Innholdsfortegnelse for April 3, 2024 i Country Life

Future Publishing Ltd, 121–141 Westbourne Terrace, Paddington, London W2 6JR 0330 390 6591; www.countrylife.co.uk BACK in 2019, Gail Bradbrook, founder of Extinction Rebellion, gave a rousing speech to the somewhat startled delegates attending a Sustainable Food Trust conference, who she promised to convert to rebels. ‘Bring your tractors and stop being so British, make your case to the vegans,’ she urged. Ms Bradbrook exhorted this group of polite, environmentally conscientious farmers to be loudly disruptive on the capital’s streets in order to get the message through that what they do—producing food and nurturing soil through regenerative farming and grassfed livestock—is important. Although no windows were broken last week, the idea of protesting farmers jamming up central London with 120-plus tractors seemed unlikely on that summer’s day in a Cotswolds barn…

Hear me roar YOU detail that the wonderful tiger mortar (right) ‘disappeared’ (The way we were, March 20). In fact, it may be the one still to be seen in the Tower Armouries today. It is one of a pair that was captured (‘taken’, to use the correct military parlance) by Maj-Gen Wilson after the capture of Fort Kurnaul, in the Madras Presidency, during a ‘local disturbance’ in 1838. The two guns may have been cast for Tipu Sultan, the ‘Tiger of Mysore’, in the late 1700s. This one never seems to have been quite completed—the vent that would have allowed it to be fired was never drilled out—so this tiger never roared. His brother tiger is now held by the Royal Artillery Historical Trust—and he can roar! I hope…

‘My last posting was in Belgium and every visitor was taken to Waterloo. It is an amazing battlefield and largely unchanged since 1815. A critical moment in the battle was the closing of the gates at Hougoumont, an act by the bravest of the brave. Lt-Col James MacDonell was in command. Remarkably, he had joined the army as an ensign in 1793 (aged 12), being promoted to full general in 1854. The picture also shows (as judged by Wellington) the bravest man at the battle, Crpl James Graham. It is wonderful. Waterloo is special. It also inspired a unique watch–The Waterloo–a one-of-a-kind model that Pinchbeck has donated to help raise funds for veterans at the Lord Mayor’s Big Curry Lunch’ The 2024 Lord Mayor’s Big Curry Lunch takes place on…

Lancing College, West Sussex, part II BUT for Lancing College’s stupendous Gothic chapel, its school buildings would surely be much better known than they are. Despite their scale and interest, they seem to crouch insignificantly beside this vast structure, literally and figuratively overshadowed by it. The founder of the school, the High Church clergyman and educational campaigner Nathaniel Woodard, would undoubtedly have approved, but he might have been disappointed as well. Although he never lived to see the chapel completed, he invested huge energy into realising the school buildings, driving forward their construction as funds came to hand. As we discovered last week, Woodard’s ambitious aim, first set out in a pamphlet of 1848, was to create affordable schools across England and Wales for the Christian education of three different…

IT’S the film everyone’s talking about—a sinister story that both disturbs and delights. Saltburn, filmed at Drayton House in Northamptonshire, features a climactic scene in an elaborate garden maze. As Drayton has no maze, director and co-producer Emerald Fennell enlisted the help of Adrian Fisher, the world’s leading maze architect, to design one for the film. Masterminding more than 700 hedge, water, mirror and mosaic mazes around the world, as well as the first ‘maize maze’, chopped into a Pennsylvania cornfield, requires a busy brain. The day before our planned interview, Mr Fisher telephones me to share the concept he has for COUNTRY LIFE’s own maze, the ideas spilling over, unable to wait. His fast-moving mind is as twisting and turning as his creations. Without warning, the conversation takes another…

Surrey, £3 million Behind high hedges and mature trees, a one-acre enclave of lawns and well-stocked borders, punctuated with an ornamental fountain and outdoor swimming pool, surrounds White Lodge. On the fringes of the highly regarded market town of Farnham, with its Norman castle and former Bishops Palace, this 1920s house has been much extended over the years, to include a large conservatory and five bedrooms. The principal suite has two adjoining dressing rooms, one of which leads to a study that could be used as a sixth bedroom if desired. Knight Frank (01483 617916) North Yorkshire, £2.65 million A Georgian country house with modern-age eco credentials, Normanby Hill House has been extensively refurbished by the current owner, from plasterwork and wood panelling to the installation of air-source heat pumps,…

