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30 Articles

Let’s end the trend

Future Publishing Ltd, 121–141 Westbourne Terrace, Paddington, London W2 6JR 0330 390 6591; www.countrylife.co.uk IN 1986, Alvilde Lees-Milne wrote The Englishman’s Room, featuring photographs by Derry Moore of various artistic, literary and theatrical luminaries of the day, including Hardy Amies, Teddy Millington-Drake and Gavin Stamp. Four decades later, the spaces in which they posed look as freshly relevant to the early 21st century as they did to the late 20th. Back then, tastes in interior design evolved at a more glacial pace than they do now. Choices of furniture, fabric and paint colours were much more limited; there were no websites, no Instagram or Pinterest flooded with images and fewer than half a dozen interiors magazines, compared with well over 20 today. With this proliferation of ever-evolving choice there emerged…

Let’s end the trend

Temple of books A PROJECT to convert an extraordinary Egyptian-style Victorian mill in Leeds into the northern outpost of the British Library has been awarded £10 million from the Government. The total cost of the conversion is estimated at £70 million and, although the scheme received £1 million from Historic England (HE) in 2022 to make the landmark watertight, there is some way to go. A Grade I-listed former flax-spinning mill, Temple Works has been empty for 20 years. It was built in 1838–40 for John Marshall by architect Joseph Bonomi and engineer James Coombe, inspired by the Temple of Edfu. Unlike its Egyptian counterpart, it was famous for its flat roof covered in grass, which maintained humidity in the building (preventing linen thread from snapping) and notoriously allowed the…

Town & Country Notebook

Quiz of the week 1) By what other name is a white rainbow, seen in cloudy conditions, known? 2) Which type of curved cavalry sword has a single cutting edge? 3) What is the term for laws proposed by backbenchers? 4) Which fish has species known as silver and chinook? 5) In which decade were NHS prescription charges first introduced? 1) Fogbow 2) Sabre 3) Private Members’ Bills 4) Salmon 5) 1950s (1952). Riddle me this: A toothbrush Riddle me this I’ve followed you around for a while and never fail to make you smile; you pick me up both night and day—up, down, rinse and put me away. What am I? Time to buy On this day… March 12, 1994 The Church of England ordained its first women priests…

Town & Country Notebook

Letters to the Editor

International relations IT is a sad and shameful time to be an American. I watched in disbelief as Donald Trump and J. D. Vance berated Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office at the White House. I do not believe that the vast majority of Americans side with President Trump in his lack of support for the Ukrainian people and their President. On May 8, the 80th anniversary of VE Day, I, together with my wife and another couple, are scheduled to land in London. Previously, I was excited to be in England for such a momentous celebration. Now, I’m feeling a sense of embarrassment to be there following the debacle in Washington DC. Jack Martin, by email Worth their weight DURING my 10-year tenure as head teacher at Kilgraston School…

Letters to the Editor

The power of food

AS March dawns and the sun returns, even our most urban friends recognise how deeply the weather affects us all. This year, when the short, dark days have been particularly grey and miserable, the longing for even a glimpse of the sun has been overwhelming. Despite the snowdrops, aconites and primroses and the green shoots of the daffodils to come, spring has seemed a very long way off. Then came the relief of the past fortnight. It was as if the planet had adjusted to the late Easter and held back the promise of better weather until the beginning of Lent. After all, the peculiarly English word ‘Lent’ comes from our own local word for ‘lengthening days’. Our dependence on the weather is not only about our mood, however. The…

The power of food

A sad story for our times IN 1997, COUNTRY LIFE greeted the River and Rowing Museum at Henley-on-Thames in Oxfordshire as ‘one of the most imaginative museums opened in Britain in recent years’. Built on Mill Meadows, beside the river, it is dedicated to three interlocking themes, the Thames, rowing and the history of Henley. Now, it faces a troubled future: although it remains open, it announced last month that it is to ‘cease its current operation’ and that it may even have to consider closure. The immediate priority, according to its board of trustees, is to ‘secure a meaningful and sustainable future for the museum’s collection, building and legacy’. Although half its financial reserves remain, it cannot sustain its current losses, despite its success in attracting some 114,000 visits…

