Innholdsfortegnelse for December 25, 2024 i Country Life

Future Publishing Ltd, 121–141 Westbourne Terrace, Paddington, London W2 6JR 0330 390 6591; www.countrylife.co.uk January Following a warm, wet winter, imports of rice to Britain are halted as farmers on Romney Marsh and the Somerset Levels are instructed to grow the stuff at home. February St Valentine’s Day is cancelled because postage is too expensive. An enterprising pigeon fancier hires out his birds to deliver red roses for half the cost of a first-class stamp. March Bookies breathe again after a handy ferry strike prevents Irish racehorse trainers turning up to wipe them out at the Cheltenham Festival yet again. In a blow for farmers, the new ruling on EU wolf control has encouraged lupine fanciers to smuggle packs into Britain—just in time for lambing season. April Rumours abound that…

Cracks and crevices I HAVE ‘planted’ salvaged large branches and decaying tree trunks in my garden for the woodpeckers and to encourage tree-creepers (right) to visit more often. Over the past two consecutive years, a pair has nested less than 3ft from my bedroom window. When the young are being reared, I find myself smearing a mixture of peanut butter, fat balls and chopped-up raisins in the crevices of the planted logs. It is greatly appreciated by the treecreepers and, as soon as the young are fully fledged, the family leave for the nearby spinney and beyond. Ash Harrison, Derbyshire Leave your hat on I AM the proud owner of a bowler hat and, as your article confirmed, it is not only city gents who wear these comfortable and stylish…

The Cathedral and Abbey Church of St Albans, Hertfordshire, part II ON June 25, 1178, a grand procession conveyed a collection of bones exhumed from a burial mound at Redbourn, Hertfordshire, to the great Benedictine Abbey of St Albans three miles away. Among them were supposedly the remains of a cleric who had been saved from persecution by the bravery of the abbey’s eponymous saint in the late Roman period. As described in the previous issue, early accounts of Alban’s execution outside the walls of Verulamium, possibly in 304BC, offer no record of the cleric’s name or subsequent story. In 1135, he became Amphibalus—or ‘cloak’—the word borrowed from an item of his clothing mentioned in a 6th-century narrative of Alban’s martyrdom. An exemplary restoration project has now given Amphibalus physical…

Stella Weatherall employed colour and pattern to bring her sitting room to life THE interior designer chose a colour palette inspired by her Hong Kong childhood when she decorated her sitting room in London’s Notting Hill. ‘I have always loved yellow, so the starting point was the sofa, the colour of which reminds me of Asia,’ she says. ‘I wanted to create an inviting feel that makes the most of the space, which isn’t huge.’ The sitting room in the Victorian townhouse features the eye-catching sofa in Craft linen in Mimosa by Pierre Frey (020–7376 5599; www.pierrefrey.com). ‘I often begin a room with a combination of three fabrics that work well together, such as a plain, a geometric and a bolder, larger-scale pattern,’ she explains. Here, the solid yellow is…

The gardens of Villa Frere, Pietà, Malta IN 1930, COUNTRY LIFE published a glowing article about the famous gardens at Villa Frere in Malta that had been created by the English diplomat John Hookham Frere (1769–1846). He had retired to Malta in 1820 with his wife, Elizabeth, the Dowager Countess of Erroll, hoping that the sunnier climate would benefit her delicate health. Eventually, however, she succumbed and in 1831, after her death, he began creating his garden partly as a way of alleviating his bereavement. Villa Frere sits on a rocky hillside at Pietà, a small harbour near Valletta, and Frere, who became famous for his kindness and generosity to the people of Malta, employed local craftsmen to build terraces, irrigation systems, classical temples and all manner of walls and…