Shop of the month Plain English Design, 61, Pimlico Road, SW1 I WAS inspired by the “below stairs” areas of grand country houses in the 18th and 19th centuries,’ says Katie Fontana, the creative director of Plain English, about the showroom that she designed on Pimlico Road in Belgravia. The joinery business, known for its traditional, Georgian-style kitchens, has its headquarters at Stowupland Hall in Suffolk, where the materials are still made. In London, the shop unfolds room by room, not unlike a home. ‘I would often find myself daydreaming of playing house here and I hope that visitors to the showroom enjoy doing that, too,’ says Ms Fontana. The surrounding neighbourhood is a hub for interior-design businesses and antique dealers, but remains residential—there’s a thriving farmer’s market outside the…

The garden at Charlton Farm, WiltshireThe home of Mrs Simon Rivett-Carnac IF ever there were a blank canvas, it was the landscape around Charlton Farm in north Wiltshire that Sarah Rivett-Carnac, her husband, Simon, and their two young sons inherited when they moved there in 2010. Surrounding the new-build house were seven acres of grass with not a feature on them, save for two ash trees and an oak on the hedgeless boundary. Once part of the nearby Charlton Park estate, the land had been sold off between the wars and had housed a chicken farm for more than 15 years. It was then bought by the previous owners, who built a speculative house that went on the market the week of the 2008 crash and consequently stood empty for…

DO you know that feeling when your heart does a little flip at the sight of something beautiful? Mine did that last week. In fact, over the course of a couple of days, it did a series of little flips—possibly even a whole somersault. I wish I could say that what I laid my eyes on was a hidden gem, a perfect secret for a big reveal. I fear, however, I’m going to disappoint and deliver only a cliché—somewhere we all know is famously beautiful, but somewhere I had never had the good fortune to visit before. The place in question is the Alhambra in Granada, Spain. We were staying in the Parador, right in the heart of the palace, which was converted from Franciscan convent to a hotel back…

Buzzing off FIVE swarms of 50,000 rare Welsh black honeybees—previously thought to have died out in all but the most remote parts of northern Britain—have had temporarily to move house, while repair work at their home in Gwynedd, North Wales, is underway. Picturesque manor house Plas yn Rhiw, within the microclimate of the Llŷn Peninsula, dates back to the 17th century and was rescued and restored by three sisters, Eileen, Lorna and Honora Keating, after they acquired it in 1938. They were happy to share their beloved home with the honeybees that lived in the roof, even when their numbers multiplied and honey seeped through cracks in the walls in summer. When they gave it to the National Trust in 1952, they stipulated that the bees not be removed: ‘We…

SHORTLY before Easter, we saw the countryside in all its complexities. There had at last been two days without rain, so a neighbouring farmer was struggling to get sugar beet out of the ground, although the soil was hardly dry enough to take the machinery. Weeks late, it was a last desperate attempt where others had given up and left their beet and potatoes to rot. Up in London, other farmers were driving their tractors to Parliament to protest about the Government’s failure to take food security seriously. The lumbering vehicles held up traffic and got the attention of some of the media, but found little sympathy in West-minster, caught as it is in a post-Brexit dream world. For Agromenes, meanwhile, suddenly it’s spring. The years of replanting hedges and…

THE weather lore of spring, just as crops are being sown, is understandably most concerned with what sort of summer lies ahead of us—and, therefore, what sort of year it will be for yields. The saying ‘If it thunders on All Fools Day, it brings good crops of corn and hay’ actually has a sound scientific basis. Thunderstorms happen when warm air rises from well-heated ground, leading to the formation of the highly charged cumulonimbus clouds that produce thunder and lightning. Ground that is warm enough to cause thunderstorms at this moment in the year only occurs when there has been an early spring—and an early spring is often the precursor of a good growing season. There are several eastern European sayings involving St George’s Day (April 23) being the…

THE owners of this Grade II-listed, 18th-century Cotswold-stone house were keen to make sure their new kitchen had a timeless feel, so, with the help of architect and heritage consultant Eva Palacios of Historic Building Studio, a central pillar was removed to increase the usable floor space. ‘After that, our brief was to create a warm and comfortable kitchen for no-nonsense cooking and eating,’ explains Sarah Picton, senior designer at kitchen makers Plain English. ‘The clients are keen gardeners and wanted plenty of storage for kitchen-garden produce, too.’ Certain elements were non-negotiable. In lieu of an island, the clients wanted to continue using an antique prep table made of elm with a hanging batterie de cuisine above. Robert Young sourced further pieces, including the horse weathervane over the AGA and…

