Innholdsfortegnelse for May 22, 2024 i Country Life

Quiz of the week 1) Which band headlined the first Glastonbury Festival (then the Pilton Pop, Folk and Blues Festival) in 1970? 2) Calluna plants are more commonly known by what name? 3) Grizedale Forest is located in which National Park? 4) Which BBC offering is the longest-running children’s television programme in the world? 5) What mode of transport was reintroduced to the city of Manchester in 1992? Riddle me this Two fathers and two sons went fishing. They each caught a fish, but only three fish were caught. How can this be so? 1) T. Rex 2) Heather (or ling) 3) Lake District National Park 4) ‘Blue Peter’ 5) Trams. Riddle me this: They were grandfather, father and son Time to buy On this day… May 22, 1840 The…

MAKE the boy interested in natural history if you can… Guard him against indolence,’ wrote Capt Robert Scott in his last letter to his wife. Peter Scott (1909–89) was only two when his father perished in Antarctica in 1912, but that small boy grew up to engender a worldwide conservation movement, as well as being a writer (he was first published by COUNTRY LIFE) and artist of note. Sir Peter (he was the first Briton to be knighted for services to conservation) was good at pretty much everything: he was the first president of the Society of Wildlife Artists, he won an Olympic bronze medal for sailing in 1936, he was a national glider-flying champion and was decorated in the Second World War. He was also a good wildfowling shot,…

FROM a distance, the nearly completed walled enclosure, where two figures are companionably chipping away at one of the walls, could be mistaken for a sheepfold. In fact, this is a workshop space in the middle of a field at the Somerset estate of The Newt, where dry-stone wallers Tom Trouton and his stepson, Liam Brady, are ‘planting’ a stone tree into the waist-high wall. There is no technical plan, no metal framework—only three piles of stones, a bucket of hammers and Mr Trouton’s skill. The leaning trunk in beige Hadspen limestone, which looks brown set against the grey tones of the wall, is already in place and now Mr Trouton selects a chunky piece of Shaftesbury greenstone, rounds off the edges with a few sharp knocks of the hammer…

WHEN the owners bought this historic house on the edge of a Northamptonshire village, it quickly became apparent that the layout of the ground floor didn’t suit their needs. ‘The kitchen was very dark with low ceilings and looked out over the drive where cars were parked,’ explains the interior designer Nicola Harding. ‘Instead, we moved the kitchen from the saddest part of the house to a space that not only has an abundance of natural light, but also overlooks the garden.’ ‘We wanted to create an airy room where our clients would want to spend a lot of time,’ explains Mrs Harding. At first glance, it appears to be painted entirely in white, but there are, in fact, a mix of different shades. ‘A single tone would look too…

Cornwall, £1.95 million Set within seven acres bordered by the River Camel, just outside the hamlet of Dunmere, about two miles from Bodmin, five-bedroom, three-bathroom The Dairy marries traditional and modern to allow for tranquil multi-generational living; there are two kitchens, large dining and reception rooms, sitting rooms and an additional ‘snug’ at the rear of the property. Formerly part of the Pencarrow estate, its outbuildings include a greenhouse, potting shed, workshop and a cabin with a wood-burning stove and loo. For the eco-conscious, floor-mounted solar panels pay their way and any potential buyer could utilise their new fishing rights to catch supper. Three successful holiday cottages provide a lucrative income. Jackson-Stops (01872 261160) Devon, £1.5 million Designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens, who needs no introduction within the pages of…

Creamy tarragon prawns and asparagus with spinach gnocchi Method ▸ Preheat your oven to 180˚C/350˚F/gas mark 4. ▸ Rub oil over the potatoes and bake for an hour or until cooked through. Scoop out the flesh into a bowl. Mix in the egg yolks and then sprinkle over the flour—you may find you need slightly more or less—add the chopped spinach and mix to form a dough. Roll it out into long sausages and cut into bite-size pieces. You can use them immediately or chill, covered, until you need them. When ready to cook, bring a large pan of salted water to a boil and add the gnocchi. As soon as they reach the surface, remove with a slotted spoon and add to a large frying pan heated with a…

