Innholdsfortegnelse for April 10, 2024 i Country Life

The Town Hall, Rochdale, Greater Manchester WE cannot have beauty without paying for it.’ So said George Leach Ashworth, the Mayor of Rochdale, at the opening of its new Town Hall on September 27, 1871. His words had a point, for the cost of the building had spiralled from an initial budget of £20,000 to the vast sum of £154,755. This had aroused great controversy, but the Mayor could claim in justification that the result was a masterpiece: Rochdale Town Hall is one of the most magnificent Victorian buildings in Britain. Now, its superb qualities may once again be appreciated fully, for the Town Hall has just emerged from a major renovation project at a cost of £20 million. In 2024—as in 1871—the results amply justify the expense. Today, the…

ANTIQUE textiles and rugs are often the starting point for Henriette von Stockhausen, creative director of VSP Interiors, whose schemes effortlessly look as if they have been collected over decades. In the case of this principal bedroom in a Georgian country house in Hampshire, it was an antique suzani that acted as the catalyst. ‘I showed it to my client and suggested it could be made into a headboard,’ explains the Dorset-based decorator. ‘She immediately fell in love with it and we built the scheme for the rest of the bedroom from there.’ The client specified that the dominant colour should be blue at the outset of the project, but what the suzani provided was a combination of complementary colours, notably red and cream. ‘It set the scene perfectly and…

MOST clients come via word of mouth,’ says Guy Meacock, director of Prime Purchase (020–7881 2388). ‘The wealthy are used to getting advice, based on experience. Shouldn’t that be even more the case when it comes to your home?’ In the mid and upper echelons of the housing market, buying agents are familiar faces, quietly navigating highs and lows on behalf of their clients. In the Cotswolds prime country-house market, for example, 50% of transactions above £2 million involve buying agents. This proportion rises to 80% for homes of £10 million and over, says Jonathan Bramwell, head of The Buying Solution (01488 657912). An ability to scour the market for time-pressed buyers is one of the buying agent’s trump cards, complemented by local knowledge and a little black book of…

I HAVE had many horticultural enthusiasms, but I have never really caught the orchid bug. Better gardeners than me—rather more passionate plantsmen—have orchid houses with graded temperature zones for the different species: cool-ish is fine for cymbidiums, slightly warmer for phalaenopsis and steamy tropical heat for vanilla orchids. I’ve seen them, too, in Mediterranean gardens—Carolyn Hanbury has vast clumps of dendrobiums in pots at La Mortola, Italy—and in tropical gardens (oh, the dark-blue vandas in Singapore!), but, somehow, they never really engender any great fondness, let alone love or passion, in my temperate soul. That’s fine—one cannot fall for everything and, after all, some people don’t share my enthusiasm for roses. More fool them. This is the month to go orchid hunting in Mediterranean countries. The richness and profusion of…

ONE of the most extraordinary events in the history of broadcasting took place 100 years ago, in a Surrey garden near Limpsfield. Foyle Riding was home to the leading British cellist Beatrice Harrison, who, on May 19, 1924, became world famous overnight when the BBC—in one of its first live outside broadcasts—relayed her ‘duetting’ in her garden with a nightingale. The broadcast achieved a worldwide audience of millions and Harrison’s subsequent ‘cello and nightingale’ relays direct from her garden became regular, much-anticipated events for the next 12 years. Harrison was a wonderful cellist. Born on December 9, 1892, in the foothills of the Himalayas, she was the second of a quartet of musical daughters. Her father belonged to a distinguished military family; her mother, Annie, was a striking, raven-haired Celt…

Every Living Thing: The Great and Deadly Race to Know all Life Jason Roberts (Quercus, £25) THIS absorbing and lucidly written account of how we came to name and categorise our birds, beasts and plants begins with two men, both born in 1707 to families of modest, if not straitened, circumstances, who developed a passion for natural history. Carl Linnaeus published his Systema Naturae in 1735, when man’s understanding of the natural world was still shaped by the Bible, Aristotle and a jumble of notions and beliefs, including the Great Chain of Being, a pyramid of perfection that ranked the world from slugs and weeds at the bottom to angels and God at the top. Linnaeus’s revolution began with the insight that flowers might be separated into identifiable categories by…

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Future Publishing Ltd, 121–141 Westbourne Terrace, Paddington, London W2 6JR 0330 390 6591; www.countrylife.co.uk All in the April morningApril airs were abroad;The sheep with their little lambsPass’d me by on the road. IT may not look much like spring—the sodden fields, the lowering, grey skies—but at least it is starting to sound like spring (when it’s not the batter of hailstones, the howl of wind or the drip of wet thatch). It’s been rotten lambing weather, but the matronly calling of ewes to their truanting offspring, evoked by Irish poet Katharine Tynan’s early 20th-century work, is one of the happier April noises that contributes to a more cheerful season. At the moment, birds are trilling mainly in solo passages: here the blackbird on flute and the robin on piccolo, there…