WHEN young Cornishman Francis Oats left school in the early 1860s, he became a miner, as did many of his classmates in west Cornwall. Yet, with an eye on a bigger prize, he would walk the seven miles from his home in St Just across the fields to Penzance, in order to attend evening classes in mining engineering. His efforts paid off. After excelling in exams, he was offered free tuition at the London School of Mines and was made a local mining captain at the age of 20. Moving to South Africa, he became chairman of De Beers and a close ally of Cecil Rhodes, accruing a significant fortune in the diamond mines and gold fields along the way. In a real-life echo of Winston Graham’s ‘Poldark’ saga, he…

IT wasn’t only the triumphant comeback of Jeremy King, the returning emperor, literally with Jésus by his side, but it marked the renaissance of the business lunch. The opening of Arlington in March reminded us that if we don’t quite have the know-how to build nuclear-power stations or high-speed rail, maintain an effective army or run a respectable police service, we can do one thing brilliantly: lunch. And not any old lunch, but the business lunch. A full-steam-ahead, bells-and-whistles, multi-course, clear-the-afternoon-diary, booze-fuelled feast. The Brits do lunch like no other. New Yorkers are a pitiful example, brandishing tepid water and actually being appalled at the idea of alcohol at lunchtime. God forbid the novice Englishman arriving in the Big Apple to entertain clients orders wine for his US counterparts. Mad…

SILVER white winters that melt into spring’ are, canonically, favourite things when it comes to the Alps, but perhaps Messrs Rodgers and Hammerstein could have spared a verse for the summertime, too. After all, a linguist (or a pedant) might tell you that the word ‘alp’ means a high mountain pasture for grazing livestock in season, rather than a mountain itself, so there’s always been more to these peaks than ski runs and raclette. It’s not that going chronologically off-piste is a new idea or that we’re letting you in on a secret. In the early 1800s, summering in the Alps was de rigueur. However, there has been a boom in recent years, fuelled by a number of factors: pandemic-era rediscovery by locals, those seeking (relative) respite from scorching heatwaves…

ON April 15, 1874, a blazing orange sun rising over the port of Le Havre freed a fishing boat from the dull vestiges of the dying night and French art from the staid shackles of the Salon’s lifeless academia. Claude Monet’s Impression: Soleil Levant lent its name to the new, revolutionary approach to painting that was presented on that April day: Impressionism. Exactly how different this style—full of loose brushstrokes and preoccupied with light—was from the rigid artistic traditions of the past emerges clearly from the Musée d’Orsay’s newly opened ‘Paris 1874: Inventing Impressionism’ exhibition in the French capital, which presents a selection of the works exhibited in April 1874 next to paintings from the Salon of that time. Nonetheless, the Anonymous society of painters, sculptors, and printmakers, as the…

‘The streets are learningthe language of plum blossom.The trees have spoken.’ ‘… It was spring,strolling forward across theearth’s surfaceat carnival pace, at the paceof a travelling fair.The highlight: blossom treesin fancy dress—some as candelabras, someas chandeliers,some in fright wigs, someas manic pierrotsthrowing sugared almonds andcherry lipsinto the streets…’From The Spectators ‘The bees buy and sell.It’s market day on Plum Street.Pollen changes hands.’ ‘… Blossom the magiciantransformedwinter’s curfew hoursinto foaming white petals.Abracadabra: flowers…’From Blossom: a CV ‘Wind plays through theboughs.Today a pear tree in bloom,tomorrow a flute.’ ‘… Planet Earth in party mode,petals fizzing and frothinglike pink champagne…’From Birthday ‘… The trees wore flowersin their hair,and on the hill you stoppedto stareat blackthorn, apple, cherry,pear,as blossom blossomedeverywhereand everywhere andeverywhere…’From Folk Song ‘… Scented and powderedshe’s staginga one-tree showwith hi-viz blossomsand lip-gloss…

What else did he do? Banks returned from Australia with a kangaroo skin from which the artist George Stubbs was able to create The Kongouro from New Holland He was the first British expert on Iceland He helped organise the notorious voyage of HMS Bounty He was George III’s agricultural adviser and wrote a paper about how merino sheep would benefit the British wool industry Banks was a founding member of the RHS and the longest-standing president of the Royal Society, for 41 years SIR JOSEPH BANKS didn’t technically found the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew (above)—it was George III’s mother, Princess Augusta, who started a garden there—but he literally sowed the first seeds of its becoming a world centre for plant genetics employing 400-plus scientists. Banks sent seeds to…