IN the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Britain’s coastline was dotted with artists’ colonies. From Walberswick in Suffolk and Staithes in Yorkshire to Cullercoats near the Tyne and Kirkcudbright in Galloway, the quays and coves of small fishing villages were cluttered with easels, as well as nets. There were inland gatherings, too, such as the one at Betws-y-Coed in Snowdonia that took root in the 1840s, but most painters headed to the seaside. The most celebrated colonies were in Cornwall. Those that grew there from the 1880s—in St Ives, Newlyn, Lamorna and Polperro—became famous around the world. This was the time when artists’ colonies attached themselves like barnacles to the shores of Europe and the US, when little-known harbour towns, such as Pont-Aven (which attracted Paul Gauguin and Emile…

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Future Publishing Ltd, 121–141 Westbourne Terrace, Paddington, London W2 6JR 0330 390 6591; www.countrylife.co.uk ARE we nearly there yet?’ If you are driving west on the A303, chances are, you aren’t. This arterial route to the delights of Devon and beyond, which runs entirely through mellow farmland, from treeless Salisbury Plain through the atmospheric barrows of ancient Wessex chalk downland to the unsung National Landscape (formerly AONB) of the Blackdown Hills, was not built for epic volumes of impatient, 21st-century traffic (page 124). When Robert Louis Stevenson said that ‘to travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive’, he probably wasn’t gazing into the back of a lorry with Polo mints and crisps as supper and a lacklustre game of I Spy with My Little Eye—F is for field,…

Pleasant pastures seen YOU suggest that Jerusalem was written from Felpham, West Sussex, where William Blake (right) was living at the time (‘A celebration of local pride’, May 1). Local belief is that Blake composed the poem when gazing over the South Downs towards the Trundle from a window in the Earl of March pub in Lavant, near Chichester, West Sussex. Rosemary Ashford, West Sussex Twin peaks IT was so lovely to see reference to the wonderful Wittenham Clumps (right), as seen and painted by Paul Nash (‘Et in Arcadia ego’, May 1). My memory of the Clumps goes back 70 years when, as a family, we would visit regularly from our home at RAF Benson. As a mere four year old, I had not quite grasped the naming and…

The Badminton Game by David Inshaw ‘This painting evokes the beauty and mystery of an English summer. It has a haunting quality, enhanced by the juxtaposition of light and shade. The dense trees appear to overwhelm the players: there is something almost sinister about them. The painting draws you in, but I think I might feel a little intimidated if I found myself in such a setting. When I was a child, there was a huge cedar tree in my grandparents’ garden; I was fascinated by it, yet could not bring myself to go near it. I feel the same fascination for this work. Above all, I love the way the painter has captured the scene. One can almost hear the thwack of the racquets, feel the heat of the…

HURTLING west, bound perhaps for the soft sand beaches of south Devon or the thunderous surf of Cornwall, brings the promise of lazy days, picnicking alfresco, immersion in an absorbing book, invigorating clifftop walks and a brief hiatus from the humdrum of everyday life. The destination is utopian, but reaching it can be as far removed from paradise as it is possible to imagine, for there are few fast roads that join the A30, which has the ultimate responsibility for transporting travellers into Britain’s deep South-West. The three-lane M5, which begins at West Bromwich and ends in Exeter, is businesslike, monotonous and built for swift journey times, barring when accidents induce tailbacks or sheer volume of traffic forces cars and lorries to a crawl. By contrast, the more southern A303,…

BENEATH Plymouth’s Royal Citadel are two carvings of giants, a Cerne Abbas in duplicate. Their extra-ordinary story can be found within the weighty tomes of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s The History of the Kings of Britain, albeit eclipsed by the sexier legend of King Arthur. From the top of Cox Tor on Dartmoor, I watch Plymouth Sound, imagining Brutus’s astonishment on his arrival at Totnes, expecting these isles to be uninhabited and coming face to face with a fierce army of giants. Against the odds, the giants are defeated and their leader Gogmagog left running for his life. He hides on Dartmoor and, as I look down, I can see his towering frame lying low as the soil turns to mire with his tears for losing his beloved Albion. ‘In this…

