Innholdsfortegnelse for August 7, 2024 i Country Life

QUEEN VICTORIA’S marriage in 1840 to her 20-year-old cousin Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha posed an immediate problem: what was the purpose of her new husband, other than providing an heir to the throne? There was no job description for a prince consort—even that title was, grudgingly, not granted to him by his adopted country until 1857. ‘In my home life I am very happy and contented,’ he wrote to a friend back in Germany, ‘but the difficulty in filling my place with the proper dignity is that I am only the husband, and not the master in the house.’ That was soon to change. The Queen’s frequent pregnancies—nine over the first 17 years of her marriage—meant that the Prince was able quickly to manoeuvre himself into a position of control…

MY first encounter with huts of an adventurous nature came in Austria when, as an 18 year old, my Alpine career started—and almost came to a premature end—in the Stubai Alps. As well as my first 11,000ft peaks, it was also my introduction to the shock of an ‘Alpine start’. To be safely off the mountain before the mid-morning sun triggers rockfall, an Alpinist needs to leave the hut in the early hours. The deep freeze of a pre-dawn glacier is always brutal, but there is the compensation of an Alpine dawn, as the sun creeps over the peaks to set the summit snows alight in a pink blaze against an azure sky. Doug Scott—who was well known for the first successful ascent of Everest’s south-west face—summed up Alpine huts:…

ST BARTHOLOMEW’S DAY on August 24 is the most important for this month’s weather lore, falling 40 days after St Swithin’s. Echoing the earlier date, the feast day of the Christian martyr was thought to set the weather for the upcoming period and it gives us some considerable hope if rain has prevailed throughout the season. ‘All the tears that St Swithin can cry St Bartelmy’s mantle will wipe dry’—a dry autumn will surely follow a wet summer. We are now at the beginning of the harvest and St Bartholomew also has his finger in all sorts of crop-related pies. ‘On St Bartholomew’s Day take the honey away’—it is time to collect summer honey—and ‘Rain at St Bartholomew’s tide christens the potatoes’, which means that a bit of drizzle will…

THE glorious Wye Valley, which straddles the border between England and Wales, provides a spectacular backdrop to one of Herefordshire’s most remarkable country houses, Whitney Court at Whitney-on-Wye, six miles north of Hay-on-Wye and 17 miles east of Hereford. For sale for the first time since it was built—at a guide price of £3 million through Peter Daborn of Savills in Telford (01952 239511)—the grand Edwardian country house stands in 22 acres of gardens and wooded parkland at the heart of the ancient Whitney estate, which was acquired by the Hope family in 1897. According to a history compiled by the owners, the house was born of a collaboration between various members of the Hope family, the prime mover being Lady Mary Nugent, the widow of the Hon James Hope-Wallace…

Shop of the month Battersea Flower Station, 320, Battersea Park Road, SW11 IMMEDIATELY behind the Bullen Street bus stop in Battersea, beneath a growling stretch of the Overground, there’s a narrow break in the wall. To go through it is to feel your jaw drop: a vibrant green passage, so long that you can’t see the end, with London plane trees bowed overhead and a five-plank fingerpost that reads: ‘Plants Pots Flowers Magic’ with an arrow at the bottom. The city noises are muffled. Pots of snapdragons and daisies sit beside butter-yellow baskets. You have to wonder how many people end up missing the bus. It took the co-founders, Lisa McCormack and John Schofield, four years of searching to find the site for the Battersea Flower Station. They opened a…

The gardens at Glin Castle, Co Limerick, Ireland The home of Catherine FitzGerald and Dominic West OPENING the shutters at Glin Castle in Co Limerick of a morning, generations of Catherine Fitz-Gerald’s ancestors would have looked out at the same ring of sessile oaks as her family and guests do today. Descendants of the Killarney forest that once stretched down to the shores of the Shannon river in front of the castle, the gnarly, moss- and fern-covered branches of the oaks protect the 10 acres of landscaped garden from the westerly winds that whip up the estuary. ‘You can see their arms are outstretched and they circle the place to create an embrace,’ says Miss FitzGerald. ‘They are its presiding spirit.’ The family has owned the Glin demesne since the…

