Innholdsfortegnelse for October 2, 2024 i Country Life

Mount Vernon, Virginia, US, part II A property in the care of Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association WHEREAS Mount Vernon’s exterior is crisp and stately, its interiors have a beguiling, intimate quality, rooted in the ordered domestic life of the Georgian era. As we saw in last week’s article, George Washington took up residence in 1754 and made numerous architectural and decorative improvements, extending the house to its current form of 21 rooms over three periods, during the mid 1750s, late 1770s to early 1780s and 1790s. His use of pattern books by Abraham Swan, William Pain and Batty Langley to serve his craftsmen as models for elegant carved detail and decoration gives an insight into the transmission of such details across the British Atlantic world. Today, Mount Vernon is shown…

IF a period of warm weather occurs towards the end of October, we call it St Luke’s Little Summer. Said to start some time about St Luke’s Day on October 18 and brought to an abrupt close by St Simon and St Jude—who share a feast day on October 28—this brief period of calm, dry weather is the last hurrah before winter sets in. St Simon and St Jude also pop up as summer-busters in a rhyme about Michaelmas daisies (above), which are always in flower on Michaelmas Day on September 29—and, therefore, into the month of October: The Michaelmas daisy, among dead weeds,Blooms for St Michael’s valorous deeds.And seems the last of flowers that stood,Till the feast of St Simon and St Jude. Greece has its own version, the…

IT begins with a soft humming noise. Then the mudguards swing out and click into wing position as the radiator grille parts to allow the fan-belt propeller and petrol-pump fly-wheel to slide out from the bonnet. A green light on the dashboard blinks PULL DOWN. As Cmdr Pott gingerly pulls the lever down and presses the accelerator pedal, the car tilts up her shining green-and-silver nose and takes off. ‘Don’t worry! She’ll look after us!’ he shouts to spell-bound Mimsie and the twins as they soar over the weekend traffic jam. After circling Canterbury Cathedral, they take a short cut over Dover Castle and fly up the Kent coast looking for a place to land for a picnic. In the hands of ‘James Bond’ author Ian Fleming, the crime-busting exploits…

LONDON is perpetually in the throes of planning battles. The evidence of our eyes is that, for all the complaints that developers make about the undoubted burdens of the planning system, it is their buccaneering spirit that generally wins the day. That can give rise to outstanding additions to the capital, but it comes with two inter-related problems. The first is that the well-thought-through development proposals of today immediately become the starting point for the poorly planned and greedy applications of tomorrow. The most startling illustration of this is the sheer quantity of totally unremarkable high-rise blocks that have sprung up like weeds around the handful of interesting buildings that have effectively pioneered London’s modern skyline. Second, that a successful development inevitably engenders more. Trying to work out in advance,…

Quince-and-almond cake with orange-blossom syrup Method ▸ Prepare the quince and put into a medium saucepan with the water and first lot of sugar. Bring to a boil, then simmer for about 20 minutes or until the quince is tender and pink. Drain—reserving the syrup—and set aside to cool. ▸ Preheat your oven to 160˚C fan/180˚C/350˚F/gas mark 4. Grease a 25cm (10in) loose-bottomed tin and line the base with parchment paper. ▸ In a large bowl, whisk together the eggs and sugar until light and fluffy, then add the Greek yoghurt, melted butter and vanilla. Fold through the ground almonds, self-raising flour, baking powder and salt until just combined. Add the cooled quince pieces, orange and lemon zests and mix to evenly distribute. Pour the mixture into the prepared cake…

WHY should we be (and generally speaking we are) so keen on visiting or (better still) staying in places that belong or once belonged to rich, famous, brilliant or otherwise distinguished people? It’s an interesting question and potentially a slightly awkward one, too, concerning as it does an apparently irresistible urge to cosy up to genius, or, if not genius, then at least some kind of exceptional glamour—or, failing that, plain old money. Plenty of us will book a hotel because (let’s say) ‘this was where Napoleon preferred to stay when relaxing in St Helena’ or ‘Marianne North was living here in the 1890s when she did her marvellous paintings of the coco de mer and other extraordinary flora of the Seychelles’. I’ve made reservations on roughly that basis. On…