ONE of the many joys of classic English and American decoration is the clarity of its four fundamental tenets: timeless good looks, comfort, a bit of creativity and nothing that will scare the horses. Stray into more modish genres and you find prevailing tastes being pushed and pulled between maximalism and minimalism in a relentless cycle of revolution and counter-revolution. Colour plays a big part in the ebb and flow; in turning their backs on the rich palettes favoured by decorators in the 1990s, designers keen to create a pared-back style relied on countless shades of white that were applied not only to walls and furniture, but often to floors as well. In the following decade, colour was back and this time often applied to every element in a room,…

The garden of Chilcombe House, Dorset The home of the Hubbard family I LAST visited Chilcombe House more than 30 years ago when it belonged to the acclaimed American painter John Hubbard, who, for 50 years, made his home in England with his wife, Caryl, and who created the garden. John died in 2017 and Caryl in 2021 and Chilcombe now belongs to their children, Kate and Edmund. As I approached for my return visit, I was intrigued as to what I would discover after such a long time, not least because I vividly remembered the powerful sense of place portrayed by the simple stone house, its intimate yet ebullient garden and the surrounding Dorset landscape folding down to the sea a few miles away. I need not have worried.…

THIN scents like lilac are far more suitable for women of the Saxon type, and it is best to leave carnation, musk, and tuberose to the languorous beauties of the harem.’ Such a sentence is not one that might be expected from a 1922 edition of the Penrith Observer, but it does nicely encapsulate the irredeemably colourful reputation of the tuberose. By contrast, the flower from which the fragrance is collected is innocence itself, the virginal white of its natural blooms preceded by a modest blush of pink on the unopened buds. ‘Intriguer of the night’, ‘Mistress of the night,/So like a bride, scented and bright’, the fragrance of tuberose is—and has always been—one for women who mean business, sometimes literally so. Saint or sinner, it is regrettable that this…

MIGHT one assume that the buyer of lot 820 in Woolley & Wallis’s ‘Parker & Morris: The Art of Decorating’ auction last month was not a dedicated gardener? Surely, even the greenest-fingered would baulk at paying £2,394 for 17 snail shells. However, it was not fingers, but the shells that were emerald green, originally having been inhabited by Manus Tree Snails, which are found only on one of the Admiralty Islands off Papua New Guinea, where they are known as ‘forest jewels’. They are as beautiful as, presumably, they are fragile, and came from the eclectic collections amassed in their various homes by two late interior decorators. Derek Parker was born in Leith outside Edinburgh and Peter Wynne Morris in Melbourne, Australia; they met in 1959, becoming partners professionally and…

IN order to succeed at succession, there needs to be a solid plan in place, yet 42% of estate owners in the UK don’t have one, finds a new report by Historic Houses (HH) and chartered accountants and business advisors Saffery. Mitigating the perils of inheritance tax (IHT) is top priority for 56% of estate owners, with other goals being the preservation of assets, long-term viability and the avoidance of family disputes. In our new ‘inheritocracy’ of a society, the issue of how we hand over assets feels bigger than ever before. ‘Globally, about $100 trillion is set to be passed down to millennial and Gen X heirs over the next two decades, in what has been dubbed the greatest transfer of wealth in history,’ claims the report. Within the…

THE countryside is first and foremost about farming. Over the centuries, agriculture has created the British landscape. We rightly talk of farmers’ roles in protecting the environment, recovering our biodiversity and fighting climate change, but we must never forget that, in a world where food supplies are increasingly under threat, we depend on British agriculture for 60% of our food. Historically, years of subsidy isolated farmers from their customers, but recent changes in support, not only in Brexit Britain, but also in Continental Europe, have forced them to seek to get closer to their markets in order to improve their margins. Those markets are getting ever more complex and demanding. Nowhere is that more evident than in changes in our basic staple—bread. Most of our wheat production has gone into…

Hartland Abbey, Devon, part I A seat of Sir Hugh and Lady Stucley MARVELLOUSLY situated in a tranquil valley along the rugged Atlantic coast of Devon, Hartland Abbey seems at first glance like a Regency house in the Gothic style so beloved by the late-Georgian squirearchy of Britain. Behind its crenellated façade and pointed windows, however, there is a much deeper history, one which extends all the way back to the emergence of Christianity in western Britain. In fact, at nearby Stoke—the site of Hartland’s medieval parish church (Fig 4)—there is evidence for a small early religious site, focused around the cult and relics of a local hermit, Nectan. By the time of the Norman Conquest, this had emerged as a major English ‘minster’, served by a body of priests,…