My favourite painting Josh Eggleton

Sammy Davis Medium by Jonni Cheatwood ‘I discovered the work of Jonni Cheatwood through my friend and sometime collaborator, the brilliant street artist Sickboy, one of our Bristol posse. He had loaned me some pieces to hang in our restaurants and was threatening to take this one away, once it had done its time at The Pony Chew Valley. I realised that it had come to represent for me everything that we were trying to do. The work is a collage, with bits of fabric tapestried, as it were, alongside paint on the canvas: materials and skills from the past informing a contemporary piece. This really spoke to what we have been doing here with the pub. We’ve taken an old format and applied our new thinking: gourmet food made…

My favourite painting Josh Eggleton

Like cats on a hot tin roof

FORGET the challenges of geopolitics, our farmyard has recently been the scene of Cat-Gate. It all started last summer when I read an advertisement about rehoming feral cats from London. Within a month of my first email, Georgie and Speedy arrived courtesy of the Society for the Neutering of Islington’s Pussies, also known as SNIP. The two cats arrived with a release pen, instructions on how and when to release them and several weeks’ worth of food. Both cats have been a huge success; our mouse and rat situation has diminished and the once-terrified twosome are now fully grown hunters and love nothing more than curling up in the tack room or workshop—wherever there is food, company and warmth. All was fine until last week, when a very large Bengal…

Like cats on a hot tin roof

Gothic splendours

Allerton Castle, North Yorkshire A property of the Gerald Arthur Rolph Foundation for Historic Preservation and Education IN the early 1980s, a businessman from Florida, Gerald Rolph, was in search of a castle in Ireland to use as a summer house. After a fruitless search of many months, he was persuaded to visit Allerton in North Yorkshire in October 1983. The house—in its present form largely rebuilt from 1848—had been in institutional use for the best part of 20 years and was in urgent need of far-reaching repair. Most people would have been intimidated, but Dr Rolph was delighted by the building, which he offered to buy the very next day, and determined to restore ‘as part of English and world heritage’. Over the following years, the roof of the…

Gothic splendours

Jacqueline du Pré and the cello

THE name Jacqueline du Pré is synonymous with the cello, yet her performing career—an intense burst of brilliance—was over by the time she was 28, when she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (MS). Du Pré, who died aged 42 in 1987, would have been 80 on January 26 this year. ‘I am quite breathless when I think about her and it’s hard not to become emotional,’ said the percussionist Dame Evelyn Glennie in Radio 4’s Great Lives. ‘The music belonged to her, the cello belonged to her and there was no holding back.’ Aged four, du Pré heard the cello being played on Children’s Hour and asked her mother for one. She left school at 15 and studied at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama with the distinguished cellist…

Jacqueline du Pré and the cello

Water you wading for?

‘The ducks grow wildAnd from the muddy pond fly up and wheelA circle round the village and soon, tiredPlunge in the pond again’John Clare, from ‘Signs of Winter’ (1820) DUCK ponds, together with village greens, pubs, churches and red telephone boxes, are one of the quintessential elements of the picture-postcard English village. Visited by generations of children and waterfowl, their mirrored calm belies a noisy past when they were an indispensable part of daily life. Typically situated near the centre of a village, ponds are usually found on common land where they were a watering hole for cattle grazing on the green, as well as the itinerant drovers on the way to market. During the Middle Ages, some village ponds were used for pisciculture and nearly all would have seen…

Water you wading for?