The Power and the Glory: The Country House Before the Great War Adrian Tinniswood (Jonathan Cape, £25) THIS is the first part of a trilogy on the English country house; it precedes The Long Weekend, about the inter-war period, and Noble Ambitions, on post-1945 England. As with Adrian Tinniswood’s other books, it is underscored by meticulous social, economic and architectural research, but it is the engaging cast of characters—dukes and duchesses, Indian princes, Jewish bankers, Society heiresses and self-made millionaires—that drives the narrative. There is the obsessively reclusive 5th Duke of Portland, who constructed a vast underground network of tunnels and chambers at Welbeck Abbey in Nottinghamshire; John Corbett, who, having made his money through establishing a salt works at Droitwich, built a Louis XIII-style house and developed the town…

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Future Publishing Ltd, 121–141 Westbourne Terrace, Paddington, London W2 6JR 0330 390 6591; www.countrylife.co.uk IT has been a particular arrogance of England to claim itself a sort of Eden—God’s own land, indeed. Shakespeare was a notoriously enamoured tribune, rapturing in Richard II about this ‘blessed plot’, the ‘demi-paradise’, a ‘precious stone’. Yet, there is something about the nation. The providential Goldilocks placement in the gulf stream helps (Albion is neither too hot, nor too cold) and the Divinely created—or, more prosaically, geologically given—basic body is generous in its forms. England has, for a country of only 50,000 square miles, an extraordinary variety of landscape, from the dramatic peaks of the Lake District to Thomas Hardy’s herby Dorset heath. It has the sylvan beechwoods of the Home Counties and the purpled…

In the round ALTHOUGH I admire the splendid vintage lifts of yesteryear (‘Love in an elevator’, September 18), the challenges of installing a lift to ‘future-proof’ listed buildings today are considerable. Our 70-year-old lift did not work and was in the wrong place. After eight months getting listed-building consent, we settled on the same circular, vacuum-driven, see-through PVE lift from Morgan Ellis that television’s Escape to the Château Strawbridge family installed in their French property, which fitted perfectly into our round stairwell. Neil Kennedy, Essex Eternal paws DOGS are not the only animals to be commemorated after death (Town & Country, September 18). In Devon, Timothy the tortoise, resident of Powderham Castle for 100 years, is buried in the rose garden. His epitaph (below) reads ‘A Treasured Friend’. At Lustleigh,…

WAR was the catalyst. Sir Richard Wallace (1818–90) had long acted as art buyer for Richard Seymour-Conway, 4th Marquess of Hertford, who was thought to be his natural father. Soon after inheriting the Marquess’s collection, he embarked on a voracious buying spree of his own as France’s Second Empire collapsed under the strain of defeat in the Franco-Prussian War. Many people associated with it—such as the Comte de Nieuwerkerke, former Surintendant des Beaux-Arts under Napoleon III, and even the Empress Eugénie—sold works of art and objets in their rush to flee the country. Sir Richard married his long-term lover and mother of his child, Julie Castelnau (1819–97) and eventually they, too, left France and, in 1875, settled at Hertford House, London W1, where they continued to amass works of art.…

IN a shallow bowl dug out of a Worcestershire hillside stands a small forest of willow: tall, slender withies shade from pale green to russet tips, yellow to chestnut, sage to purple, rustling and sighing in the winter breeze. Half the beds have been harvested and a blonde figure in boots and waterproofs is bent over, sorting the bundles before tying two fine rods of willow around each one. Jenny Crisp has been cultivating willow and making basketwork for 30 years: ‘We grow our own because I like to have what I need to hand for particular constructions. It also helps to understand the material and achieve a different palette.’ She will sell one-third of this year’s produce to other makers: ‘It’s a growing market.’ ‘Willow has such light, workable…

