Innholdsfortegnelse for June 12, 2024 i Country Life

Future Publishing Ltd, 121–141 Westbourne Terrace, Paddington, London W2 6JR 0330 390 6591; www.countrylife.co.uk IT is bin day and a colourful array of receptacles lines the road. Many of us, let’s face it, depend on an informed neighbour to put theirs out first—oh look, it’s black/green bins this week—before hastily following suit. Some of us even rely helplessly on a local bin anorak to shuffle through our debris and re-categorise it, separating cardboard from newspapers, glass from plastic. Yet the confusion is understandable, for over the border in the next borough a different system may well operate, with only one bin for all recyclables (‘The COUNTRY LIFE green manifesto’, page 80). The Government’s Environment Act 2021 was supposed to straighten inconsistencies, yet councils continue to operate confusing and varied collection…

Treading softly WITH the sun at last out and the warmth encouraging us to prepare for summer’s glorious blooms, we need to tread warily as we spring clean those stacks of pots and baskets. On my wife’s recent clear-out, she found a plastic bag of moss used for Christmas wreaths by the back door. She was about to remove the moss, only to find a robin sitting on its nest (pictured). Horrified that she might have driven it away, she carefully replaced the bag and was heartily relieved to see robin redbreast flitting backwards and forwards to feed its young, but we are now treading around the garden with extra care. Sir Gerald Howarth, Suffolk Goodbye, Londinium THE fact that there are 500 proposed new tower blocks (more than 20…

‘This wonderful portrait depicts Elizabeth II at her birthday parade, when 2nd Battalion Coldstream Guards trooped their colour 70 years ago this month. The late Queen is depicted glancing away from inspecting her troops to look directly at the viewer, inviting you into the scene. As she sits side-saddle on her horse, Winston, her ramrod-straight back contrasts with her gentle smile–epitomising her sense of service and her sense of humour. Today, the portrait hangs in our Officers’ Mess in Windsor, where the late Queen looks into the ante room, keeping a watchful eye over us and setting an example to us all. No 7 Company Coldstream Guards will troop their colour at The King’s Birthday Parade next year–the regiment’s 375th anniversary. We are now on the hunt to find an…

CONSIDER, for a moment, the traditional sounds of a British summer: the soft jangling of china crockery on a picnic blanket; the thwack of willow hitting leather on a village green; the politely ordered cacophony of a brass band ‘tuning up’ for a bandstand concert on a sunny afternoon. The latter, an endearing reminder of our Victorian forefathers’ obsession with genteel outdoor pursuits and a belief in the virtue-inducing power of music, was, until recently, at risk of almost being lost to the nation forever. Parks and recreational areas in our towns and cities proliferated in the 19th century as a foil to increasing industrialisation and urbanisation. The introduction of the Select Committee for Public Walks in 1833 provided public access to green spaces, encouraging ‘a better use of Sundays’…

ONE day, in the mid 1800s, naturalist Charles Darwin walked into a field behind his home and set upon the ground a line of coal stones. Then he waited. Over the following decades, the stones disappeared into the soil. When they had vanished, Darwin dug a trench beside them. He wanted to see if a theory he had been working on could be proved: namely, that the stones had not sunk. They had been buried. The prevailing view at the time was that soil was disintegrated rock modified by weather. It was inert, unchanging and unchangeable. This belief was formed by a simple, but profound reality. Most of the early work on soil had been conducted by geologists because they were the ones with both the scientific method and equipment…

THE Ryeland sheep is a Cotswold breed so fluffy it seems you could knit a twin-set from the contents of its ears. In medieval England the wool from the Ryeland was of such value it was nicknamed ‘Leominster ore’. The fleeces of sheep such as the Ryeland, the Cotswold and the Yorkshire equivalent, the cream-coloured Longwool that was kept by the monks of the county’s 15 Cistercian monasteries, created Britain’s modern market economy almost single-handedly. Wool swelled the ranks of the nobility, helped found the middle class and turned subsistence farmers into wealthy gentlemen. It is no coincidence that to this day the Lord Chancellor sits on a woolsack. The Ryeland and the Longwool were never milked for fear it would detract from the heft of their thick, luxurious fleeces.…

New life Interior designer Bryony Richardson gave new life to salvaged kitchen cabinetry by adapting it to fit and painting the island in Paint & Paper Library Masai and tall cupboards in Farrow & Ball Bancha. The energy-efficient electric Everhot cooker, designed to run off a standard 13-amp plug, is also suitable for use in solar panel-powered homes (07829 880130; www.bryonyrichardson.com) Dish story Today’s dishwashers are increasingly energy and water efficient: some studies show that, on average, they use a mere quarter of the water per place setting compared with washing by hand. The Miele G 7650 SCVi fully integrated dishwasher, £1,879, is A rated for energy efficiency and uses only 6L of water on its automatic programme (0330 160 6600; www.miele.co.uk) Renew and re-use Blake & Bull takes old…

