem to contain all weather at once: squally showers, warm sunshine, hail and snow. It is, however, the first month that’s potentially warm enough to start planting outdoors. Good Friday has long been considered the day on which to plant your potatoes and parsley. When potatoes were first introduced to Europe in the 16th century, many Protestants refused to plant them because they weren’t mentioned in the Bible. Irish Catholics got around this by…

THE inaugural running of the Cheltenham Gold Cup in 1924 brought National Hunt racing its first level weights championship test for the season’s best chasers. It took a few years to become established—the Grand National at Liverpool continued to be steeplechasing’s most prestigious prize for some time after. A race needs charismatic horses or connections to become a highlight of the calendar and, surely enough, the Gold Cup soon attracted them. Here are some of the personalities, equine and human, who helped make Cheltenham’s Blue Riband the high-quality, much-anticipated event it is today. The forgotten Hero His feat was soon to be surpassed by Golden Miller, but Easter Hero was the first dual winner of the Gold Cup, in 1929 and 1930, both times by an imperious 20 lengths when…

Kent, £3.95 million Fresh, modern simplicity reigns at Waterfield House, built into a hillside within the High Weald National Landscape (or AONB if you prefer to call it by its less confusing former name), with ‘earth and sky’, the design concept that won it the RIBA South East architectural award last year. About a mile from the village of Goudhurst, near Cranbrook, it has five bedrooms, five bathrooms and four living spaces that flow, seamlessly interconnected, around a central atrium that leads to a lower-ground floor where a gym, cinema room and wine store can be found. Air-source heat pumps, two electric car-charging points, an MVHR (Mechanical Ventilation with Heat Recovery) system, SONOS and automatic shutters all contribute to its high-tech and eco credentials. Savills (01580 720161) Argyll and Bute,…

IT takes pluck and vision to build a large swathe of London almost single-handedly. Developer James Burton had both and the figures of what he accomplished remain dizzying even 300 years later. In the 38 years between 1785 and 1823, he built (or supervised the building of) 2,366 townhouses, rising to riches and success from relatively modest origins. Born James Haliburton in London in 1761, he was the son of a developer of Scottish origins and it was in Southwark that he began his career in 1785. Blackfriars Bridge had joined the two banks of the Thames in 1769 and this offered an opportunity for speculative development in south London that Burton seized with gusto, first in his native neighbourhood, then in Clapham Common. Soon, however, the sirens of Bloomsbury…

CHICORY (Cichorium intybus) and endive (Cichorium endivia) are closely related bitter leaves that I wouldn’t be without. Think of them as the olives of the salad world. Our sweetened palates make them an acquired taste for some—we are programmed to read bitterness as dangerous—but, once bitter clicks, it can become a real favourite. Try a few bitter leaves as punctuations in a leafy salad, a well-dressed shredded chicory heart (the hearts tend to be sweeter than the leaves) or cook a few halved hearts in a creamy-sauced gratin. The stepping stone for me was a whole frilly endive fried in scorching oil until it had wilted: heavily salted and peppered, a squeeze of lemon, with just a trace of sugar thrown in, it was sweet, salt, bitter and sharp in…

WILDLIFE encounters come in all shapes and sizes, but the thrill of seeing any creature for the first time sticks with you forever. This was the case for me in the 1990s, when I was working as a gamekeeper on an estate in the Forest of Dean, Gloucestershire. I had a hunch that the secretive little thing I was looking for was present, as the tiny stream that ran through the valley, sourced from a spring at its head, was pristine. It fed a manmade lake that bubbled with wild brown trout on balmy summer evenings, indicating that the water was full of life. The stream would be no more than 4ft wide, with a gentle flow over a stony bottom. ‘It gave me a great sense of satisfaction to…

THE Victorian sugar baron Abram Lyle famously declared that he’d rather see his son brought home dead than drunk. It’s an extreme position, certainly, but I have a certain respect for Abram Lyle. He wasn’t afraid of speaking his mind, in Greenock where he lived, or anywhere else. And his mind was full of weird things and obscure tracts. He knew his Bible, including the parts that, for some unfathomable reason, we never get to hear in church. He knew, for instance, the story of Samson inside out, a story we learned greedily at primary school and which I have never again, in 40 years, heard mentioned in a place of worship. As stories go, it is one of the better tales in the Old Testament, a lot more entertaining…