FLORENCE BISS of Knight Frank’s Exeter office (01392 423111) quotes a guide price of £1.9 million for idyllic Eastacott Barton near Umberleigh, north Devon, six miles west of South Molton and 10 miles south of the ancient town of Barnstaple on the River Taw. A former 16th-century farmhouse on the surrounding Clinton estate, Eastacott Barton was substantially enlarged in the 19th century, when its two stone barns were added. Located at the head of its own private valley, the imposing main house, its Victorian barns and outbuildings are now the focal point of a thriving, 27-acre, small country estate set within gardens, meadows, woodland and lakes running down to the Taw, halfway between Exmoor and Dartmoor and within a short drive of the rugged north Devon coast. The main house,…

The garden at Seend Manor, Wiltshire The home of Amanda and Stephen Clark ON a sunny day, Amanda and Stephen Clark hang out by their pool in Italy for the afternoon with a good book. From there, they can move to England for a sundowner, breathing in the heady scent of hundreds of roses in the parterre, before brushing their way through the copious growth of Spanish reeds (representing maize), cannas and bananas surrounding a South African hut. ‘Let’s go to China,’ they might then decide, meeting up with their nephews and nieces, who live next door, for Peking duck in the shade of an impressive, double-height ‘ting’ pavilion. Instead of owning a supersonic jet, Mr and Mrs Clark have given these names to the four highly distinct areas they…

NUMEROUS people had advised us that, after a big wedding, it is not only the happy couple who need a honeymoon: the parents of the bride need one, too. So true, so true. We left it a couple of weeks, wanting to be part of the dismantling process as tents came down, wilting flowers were dispatched to the compost heap and order was restored, not realising that what takes months in preparation is over in a heartbeat. Within three days of having set the newly weds on their way, not a trace was to be found that a wedding had happened at all, apart from an infestation of cigarette butts in the grass and a sizeable hole in the bank balance. Fortunately, Italy beckoned, with kind friends having asked us…

IN 1804, an 18-year-old aspiring artist named Benjamin Robert Haydon arrived in London from his native Plymouth, determined to make a name for himself. He had an introduction to another Devonian painter, James Northcote, who, on being told that Haydon planned to devote himself to history painting, exclaimed: ‘Heestoricaul peinter! Why, yee’ll starve with a bundle of straw under yeer head!’ Northcote was not far wrong, although it took several decades for Haydon’s tragedy to play itself out: having taken his own life in 1846, his tombstone recorded that: ‘He devoted 42 years to the improvement of the taste of the English people in high art and died broken-hearted from pecuniary distress.’ Haydon is remembered today for his memoirs and journals, which depict the artistic and social life of Regency…

SEPTEMBER has taught new Labour MPs exactly how much more difficult government is in practice than it looks in opposition. After 14 years out of power, they succeeded a listless Tory administration that was unable to shake off the memory of two disastrous prime ministers. Although denied any great enthusiasm from voters, Labour had every reason to expect at least a limited honeymoon. Instead, defeated at its own conference and diverted by dresses and football favours, it returns to Parliament with spirits cowed and problems formidable. The state of the opposition is worse. The Conservatives have to choose a leader from a slate that lacks any stand-out figure and from which picking either of the two most likely final contenders would condemn the party to more of the same. Already,…

‘Dirty old river’ The Kinks, from ‘Waterloo Sunset’ IN the estuary, worlds meet, combine, finish. Not only the various states of Nature—the freshwater of the outgoing river, first embracing, then battling the incoming saline sea, merely to dissolve into oceanic extinction—but human states, too. I know of no more perfect exemplar of the estuary phenomenon than the Thames at Tilbury. You take the c2c train from Fenchurch Street, London, proceed 20 miles as the gull flies, disembark, take the uncharter’d, lager-can-strewn streets down to where the old Thames doth flow… and there is a clapperboard pub at the end of the lane, surrounded by nibbled grass and piebald ponies. The pub is called The World’s End. If it had pirates sitting outside, you would say: ‘Of course.’ Up to East…