Gloucestershire, £1.35 million Embedded in the slope leading down to the River Frome, within walking distance of Stroud town centre, this extraordinary house is constructed with a 4Wall panel system finished with brick slips and Siberian larch cladding, complemented by a heat-pump ventilation system. A garden room, plant room and garden store sit underneath the lawned top garden terrace and the main three floors have an upside-down arrangement, with the master bedroom, and four further bedrooms, sitting room and balcony on the lower two floors and a large kitchen/living space on top. Fronting the river and overlooking a mill pond, the garden incorporates wildflower-meadow areas, specimen trees and terraces and there’s an electric-car charging point at the front. Hamptons (01453 802339) Somerset, £5 million Grade II-listed Selwood Manor on the…

JOHN LITTLE is a bit of a garden visionary. Not for him the tweaked borders of country houses or the starched formality of the city garden. For him, gardening is all about diversity of species and how people can comfortably cohabit with as wide a range of invertebrates as possible. As a starting point, he talks about a brown-field site on Canvey Island (the south Essex home of 1970s rock band Dr Feelgood), which he thinks is a more important habitat than meadows and ancient woodland. It is a post-industrial site (formerly an oil refinery) that has been left alone for 50 years. The concrete has cracked, the steel has rusted and native plants have self-seeded. ‘The fact that it has not been shut away and kids ride their bikes…

Beowulf: Poem, Poet and Hero Heather O’Donoghue (Bloomsbury, £20) A SEARCH of every bookshelf in the house has produced a dozen Beowulf-related books, including Rosemary Sutcliff’s Beowulf: Dragonslayer (eighth-birthday present), three other versions for children, Bea Wolf (a graphic novel), translations by J. R. R. Tolkien, Howell Chickering, Michael Alexander and Seamus Heaney, the script for Robert Zemeckis’s 2007 film version and two sets of exam notes. Five of our children admitted to studying it at school or university and the other two said they knew the plot thanks to playing a ‘hack and slash’ Beowulf computer game. It wasn’t a set book in my day, but, 20 years ago, I saw Heaney’s Beowulf performed in an old boatshed in west Cork and later listened to a recording of Heaney…

Going for gold A RECORD number of golden eagles is now swooping about the skies of southern Scotland, thanks to the South of Scotland Golden Eagle Project. The number, 47, is the highest recorded there for 300 years and is attributed to a series of successful translocations of ‘free-flying young golden eagles’ (aged six months–three years) over the 2023/24 winter. Others of the convocation are there due to an earlier project, in which 28 chicks from the Highlands and islands were released, some going on to build eyries. ‘This novel approach has provided a significant boost in our efforts… and is proving to be a groundbreaking technique for global raptor conservation management,’ comments project manager Dr Cat Barlow. ‘We, too, would like to see more of these important apex predators…

WE’RE only a couple of weeks into the election campaign and the failures in our democratic system are already manifest. Simply look at the rows about candidate selection. It started with the Labour Party’s arguments over that standard bearer of the left, Diane Abbott, but it’s spread far and wide. Of course, Sir Keir Starmer had a problem because he had already been forced to ban the very leader that he had previously backed to be prime minister. Unlike Ms Abbott, Jeremy Corbyn refused to withdraw apparently anti-Semitic remarks. However, to deselect the woman who would have been Home Secretary should Labour have won last time really did suggest the party was denying its history. In any case, we do need Parliament to be representative of all—even those whom Agromenes…

ALTHOUGH he joined his father in the family business of farming, David Austin (1926–2018) dreamed of roses and, in particular, of creating the perfect English rose. This would have that old-fashioned ‘charm and beauty’ that had been all but lost in the popular success of Hybrid Teas that, to his mind, were stumpy and stiff, their colours too shiny and showy. Aged 21, he devoted his spare time to crossing Gallica roses with Floribunda, hoping that, by using the best of the old roses (their beauty and shrubby growth) with that of the new (their colour and ability to repeat-flower), he would discover ‘a scented rose with rosette-shaped or cupped flowers’ on a shapely bush that flowered to the ground. It was not a route of which his father approved.…