IN 1790, French aristocrat Xavier de Maistre was placed under house arrest for 42 days and used the time to embark upon a journey around his living room. His book, A Journey Around My Room, set out to prove that sitting on the living-room sofa can be as exciting as climbing Everest or sailing to Antarctica. Pull up a deckchair, follow in de Maistre’s footsteps and take a trip around my suburban garden. This unexplored ‘piece of a continent’ measures only 9yd by 6yd, but is teeming with life and activity. As John Donne might have remarked, no garden is an island and this one—when adjoined to the other rectangular strips of garden in the street—could form part of a small park. George Orwell’s Coming Up For Air, featuring 1930s…

THE time of year has come for us to pack up the rusty Land Rover Defender and head to north Wales. Our favoured holiday spot there is an old farmhouse with commanding views of Cardigan Bay and the Llŷn Peninsula, to which friends and family come and go, ready and willing—most of the time—to be marched up mountains and dunked in lakes and rivers whatever the weather. Those who are new to this corner of Snowdonia are then rewarded for their endeavours with a trip to nearby Portmeirion, the bizarrely picturesque Italianate village built by Sir Clough Williams-Ellis between 1925 and 1976 on a peninsula, which juts finger-like into the wide Dwyryd estuary between Harlech and Porthmadog. Sir Clough has long been a hero of mine, not least for his…

THE long-defunct Duchy of Lorraine has a warm place in my affections, as my paternal ancestors came from the village of Malleloy just north of Nancy, its capital. Despite being regularly scrabbled over by more powerful neighbours, France, Burgundy and the Holy Roman Empire, during the 17th century, it produced a number of artists who had a lasting influence on European culture. In whichever form, the name of Claude Gellée (about 1600–82), otherwise Claude le Lorrain or, in England, simply Claude, has come to stand for the idealised ‘Arcadian’ classical vision that he spread over the real landscapes of central Italy, which percolated through the galleries of Europe as Grand Tourists’ souvenirs. Claude was born a little south of Nancy, yet spent most of his career in Italy, unlike his…

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That’ll do, pig I ENJOYED George Reynolds’s correspondence (Letters, July 24) about his friend who rescued an orphaned boarlet (or humbug) in the south of France. It brought to mind Sir Winston Churchill’s kindly attitude to swine: ‘Dogs look up to you, cats look down on you. Give me a pig! He looks you in the eye and treats you as an equal.’ How true! David Buxton, by email Herd you the first time WHAT a delight it was to meet Taff, Jon, Belle, Glen and Squiggle in your enchanting piece about working sheepdogs (‘Whistle while you work’, July 24). On holiday in Ireland a few years ago, we stayed on a farm and set out for a walk after dinner, sociably accompanied by the sheepdog. On reaching a large…

Hotel Room by Edward Hopper ‘I’ve always been drawn to portraits and the stories they tell about their subjects. I saw a major Edward Hopper exhibition at the Whitney in New York in 2022 and was captivated by the sense of time and place in this painting. It conveys the loneliness of big cities through the impersonal surroundings of a hotel, but also has a sense of possibility represented by the train timetable and suitcases. As a viewer, one feels like an intruder into a private moment–this is a girl on a journey, but we don’t know where to or where from’ Charlotte Mullins comments on Hotel Room LOOKING at an Edward Hopper painting is like freeze-framing the key moment in a film around which the whole narrative pivots. Hopper…

WHEN Henry Tate, the 11th child of a Lancashire Unitarian minister, had success as a grocer, he branched out into the sugar business (by then less tainted by slavery, which had been abolished in 1833–34). He introduced better refining techniques and embraced European methods to lump sugar into small cubes. Having made a fortune, Tate (1819–99) could have wielded much influence, but he had little interest in office and even less in fame; he donated generously, but quietly. He did, however, have one great passion: art. Tate supported contemporary British artists—he was a personal friend of John Everett Millais—and his collection soon included some of the best paintings of the time, such as Millais’s Ophelia and John William Waterhouse’s Lady of Shalott (top). All this Tate intended to leave as…

GENERALLY, wildlife sees us before we see it. It’s rare to have the kind of face-to-face encounter that American writer Annie Dillard experienced when she unexpectedly came across a weasel and became locked in its gaze for so long she felt they were like lovers, exchanging brains: ‘The world dismantled and tumbled into that black hole of eyes.’ It seems strange that animals so keen to keep out of sight have such attention-grabbing features. Rabbits often freeze, blending against a bare winter hedge or molehills and rocks, but, once they run, their snowy tails immediately give them away. It is the same with roe deer. Motionless on winter barley or stubble, they merge with the scenery, but, when they scamper off, there go those flashing white beacons that seem to…