WITH Labour winning the General Election and the Bank of England cutting interest rates this summer, there has been plenty to navigate. As the dust settles—autumn Budget permitting—buyer activity may be set to rise. ‘A lot of buyers are looking to activate their plans in the autumn, when they will have a clearer picture on interest rates and government tax plans,’ believes Edward Rook, head of Knight Frank’s country department (020–7861 5115). What is catching buyers’ eyes? According to Edward Sugden, head of prime country houses at Savills (07557 337507), recently refurbished or modernised country houses are garnering more attention ‘due to their running efficiency and often lower maintenance costs’. Joanna Cocking, head of private office and prime at Hamptons (07824 623709), agrees: ‘Buyers are coming to us saying that…

PRIMROSE HILL is a popular green space in north-west London. Gently ascending paths lead to a 210ft summit that offers extensive views across the crowded metropolis. Yet the immediate terrain would have looked different had plans to dig into the hill and erect a so-called ‘Death Pyramid’ been realised in the early 19th century. The base of the necropolis, officially to be named the Metropolitan Sepulchre, was intended to occupy an area equivalent to three times the size of Bloomsbury’s Russell Square, one of London’s largest garden squares. With a volume exceeding that of the Great Pyramid of Giza, its 94 storeys would have risen to four times the height of St Paul’s Cathedral (365ft), according to The Literary Gazette. ‘The pyramid would beguile the hours of the curious and…

AS summer leans into autumn and either end of the day anticipates the season to come, I occasionally find myself checking the slowly colouring fruit of the Chilean guava hedge that edges one of the perennial beds. I know there might be two months or more until their peak, but anticipation is such a vital pleasure of gardening. Chilean guava (Ugni molinae) is a half-hardy evergreen shrub that produces not the tropical fruit you might find in the supermarket, but an abundance of blueberry-sized, deliciously sweet/sharp berries with a flavour somewhere between kiwi, strawberry, blueberry and a gentle spicy sherbetiness. Despite having apparently been Queen Victoria’s favourite—she had it grown in Cornwall’s mild climate for her table—Chilean guava is not widely grown in the UK for reasons beyond me. That…

THE cricket never ends and the carnival must keep performing, whether anyone is watching or not. That is what I say when friends ask me why, when a one-day series at home against Australia has just finished, England are now playing a three-Test series against Pakistan, in Pakistan. There is money to be made, contracts to be honoured, television deals to be kept. The show must go on. And so the show arrives in Multan on Monday, where England will look to build on a successful home summer, in which they won five out of the six matches they played. Indeed, the last time they visited Pakistan in 2022, they won 3-0 and were the first team to score 500 runs in a single day of Test cricket. It was…

THE Biennale Internazionale dell’ Antiquariato di Firenze in Italy, launched in 1959, claims to be the oldest art fair to survive and, for the past few outings, it has been under the direction of Fabrizio Moretti, a Florentine dealer who now operates in London, Monte Carlo and Paris. I would guess that it is his influence that has attracted more impressive international exhibitors than used to participate. Among them this year are the Londoners Dickinson, Agnews and Colnaghi. The fair, which opened on September 28 and runs to October 6, occupies one of the loveliest venues anywhere, the Palazzo Corsini, where the terrace overlooking the Arno is a glorious place to taste some of the best local wines. Originally based in Milan and now in Geneva, the Rob Smeets Gallery…

LAST week, at dawn, I was in the woods with an interior designer from Gloucestershire. We were both going to the same wedding later that day and we’d agreed, the evening before over a few beers, that we’d head out early for a muntjac with a flask of tea and some KitKats. The interior designer hadn’t, he told me, actually ever fired a rifle, but he understood the principle and, if a relatively easy shot presented itself, he seemed to have every confidence he’d manage just fine. About half an hour later, as the fog was lifting, I set the rifle up on sticks and reminded my companion to aim for just behind the shoulder. I squeezed the muntjac call, which emitted a plaintiff little squeak. It was really a…