Egg-cellent spot YOU correct Clarence Court on the matter of ‘fabulous eggs by fabulous birds’ (Agromenes, March 27). Surely, it’s only hens that lay eggs, not chickens? Louise Mangles, by email Echoing the message WHAT a deeply profound, but accessible, article by Revd Heber-Percy (Leader, March 27). I’d summarise it as: I do not know and perhaps I do not need to know. I am lost and I will be found. Of course, recognition is also a journey and acceptance of that in itself gives us hope and sustenance—or should to any healthy and sentient human being. Let us see more of these occasional observations, as they may prompt a healthy debate without religious ministering. Ian Jakeway, Derbyshire Demons are forever YOU correctly list the admirable qualities of James VI…

SO much gloom is written about conservation statistics that we tend to forget the success stories. The heartwarming tale of how Philip Wayre, a film-maker and naturalist, restored the otter to English rivers is one such. By the late 1970s, the only healthy British otter populations were in Scotland and odd spots in the South-West, due to the pollution of English rivers by pesticides; sightings of this enchanting mammal were painfully rare. Wayre (1921–2014) and his wife, Jeanne, had started the Otter Trust in 1971 to highlight the problem; their aim was to breed the animals in captivity to release into the wild. They released the first captive-bred otters into the River Blackwater in Suffolk in 1983. Wayre had already made an unsuccessful foray into agriculture when he turned his…

ESTEEMED herbalist Nicholas Culpeper wrote in his 1653 treatise that ‘Providence has made the most useful things most common and for that reason we neglect them’. He was making particular reference to one of our most familiar of wild plants, shepherd’s purse, that leggy weed whose modest, but unmistakable white pancake racemes so readily decorate hedgerows, verges, waste ground and field margins. Today, we certainly neglect shepherd’s purse, but it deserves more than a passing thought. Its name alone should claim our interest. Unusually for a plant, let alone a weed, it carries a double-barrelled Latin classification, Capsella bursa-pastoris, determined by Linnaeus and confirmed by his less-renowned German contemporary Friedrich Medikus, although it was assigned to the Brassicaceae (cabbage) family by British botanist Gilbert Burnett. It translates directly into the…

THE course in traditional painting techniques at the Van der Kelen Logelain institute in Brussels can involve working seven days a week for up to 11 hours a day. At times, students are required to paint by candlelight, to mimic the conditions in which artists worked before the advent of electricity. Such is the physicality of the work that the upper age limit is 50. However rarefied the results, the demands of this art form are, without doubt, challenging. Happily, the hard work has never discouraged artists: the most luxurious villas in Pompeii were finished with faux marble effects and decorative painting reached new heights of sophistication in the Renaissance. Today, not everyone working in the field goes through a Van der Kelen-style training. Some are self-taught, others have undertaken…

THERE’S not much in Manthorpe, the tiny former estate village just outside Grantham in Lincolnshire—only a postbox and a parish noticeboard. Yet it’s packed full of character and that’s partly down to names: almost every house has got one. Some are more obviously chosen than others. Holly Cottage is demarcated by an enormous holly hedge; The Old Post Office retains its now-defunct postbox; and the Old Reading Room, once a recreational building for estate workers, is fittingly often the place for village get-togethers. ‘Names can be more revealing than they intend’ At the last count, ‘The Cottage’ was the most popular house name in the UK, followed by ‘Rose Cottage’. Within The Buying Solution, Knight Frank’s independent buying agency’s database, an ecclesiastical bias to the most popular names is revealed:…

IN the claustrophobic gloom of Caravaggio’s 1610 The Martyrdom of Saint Ursula, a dark, burly man is shoving his way into the centre of the frame. His expression, mouth open, is enigmatic: is he coming to cheer on the executioner, whose bow has just fired the fatal shot or to rescue the saint looking down with calm acceptance at the quivering arrow piercing her breast? Is he merely excited at the drama? He certainly looks, as described by a contemporary, ‘a stocky young man… with thick eyebrows and black eyes’. It is unquestionably a self-portrait of the artist and, whatever his intention, he is acting exactly as he did throughout his short, turbulent life—barging his way towards, rather than away from, trouble. The painting is coming on loan to the…

PERHAPS she is preparing to be married. Behind her, a maidservant holds out a necklace to place around her throat, another presents a casket containing cosmetics or additional pieces of jewellery—and above her is a hand mirror, a bright pale circle smaller than the young woman’s face. This scene, dating from the 5th century BC, appears on a painted terracotta cosmetics box, or pyxis, now in the collection of the British Museum. An almost identical hand mirror, held by another seated young woman, is seen on a painted vase of similar date in the National Archaeological Museum in Athens, Greece. Much in both images points to the status of the two women, most of all their possession of mirrors, which were costly and highly coveted. Two thousand years previously, the…

LAST month, the Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust (GWCT) met in North Yorkshire for its annual Game Management Conference. Chairman Sir Jim Paice, a former Defra Minister, set the direction of conversation when he said, candidly, that ‘when people complain that shooting is unregulated, [the] Government needs to be able to say it has proof that it has its house in order. Otherwise, regulation will follow, as sure as night follows day’. ‘Voluntary accreditation in the form of initiatives such as Aim to Sustain’s new Game Assurance Scheme’ (which ensures game is handled correctly) are the answer, he said: ‘We need shoots to sign up across the board.’ The GWCT also pioneers ‘best practice’ principles, such as avoiding the release of pheasants and partridges into sensitive habitats and not shooting…