IN 1814, in Book 1 of his long poem The Excursion, William Wordsworth described the landscape as it emerged tentatively after winter: on a ‘sunny bank’, he wrote, ‘the primrose flower peeped forth, to give an earnest of the Spring’. It is not perhaps his best line, but, nevertheless, some 30 years later, John William Inchbold—an adherent of the Pre-Raphaelite Brother-hood—was inspired enough to paint a literal and descriptive picture of the image Wordsworth had evoked. A Study, In March was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1855. Inchbold would spend the later part of his life abroad, but in this picture of an upland ridge lit by a low sun, he captured an archetypal British spring in which Wordsworth’s words have been interpreted in crisp and minute detail. John…

MOST interior designers agree that, when in search of ideas for colour, it pays to look outside. ‘Nature is always a good source of inspiration for a colour palette,’ says interior designer Emma Sims-Hilditch. Her current go-to green is Sage by Neptune, which has warm, fresh and inviting qualities. ‘There are so many different tones and hues of green in the garden and beyond—and they all work beautifully together.’ Ruth Mottershead, creative director of Little Greene, agrees. ‘Because greens are fairly neutral and often contain both blue and red, they are incredibly versatile. They serve as a natural extension of the exterior, giving the impression of bringing the outside in.’ She recommends teaming a bright green, such as Little Greene’s Sage & Onions, with Loft White or Flint for a…

YOU’LL recognise the setting and the scene is familiar—fans standing shoulder to shoulder, whooping, cheering and clamouring to meet the artist at the merch table afterwards—but the performers may prompt a double-take, such is the simple subversion of Noisenights. For four years, these nights, programmed by Through The Noise, have been providing classical music up close; taking artists out of the rarefied surrounds of plush-seated concert halls and into the more low-key trappings of some of the capital’s best-loved gig venues. Fans are close, both literally and figuratively, to the performance: each Noisenight event is entirely crowdfunded by its attendees. ‘It’s partly grassroots financial support,’ explains Through The Noise founder and artistic director Jack Bazalgette, ‘but it’s also an atmosphere thing. When you introduce it by thanking everybody for making…

LOOK again. Beyond the black and pink ostrich feathers, massed in glass vases, are chocolate-coloured lipsticks, reflected in 1,000 mirrors. There are baked beans in customised cans and biscuits in patterned paper bags and the walls are papered with leopard prints. Potted palms thrust arching stems towards the light, the scent of Madonna lilies merges with the body odour and bubblegum of the communal changing areas. Is the floor pink marble? If you want false eyelashes, the owner has ordered 25,000 pairs. There are black nappies, too, scarcely visible in the carefully dim lighting, glossy black coffee cups and, draped over bentwood stands, strings and strings of beads alongside feather boas in the dusty, watercolour hues of old women’s knickers. On a sofa in the window, benign beyond the fray,…

Rural Hours: The Country Lives of Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Townsend Warner & Rosamond Lehmann Harriet Baker (Allen Lane, £25) I MUST go and plant lettuces. What a spring, what a spring,’ wrote novelist Rosamond Lehmann to a friend in April 1945, as if her life’s primary urgency, as the Second World War staggered exhaustedly to its close, was the demands of her garden. In Rural Hours, Harriet Baker traces a relationship between writers and their surrounds, and assesses the impact of rural domesticity, including the exigencies of wartime housekeeping, on Lehmann, Sylvia Townsend Warner and Virginia Woolf, a loosely connected trio. The relationship between environment and imagination is one the women themselves would have recognised: years later, Townsend Warner explained that ‘an old teapot, used daily, can tell me more…

MY grandmother was born under the wide skies of the Argentinian Pampas, on an estancia that belonged to her father; he’d made, lost and made a fortune, as only Victorians could, by investing in cattle and land. Back then, the Argentine, as my mother’s family called it, was close to being a British colony. Scottish engineers laid miles of track, British bankers laid out wads of capital, everyone in Britain ate corned beef and there was a branch of Harrods in Buenos Aires, the only branch in the world. (I inherited a linen jacket from the store and had it mended many years later by a tailor in Benghazi.) By 1939, nearly half of investment in the country came from the UK. My grandmother was one of three girls. Outdoors,…