Festive spiced-citrus pavlova with clementine curd Ingredients For the meringue 4 large egg whites200g caster sugar1tspn white wine vinegar1tspn cornflourPinch of ground cardamom (optional) For the clementine curd 4 large egg yolks100g caster sugar4 clementines, juice and zest of1 lemon, juice of100g unsalted butter, cubed For the spiced syrup 200ml water75g caster sugar1 star anise1 cinnamon stick1tspn vanilla-bean paste1 clementine, segmented1 blood orange, segmented1 grapefruit, segmented2tbspn caster sugar600ml double cream, softly whipped100g chopped roasted hazelnutsFresh rosemary or holly to decorate Method ▸Preheat your oven to 120˚C fan/140˚C/250˚F/gas mark ½ and line a baking tray with parchment paper. Whisk the egg whites until stiff peaks form and then gradually add the sugar, a tablespoon at a time, until the mixture is glossy. Gently fold through the vinegar, cornflour and ground cardamom…

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Tottering in motion IN a little over 20 seconds, Annie Tempest cheers the Boxing Day blues. For the first time, COUNTRY LIFE’s beloved cartoonist of 31 years’ standing (Tottering-by-Gently, page 122) has created an animation. Her short film for Jackson-Stops shows Dicky reading the Financial Times in a black cab on his way into the city, passing Daffy heading out of town in a battered old Land Rover, spaniel ears flapping through the open window. It was created in collaboration with Eliot Wykes of Part Human, the animation production company known for television shows and advertisements for the likes of Coca-Cola and Mercedes. Launching the estate agent’s Boxing Day marketing campaign, the slogan reads: ‘Whether country or town, Jackson-Stops is the national estate agent locals recommend.’ ‘I can see future…

THE sign at the end of the track says ‘Home Farm’. If an ancestor time-travelling from the 17th century landed here today, he or she would recognise the place. Forty acres of hill farm, centred on a family farmhouse and clustered around farm buildings of varied architectural pedigree, from Tudor stone to 1950s red-brick cowshed. Down the valley is more ground, but rented. Almost all the land in this rainy place has been given over to pasture, save for one field on arable rotation. ‘English farmers were never given to poetry in nomenclature, only the prosaic identifier’ English farmers were never given to poetry in nomenclature, only the prosaic identifier: the latter plot, alongside the road, is ‘Lane Field’. The rest of the farm grows sheep, cows, chickens and pigs.…

JENS MARTIN KNUDSEN is known to football fans around the world as the goalkeeper of the tiny Faroe Islands when the team pulled off one of international football’s greatest acts of giant-killing, defeating Austria 1–0 in the 1990 European Championships. It wasn’t the goalie’s string of brilliant saves that attracted the world’s attention, however, but rather what he was wearing on his head: a knitted woollen hat. Mr Knudsen has gone down in sporting folklore as ‘the bobble-hat ’keeper’. That hat, homespun and a little goofy, epitomised the romance of the sporting underdog. That one of the most celebrated modern exponents of the bobble hat should be a Scandinavian is fitting, as the first person we can confirm wearing one is Freyr, Viking god of peace and pleasure, as he…

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THERE is great delight to be had poring over the front pages of COUNTRY LIFE each week, dreaming of what life would be like in a Scottish castle (so reasonably priced, but do bear in mind the midges) or a townhouse in London’s Eaton Square (worth a king’s ransom, but, oh dear, the traffic) or perhaps that cottage in the Cotswolds (if you don’t mind standing next to Hollywood A-listers in the queue at Daylesford). The estate agent’s particulars will give you details of acreage, proximity to schools and railway stations, but never—no, never—an indication of noise levels. You can pay double-figure millions for your rural dream house, but—unless it really is that castle in the Highlands—the chances are that the thing you will be unlikely to acquire at any…

AN artists’ society seems an unlikely setting for romance, but it’s there that Emily Coppin (about 1803–85) met fellow painter Joseph Stannard (1797–1830) and fell in love. She was a young, but acclaimed painter of floral still lifes. He was an accomplished portraitist and landscape artist, a skilled oarsman and ‘the most elegant skater of his day’, who ‘excited the admiration of all by the elegance and perfection by which he cut all the difficult figures,’ according to Harold Day in Life and Work of Joseph Stannard. No wonder Emily was charmed. Born in Norwich, she was the daughter of a collector and amateur artist, Daniel Coppin, and a painter, Elizabeth, née Clyatt, a skilled copyist of works by better-known masters. Emily’s talent was superior to that of either parent…