INTERIOR designer Sarah Peake was first invited to see this Arts-and-Crafts house in the Surrey Hills before her clients were handed the keys. ‘They initially intended to use it as a weekend bolthole, but when their working lives were transformed by the pandemic, their plans changed and the project became a full-scale renovation of the house.’ The main structural changes to this space included redesigning the window seat, so that it had generous storage underneath, and creating a bookcase in a deep and dark alcove to the side of the chimney breast. The aim was to create a relaxed space, but first the designer went down what she describes as a ‘research tunnel’ into the history of the Arts-and-Crafts Movement to ensure the scheme would be sympathetic to the architecture…

Devon, £6 million The word ‘flatpack’ certainly does not spring to mind on viewing this Grade II-listed, English oak, Kentish Wealden-style house, ‘built exactly as half-timber dwellings were in the 15th century, every timber, joint, mortice and tenon was produced by the handwork of craftsmen in the style of a Kentish manor house,’ say agents. However, it was originally created for London’s 1924 British Empire Exhibition to showcase English architecture at its finest, alongside other delights of the day, such as elephants, butter sculptures and miniature railways. Among 25 million visitors was a Lady Moore, who bought it, had it dismantled and transported by ship to Salcombe, where it was re-erected on a seven-acre plot above the town, complete with its studded front door, stained-glass windows, carvings, exposed beams and…

BLACKBERRIES are many people’s first—perhaps only—excursion into the world of foraging. Some of my strongest childhood memories are of the four of us, Tupperware in hand, heading to the railway line that—thanks to the Beeching line closures—had grown wild with brambles. How could something free taste this good? One for me, one for the tub was as good as the ratio of eating to saving got. Whether in my own garden or beyond, plucking soft fruit from the plant still holds that magic for me. Although I continue to forage blackberries with my family, I can’t help but grow a few of the sweeter varieties bred for the garden, together with a raspberry bed and—every bit as good as the rest—a few hybrid berries that I wouldn’t be without. Boysenberries…

Turning to Stone: Discovering the Subtle Wisdom of Rocks Marcia Bjornerud (Wildfire, £25) RECENT decades have seen a surge of books framed around their authors’ response to Nature, usually disclosing some form of self-discovery or revelation. Here is another in the personal-pronoun school, but stones are a change from birds or butterflies. The author is a geologist by profession, adding a stamp of authority to what is effectively a biography told through encounters with rocks. Marcia Bjornerud writes evocatively: passages in an early chapter on childhood years in rural north-west Wisconsin, US, where she is unwittingly introduced to rocks by the sand in her shoes that slowed her daily dash for the school bus, are charming. However, that chapter also makes clear her disdain for human folly and arrogance. Those…

D-DAY anniversary celebrations this year have been many and varied, but one of the more unusual has to be ‘The Few’ collection from The Great British Watch Company, made from the wreckage of Mk 9 Spitfire ML295, which was shot down over Normandy on July 30, 1944—80 years ago almost to the day (‘We salute you’, May 29). As far as we know, this is the first time any Spitfire has been reincarnated in wristwatch form. Royal Canadian Air Force 411 ‘Grizzly Bears’ Squadron pilot Harold Kramer survived the crash—hidden by the French Resistance in the loft of a cottage for a month until the Allies liberated the area—but his aeroplane did not and the wreckage was used as target practice by the Germans. After the war, it was all…

THERE are moments in life when, if we are to retain our sanity, we have to laugh. It’s about keeping a sense of proportion when the single-minded and the ideologues have lost theirs. Whether it’s the far left or far right, the woke or the culture warriors, the ultra-permissive or the thin-lipped prudes—they can’t stand being laughed at because nothing else so effectively exposes the idiocy of the extremes. Last week, three particular examples deserved prolonged mirth. The first came from the self-righteous among the art establishment. A curator at the National Gallery has rehung Constable’s famous Suffolk painting The Hay Wain and declared it ‘a contested landscape’. Evidently the point of the painting shouldn’t be what you see, and what has made it a great work of art, but…