WHY did the hedgehog cross the road? Perhaps it was out hunting slugs or seeking a mate. Unfortunately, it was run over when on its nocturnal ramble; up to 335,000 hedgehogs die each year on UK roads. Flattened. Together with about 750,000 other wild things. How could the animals not end up as roadkill? The UK has a road network totalling about 262,300 miles, along which we drive 41.3 million licensed vehicles. People find tarmac and four wheels useful, whereas Mrs Tiggy-Winkle and friends find the road network at best a barrier, at worst a mortal experience and, somewhere in between, they discover themselves stranded in fragmented habitats with diminishing resources and a shrinking gene pool. We Nature-caring drivers resort to helping mother duck and her ducklings across the lane…

NAVIGATING what’s green—and what’s not—when it comes to choosing what we’re dishing up, decorating with or deciding to live alongside is like traversing a trip wire, as businesses seek to burnish their 21st-century credentials. Fortunately, among the buzzwords and vague commitments ready to catch you out are companies where making the planet a priority is part of the mindset. Here’s our pick of the brands that are not merely plastering over the unsustainable cracks or adding a tiny green footnote to proceedings, but instead making sustainable practice the bedrock of their business and part of their identity for a greener future. Food and drink Black Isle Brewery Black Isle Brewery produces beer made from barley and hops grown in the Highlands, supporting organic farmers and growers. Since David Gladwin founded…

THROWAWAY culture isn’t the preserve of the high street. At more elevated levels, the value of the resources squandered are simply more eye-watering, not least in the world of super-prime property where kitchens and bathrooms are often changed with the arrival of every new owner. It’s not only consigning cabinetry and appliances to the skip that’s the problem: the impact on the environment is pretty crushing, not least the reliance on a textile industry reputed to be second only to the oil industry when it comes to greenhouse gas emissions. Designers, suppliers and their clients are waking up to the fact there needs to be a focus on sustainability. A measure of the growing interest is that sustainability has been the subject of a increasing number of events at autumn…

The gardens at Dunvegan Castle, Isle of Skye The home of the Chiefs of Clan MacLeod ONE might remark that the somewhat dour-looking Dunvegan Castle, parts of which date back to the 13th century, is at the back of beyond; however, this is not in condemnation, but admiration. Perched on a rocky promontory overlooking Loch Dunvegan in the north-west of Skye—itself the topmost of the Inner Hebrides—there’s really not much further you can go west, save for North Uist, before you hit the great Atlantic Ocean. The journey from the ferry or bridge connecting to mainland Scotland enforces this sense of isolation, before one travels through an almost lunar landscape, grazed over the centuries by sheep introduced from the Low-lands. Although it possesses a raw beauty, for those in search…

EDWARD SEAGO was one of England’s most popular and prolific artists of the 20th century, with subject matter ranging from circuses and ballet to landscapes, hunting scenes, war-torn Italy, the coronation of Elizabeth II and the icebergs of Antarctica. The queues in Bond Street outside his dealer, Colnaghi’s, on the mornings of the opening of his annual exhibitions were legendary and, inevitably, such popularity drew the sneers of the cognoscenti, who tended to equate facility with shallowness. An unfair judgement, as evidenced by the Portland Gallery’s current exhibition of his work to mark the 50th anniversary of his death. Ted Seago was born on March 31, 1910, in Norwich, the second son of Brian Seago, area manager of a firm of coal merchants, and his wife, Mabel. Norwich had a…

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Wolterton Hall, Norfolk, part I The former home of Keith Day and Peter Sheppard MY house, of my own building, is not extremely large, nor little; is neither to be envied, nor despised. The disposition of the rooms is neither magnificent nor contemptible, but convenient.’ Thus did the parliamentarian and diplomat Horatio Walpole describe his seat at Wolterton in a letter dated May 29, 1745. ‘The situation is upon an eminence that commands a most agreeable prospect,’ he continued, ‘encompassed with… oaks, spanish chestnuts and beech… on the south a green carpet of the finest verdure gratifies the eye and gradually leads it into a more extensive plain. On one side a lake of living water catches and fills the sight… If this description pleases you, come, my dear friend,…

1 Turn on the night Artificial night light obscures the celestial magic of natural wonders, such as the Aurora Borealis, drives biodiversity loss and negatively affects our circadian rhythms and physical and mental health. We endorse Dark Sky International’s recommendation to reduce average illumination levels by switching to dimmers, motion sensors and timers; using LED lighting and warm white bulbs for reduced illuminance; and directing the angle of essential light downwards. The worst pollution comes from commercial buildings and offices, where whole floors are left lit up at night; these establishments should be required to turn off unnecessary indoor lighting. 2 Give British food more shelf space Problems with food packaging extend far beyond the excessive amount of plastic used. Labels can also be misleading, because the presence of a…