A MEMBER of the cast of The Two Gentlemen of Verona is a dog called Crab. The only canine to appear in a Shakespearean play, Crab is a naughty dog. He steals a chicken and widdles on a lady’s dress. His master, Lance, says: ‘I think Crab, my dog, be the sourest-natured dog that lives.’ It was in Shakespeare’s time that bad-tempered people were first described as being crabby. Real crabs can certainly appear rather grumpy. If you find one of these crustaceans at the beach hunkering in a rockpool, it will likely either scuttle away sideways and hide in some seaweed or stand its ground and brandish a pair of pinching claws at you, hoping you’ll be scared enough to leave it alone. Get to know them, however, and…

THE ancient Wiltshire parish of Woodford lies between Salisbury and Amesbury on the western side of the River Avon, bounded on the east by the winding course of the river and on the west by the old turnpike road from Salisbury to Devizes, now the A360. The land rises sharply from some 200ft above sea level in the valley to about 400ft at the top of the down. The land on the slopes is mainly pasture and, in the valley, the famous chalkstream runs fast and deep. For centuries, it was fished by permission of the lords of the manors of Woodford and Heale. It’s a tranquil pastoral setting where, according to the Victoria County History (1962), ‘the most notable event in the history of the parish occurred in 1651,…

AS usual after a holiday, I returned home to discover that the garden had put on a massive growth spurt. The roses that had only just been setting out their leaves were beginning to bud, the cornflowers had quadrupled in size and were generously offering their brilliant-blue flowers to the skies and the pearly spikelets of Briza media, the perfectly named quaking grass, which has taken years to get its feet down, were glittering in the breeze. Most satisfying of all, one of the succulents that I had tucked into the gaps in our crumbling stone garden wall had not only taken, but had pushed out buttons of new green growth. (Often, the lashings of rain wash them out of their crannies.) This was all the more pleasing to see…

IT’S like this from quarter to 12 until about 4pm,’ says Paul Rothe, surveying the hectic scene inside 35, Marylebone Lane, London W1. ‘One minute, there’s nobody around; the next, all hell breaks loose.’ His sandwich shop, the capital’s oldest (established in 1900) and most famous, is a glorious time capsule: Formica-topped tables are arranged cosily under shelves groaning with pickles, mustards and ginger biscuits. At the heart of it is a deli counter, where the Rothe team assembles sandwiches from scratch, to order: if you want a bespoke sarnie, this is the place to come. Can you really have anything you like? ‘We once had a young lady coming in asking for a sardine, pork sausagemeat and Branston Pickle sandwich,’ Mr Rothe remembers. ‘I thought she must have taken…

BRITAIN smelled awful in the past. Refuse filled the streets, sanitation was primitive and people were strangers to regular bathing. To fend off the stench, the Georgians took to carrying around, suspended from a chatelaine (belt hook), little silver boxes containing a sponge soaked in perfume or aromatic vinegar. These vinaigrettes, as they became known in the 1780s, could conveniently be lifted to the nose whenever an offending smell attacked the nostrils and the scent wafting through their perforated grilles would provide immediate respite. Soon, style matched function: the plain boxes with hinged lids and grilles of the late 18th century developed into real works of art. Much the same evolution happened to the collection of Laurie Hearn, who bought his first silver box a little more than 20 years…

The Missing Thread Daisy Dunn (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, £25) READING Daisy Dunn’s admirable new book, subtitled A New History of the Ancient World through the Women Who Shaped It, I couldn’t shake Zoffany’s portrait of the founders of the Royal Academy out of my mind. It shows them chatting and joshing with each other as they assess two life models, surrounded by Classical busts and statuary. You might at first miss the portraits of two women in contemporary, Georgian, dress, hanging directly above the male nudes and striking a slightly incongruous note. They are of the two female founding academicians, the celebrated artists Mary Moser and Angelica Kauffmann, who were not painted alongside their fellow academicians, but relegated to the walls: it was deemed unfitting for women to be in…