WHAT’S in a name? If that name is the old cognomen of a British wildflower, then it is the epigraph of the lore concerning the plant, the superstitions, traditions and knowledge linked to it over decades, centuries, millennia. Our wildflowers are deeply rooted in ancient myth and experience, their naming and their lore telling of their qualities—whether good or bad for human health, for example—but also, when we dig a little deeper, reflecting our own cultural history. Pick a buttercup and play the childish game of holding it under someone’s chin to see the yellow sheen that betrays whether they like butter or not and you are enacting a relic belief of the West Country. There, long, long ago, farmers rubbed the udders of their cows with buttercup flowers on…

OPENED by the late Queen in 2000, the Great Court of the British Museum quickly became an icon of the capital’s cultural landscape. If you’ve ever wondered what used to fill that gleaming space before it was a courtyard, well, it formed most of the British Library. From 1997, three storeys and several centuries’ worth of books were removed to their purpose-built St Pancras site, allowing Foster + Partners’ glass-covered creation to take shape. Some of that library, however, never left. The cylindrical centrepiece to which all that tessellated glass is affixed is the original round Reading Room, which has spent much of its new life off limits. Until now. The domed Reading Room first opened on May 2, 1857, designed by architect Sydney Smirke (another of whose famous domes…

Smoked-salmon and ricotta-stuffed tempura courgette flowers Ingredients Serves 4 as a starter 12 baby courgettes, with flowers attached200g ricotta100g smoked salmon, finely chopped1tbspn fresh dill1tbspn chives1tspn lemon zest For the tempura 100g plain flour50g cornflour½tspn baking powder200ml sparkling waterA pinch of saltOlive oil for frying For the lemon sauce 100g Greek yoghurt½ lemon, juice and zest of1 small clove garlic, gratedCaper berries and lemon wedges to serve Method ▸ Carefully wash the courgettes and gently clean the flowers, being careful not to break them. Remove the stamen from the male flowers and discard (they taste bitter). Pat dry with kitchen paper. ▸ Mix together the ricotta, smoked salmon, herbs, lemon zest and seasoning and spoon it into the courgette flowers. Twist the ends to enclose the filling and set aside.…

Gundari, Folegandros, Cyclades The words ‘Gundari’ and ‘Folegandros’ mean similar things—variations of ‘stony place’, ‘rocky place’ and ‘big rock’. Indeed, from afar, the island of Folegandros, in the Greek Cyclades, looks like a place full of rocks and not much more. The arid soil is scarred by sharp stone terrace walls and brittle shrubs that look like half-domes of spiny coral plants. It is, however, not deserted. Admittedly small, but far from down on its luck or lacking in charm. For years, it’s been the holiday preserve of Greek families and in-the-know Europeans; tourists from the UK and US are more likely to stick it out on better-known Santorini (less than an hour away by ferry or small boat), which gets 2.6 million visitors a year to Folegandros’s 50,000. ‘Spend…

IN 1436, an intrepid young Spanish nobleman named Pedro Tafur set out from Gibraltar on a three-year journey to see the sights of Europe and the Middle East. From Italy, he sailed to the Holy Land, Egypt and Sinai, returning across land to Germany. By the time he reached the Netherlands, in 1438, he had seen many wonders, including hippopotamuses and the pyramids, but he was far from jaded: he was astonished by the wealth on show in the shops and markets of Antwerp, Brussels, Ghent and Bruges. ‘The goddess of luxury has great power there,’ Tafur wrote. ‘Anyone who has money, and wishes to spend it, will find in Bruges alone everything that the whole world produces.’ Among the magnificent goldsmiths’ work, textiles and carpets, Italian armour, furs from…

EXPERIENCES can be so extraordinary that you are unable to take them in at the moment. It’s only later, sometimes months, even years, that you realise quite what they meant. One Sunday afternoon in May, I drove up to Northumberland to see my friend Katrina, a poet who lives in Beadnell, in a white cottage overlooking the sea. Much of her writing has documented the decline of the inshore fishing community. When Katrina was in her twenties, netting for salmon and sea trout kept whole families going during the spring and summer months and the harbour, only 500 yards from her front door, was full of boats. Now, there is one licence for catching sea trout still issued in Beadnell and the boat it’s connected to is crewed by Edward,…