EVERY autumn, Jane Scotter collects fresh manure from a neighbour’s lactating cows, brings it home to her market garden, Fern Verrow in Herefordshire, and ladles it into her collection of cow horns. The horns are then buried close together in soil and left for six months over winter, after which the contents have composted into a perfectly balanced mix of bacteria and fungi. Mrs Scotter tips the mix into a barrel of water—‘two or three pinches in 30 litres’—and stirs it vigorously with a broom handle. This precious potion is then applied to her 16 acres of flower and vegetable beds: ‘I do it in the afternoon, on what is called a root day,’ she tells me, ‘walking up and down with a bucket and a brush flicking it over…

SEAWEEDS are having a moment, with more people heading to the coast to forage for these tasty green, brown and red wild foods. At least 20 edible and easily identifiable varieties grow along the UK coastline and, as long as you take care on slippery rocks at the beach, foraging for them is a perfectly safe pastime—there are no poisonous nasties to worry about. If you can’t make it to the coast, there are plenty of seaweeds and seaweed products available to buy from seaweed farms that are popping up around the UK and elsewhere. Seaweed farming is a great way to produce sustainable sea food, as the plants absorb carbon dioxide and excess nutrients, doing their bit for the climate and cleaning up coastal waters. They look after themselves,…

EAST ANGLIA’S largest county, Norfolk, covers an area of 2,074 square miles and boasts a wonderfully diverse landscape of woods, lush farmland and a glorious sweeping coastline that stretches for 90 miles from King’s Lynn in the west to Hopton-on-Sea in the east. This year, buyers looking to secure a base in this least cluttered of counties can choose from an unusually wide selection of coastal and country properties, from manors and farmhouses large and small, to seaside houses old and new. Ben Rivett of Savills in Norwich (01603 229256) sets the pace with the launch onto the market of Grade II*-listed Ingoldisthorpe Hall, only three miles from the royal estate at Sandringham and 10 miles from King’s Lynn—a rare find in west Norfolk, where, as elsewhere in the county,…

FIFTY years ago, in 1974, Tom Hewer said to me ‘the best way to lose a plant is to ask the RHS to look after it for you’. Prof Hewer was a very distinguished and charming plant collector and many of the bulbs he brought back from Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan are still alive and well at RHS Wisley. However, he was cross because he had also collected a swathe of nameless new Lonicera species and the RHS, he said, had let them die before even planting them out. We cannot expect an organisation such as Kew or the RHS to conserve every plant that might be of interest to botanists, gardeners or nurserymen. There are far too many of them. The only way to preserve our heritage of plants…

THERE was once a French cook, Madame Poulard, who was famed for the magnificence of her omelettes. The restaurant was in Normandy, but people would traverse seas, oceans and continents, simply for one mouthful of her puffy, burnished beauties. Try as they might, no one could prise the recipe from her well-seasoned hands. What was it that made her omelettes quite so legendary? A secret splash of water, a sly glug of double cream, even a smidgin of foie gras? The truth, when it eventually emerged, was none of the above. ‘I break some good eggs in a bowl,’ she said, ‘and I beat them well. I put a good piece of butter in the pan, I throw the eggs into it and I shake constantly.’ That, she declared, was…

INSTEAD of getting through a list of long-deferred tasks, such as a trip to the local tip, I spent much of the recent Bank Holiday Monday online, staring at and trying to decipher the extraordinary Surrealist painting by Leonora Carrington that is currently the highest-priced work by a British-born female artist sold at auction. Last month, at Sotheby’s New York, the 29¾in by 34¼in Les Distractions de Dagobert (Fig 1) went for $28.5 million (£22.4m). Painted in tempera on a masonite hardboard panel, it had previously reached a mere $475,000 at the same saleroom in 1995 (equivalent to about $973,000 or £760,000 now). Having been presented at Court, Carrington (1917–2011) escaped the life expected of a deb to join the Surrealists and become the lover of Max Ernst in Paris,…

I WAS told last week by a veteran London publisher, who had just returned from the newly defunded Hay Festival, that there is a book out about the palatability and acceptability of ‘killing in the name of conservation’. Is it ever OK to trap rats in order to protect seabirds or to shoot Welsh foxes to save the last of the country’s lapwings? A farmer in Ceredigion called Charles Grisedale has one of the last breeding lapwing populations in Wales. When he was a boy, he told me, they were all over the country, from the Severn to Cardigan Bay. As we all do when people recommend books, I said that I would read Hugh Warwick’s Cull of the Wild without delay (Books, April 3). I even went home and…