WELL, we haven’t stopped the boats. The Rwanda Bill was supposed to deter illegal migrants. It hasn’t and it won’t. The rhetoric suggests that illegal migrants will be shipped off and Britain will be rid of them. The truth is that Rwanda isn’t yet ready to take any migrants; when it is, it will only take a few hundred and every one who does go will cost the British taxpayer £1.9 million. The Bill’s real purpose is to give the Government ammunition to claim that the opposition are ‘woke’ supporters of untrammelled immigration. It’s an election ploy. However, no political party is prepared to face the nation with the unvarnished truth. The facts are these. Every country in Europe is faced with a migration problem and Britain has one of…

WE are never more than 72 miles from the sea. Britain, including the islands, has a coastline of more than 19,000 miles, a mere 5,000 miles shorter than the circumference of the earth and blessed with all the diversity for which the land has been lauded for centuries. Yet, until the late 18th century—and, really, not until the 20th century—the coast was a distant poor relation, perceived as merely the abode of fishing folk, military fortifications, lawless pirates and smugglers. This was despite Britannia long and proudly parodying itself as an island race and ruling the waves. William Cobbett in his Rural Rides (1821–26) generally gave the coast a wide berth and H. V. Morton, a century later in his In Search of England, charted a decidedly inland course. The…

WOW!house 2024 Now in its third year, WOW!house has become one of the world’s leading showcases for inspiring design. This year’s show will run from June 4–July 4 at the Design Centre, Chelsea Harbour, London SW10, presenting an opportunity to wander through 19 inspirational rooms created by leading interior designers. The rooms will include the Tissus d’Hélène drawing room created by Guy Good-fellow, Jamb primary bedroom by Charlotte Freemantle and Will Fisher, Colefax and Fowler morning room by Lucy Hammond Giles (above), Watts 1874 legend room by Alidad and Schumacher courtyard bedroom by Veere Grenney Associates (020–7225 9166; www.dcch.co.uk) Fresh look From the Eden collection by Blithfield, Springfield linen in Aquamarine, £143 per m, has been used here to create an eye-catching headboard, shown with cushion in Camden Sage, £132…

THE vast, Grade I-listed Jacobean Dorfold Hall, just outside the market town of Nantwich in Cheshire, was built, so the story goes, for a visit by James I. Completed in 1621, the property and its surrounding estate of 101 acres have been in the home of the Roundell family ever since, making a few detours along the way down the female line. Many of the original 17th-century interiors have been beautifully preserved, such as the ornate plaster ceiling in the drawing room, commissioned in 1621 to celebrate the unification of England and Scotland. Changes over the centuries have included a remodelling of the ground floor by architect Samuel Wyatt in 1771. Later, in 1862, William Nesfield was commissioned to rearrange the landscape. During the Second World War, the house was…

The garden of Midsummer House, Oxfordshire The home of Mrs Anthony Spink THE first thing you notice about Penny Spink’s garden at Midsummer House is its ebullience. As do many of the best gardens, it reflects the character of its owner and celebrates plants in a joyous, artistic manner. It also demonstrates the enjoyment that can come from the centuries-old tradition of naming plants after people. As you walk around, Mrs Spink will point and remark: ‘Look at “Phyllis Bide” next to Princess Margareta of Denmark, she’s pretty but very prickly… I love “Corning”, she’s so delicate’ and other such asides. The second thing you notice is how immediately the garden wraps around the house like a secure embrace. But Midsummer House is not only about plants. It has a…

THE lamprey is a strange, sinister and primitive fish, more suited to slithering through the darkest recesses of your deepest fears than being turned into a pie. Long, sinuous and slimy, this eel-like beast has a rounded sucking disk for a mouth, packed with razor-sharp teeth. And, although it clamps onto its prey (pretty much anything that swims, from sole to shark), extracting the blood like a deep-sea Dracula, its tastes are admirably omnivorous. In Ancient Rome, lampreys were highly prized as delicacies, farmed in vast tanks. Tanks into which errant slaves were pushed by cruel masters, to suffer a slow and excruciating death. Their meaty flesh was similarly adored in medieval times. Indeed, Henry I was famously supposed to have perished thanks to a ‘surfeit of lampreys’, baked into…

AN antique mirror can transform a room, reflecting light, adding a decorative quality and creating a feature in settings where an artwork might be too dominant,’ says Laura Dadswell, director of antique specialist Westland London. ‘There is something quite magical about the shimmering surface of an 18th-century mercury plate that many people love.’ It was in the 18th century that mirrors became popular as symbols of wealth and prestige, influenced by the pattern books of designers (and tastemakers), such as Thomas Chippendale, Thomas Sheraton and John Linnell, their work drawn upon by other cabinetmakers. ‘As a result, there are more opportunities to find an antique mirror from this period onwards, although, of course, quality and condition will vary,’ says Mrs Dadswell. The most obvious indicator of age is usually to…