Reschio: The First Thousand Years Steven King (Rizzoli, £85) I KNOW, I know—I wrote this one, so I probably shouldn’t be writing about it here. It’s included on this list at the request of COUNTRY LIFE’s kind-hearted Travel Editor. You can decide for yourself about the merits of the book. The merits of its subject, the Reschio of the title, a large estate in Italy’s rural Umbria, however, are beyond dispute, and have nothing to do with me. (Best-case scenario, from my point of view: go to Reschio, pick up a copy of the book when you’re there and leave with ecstatic feelings about both.) The estate is outrageously beautiful and historically rich, even by Italian standards. Despite its out-of-the-way location, a great deal of life has swept by, just…

Walking and Talking on the Downs by Alice Macdonald ‘This painting, by my niece, Alice Macdonald, is of the Ridgeway, near to where I grew up. It is heavenly; the colours are perfect, the composition is fascinating and, throughout, there seems to be ambiguity and symbolism. There are the trees, one in blossom and one not, and even the sun’s rays (reminiscent of van Gogh) could be sunshine or rain, perhaps depending on mood. The two figures you see are my sister and niece. The painting is hanging in my house, which once belonged to my mother and is near the Ridgeway. In spite of its uncertainty, the style is not uncertain, and I find it incredibly beautiful, life-affirming and optimistic. It reminds me of so much’ Charlotte Mullins comments…

THE public cannot fail to be aware of farmers now, following the protests about agricultural property relief, with banners proclaiming ‘No Farmers, No Food’. Among all the claims and counterclaims, this is one statement that is obviously correct, but does it carry the same weight with the public that it does with the protestors? This month’s choice at our local men’s book club was James Rebanks’s English Pastoral (2020); it is beautifully written and is happy and hopeful, in stark contrast to his first book, The Shepherd’s Life (2015). I agree with most of his points, but was interested in the opinions of those who live in a rural community, yet have less farming knowledge. They commented on how traditional farming practices have been shed in the pursuit of apparent…

RESEARCH compiled by Crispin Holborow and his team at Savills paints a fascinating picture of the workings of the upper end of the English country-house market in the 11 months from January to November 2024. Sales of houses valued between £5 million and £10m numbered 173 in 2023, but fell to 88 this year, whereas the number of houses sold for more than £10m showed a marginal increase: 25 up from 23. The significant drop in the volume of deals done at almost all levels of the market in England in 2024—not only at the rarefied top end, but also for country houses valued at £2m or more—can be attributed to a number of factors, which combined to create a perfect storm. These included the cold, wet winter and spring,…

I AM sitting on a Persian-carpeted veranda in the loveliest of west Dorset gardens admiring our picnic lunch: huge platters of asparagus, overfilled sandwiches and seriously good Scotch eggs. We have explored the garden, laced with delicate wisteria and radiant with ferns and Solomon’s seal, and paused in the blossom-laden apple orchard. Now, we are embarking on a cider tasting led by poet and cider historian James Crowden. If you don’t drink cider, worry not: organic apple juice or Champagne? This is the G&T Earthly Paradise tour, a blissful six days visiting west Dorset’s finest gardens, master-minded by magazine editor-turned-passionate gardener Simon Tiffin and COUNTRY LIFE columnist Jason Goodwin. Our small group—from the US, Australia, Spain and the UK—is entertained from the moment we climb onto the Goodwin-chauffeured minibus. We…

HOBBY-HORSING, a craze that has been popular in Finland since the early 1990s, was recognised on our shores earlier this year when the British Show Pony Society announced that it was to ‘embrace the hobby horse craze’ and hold an official competition for the sport, with a £300 prize pot. This nod of approval has paved the way for further regional competitions in the UK. The sport, it seems, is hot to trot. Anyone can own a hobby horse (it simply comprises a fluffy toy horse’s head on a stick), but there’s more to the sport than meets the eye. A high level of agility, fitness (some jumps are as high as 3ft) and coordination is required to trot, canter and gallop along on the equine equivalent of a broomstick.…