IF you go down to the woods today, you’re sure of a big surprise if you sit on one of those comfortable-looking mounds on the south-facing edge of a sunlit glade. It seems an ideal place for you and your teddy bears to picnic. However, the spot is already taken. Compounded of leaf litter, pine needles and forest debris, these mounds are multistorey homes to wood ants. The largest heap may rise 6ft in height and contain interconnected colonies seething with as many as half a million workers and 100 queens. Southern or red wood ants are the largest of the 51 native ant species in Britain, workers measuring one-third of an inch and the queens almost half an inch. They are inclined to bite and spray acid to protect…

Sorry seems to be the easiest word

AS part of the research for her book Watching the English: The Hidden Rules of English Behaviour (2004), Kate Fox set herself the unenviable task of deliberately bumping into unsuspecting members of the public to compare their reactions. ‘The English lived up to their reputation,’ she reports. ‘About 80% of my victims said “sorry” when I lurched into them, although the collisions were clearly my fault.’ We are a nation of over-apologisers—or, as Max Davidson writes in Sorry: The Hardest Word and How to Use It (2010): ‘If there were Olympic medals for saying sorry, we English would win gold, silver and bronze.’ We apologise when we make a request or a complaint, when something is spoken too softly for us to hear and even—as we’ve seen—when something unfortunate happens…

Sorry seems to be the easiest word

Two’s company, three’s a crowd farmer

I ORDERED a box of Seville oranges from Antonio Bottiglieri, a member of the Frutti del Sole cooperative in Calabria, Italy. The fruit was available when I contacted him late last year—the season runs from November to March—but I told Signor Bottiglieri I didn’t want it until January when Christmas and New Year was over and I could make marmalade in peace. That meant my oranges stayed on the tree until the day before our agreed shipping date and arrived on my doorstep in Herefordshire two or three days later. This suited me—I knew they would be organic, unwaxed and box fresh—and it suited Signor Bottiglieri, who could plan his picking and packing schedule. As I did, his customers place orders via the online platform CrowdFarming (www.crowdfarming.com), which links consumers…

Two’s company, three’s a crowd farmer

Bring me everlasting flowers

ARTIFICIAL flowers come in many shapes and forms, but one of the most charming is surely the wooden blooms that were traditionally carved by travelling communities. This almost-forgotten craft dates back to a time when they would stop for a night or two on a village green and, equipped with only a knife and a few foraged branches, whittle dozens of delicate flowers to sell. The process was simple: a peg knife was used to shave strips of wood from a peeled stick, which was held against the carver’s knee for support. Instead of slicing the piece off, the maker would stop just short of the end, folding each thin sliver over to form a petal. By repeating this process around the stick, a full flower gradually took shape. ‘This…

Bring me everlasting flowers

The COUNTRY LIFE Top 100

THE enduring appeal of the design of architecture, interiors, gardens and landscapes—as well as the skills that bring the ideas to life—is that it constantly evolves as new ideas meet the changing demands of successive generations. With this evolution comes fresh talent, of which we have plenty in Britain. A measure of this is the 14 new names on the 2025 COUNTRY LIFE Top 100 list. Although our selection can never be definitive, it can celebrate those with a track record of excellence, from businesses built up over generations to those that are a few years old. Together, this cohort, many of whom are often featured in these pages, is building on Britain’s impressive heritage and bringing to their craft a spirit of innovation and professionalism that is a vital…

The COUNTRY LIFE Top 100

TODAY sees the launch onto the market in COUNTRY LIFE of historic, Grade II-listed Trenarth Manor, which sits in 120 acres of rolling pasture and woodland on the north bank of the lovely Helford River in south Cornwall, two miles from the village of Constantine and five miles south-west of Falmouth. The sale of Trenarth, for the first time in more than 30 years, is being handled by Falmouth-based Jonathan Cunliffe (01326 617447) and James Toogood of Savills Country Department (020–7016 3822), who quote a guide price of £4.5 million for the idyllic small country estate. For more than 800 years, Trenarth has been home to owners who lived, worked and farmed on its fertile, south-facing slopes and probably chose the site for its proximity to the river, abundant woodland…

Keeping the faith

LAST year’s news that the Church of Scotland was to sell dozens of its churches—and halls and manses—might have come as a revelation. However, shrinking congregations and growing secularism lead to drastic measures as costs go up and revenue comes down. Citing an almighty drop in members and minister numbers, especially over the past 20 years, a spokesperson points out that pruning property assets ‘is believed to be necessary in order to deliver sustainable and realistic new expressions of ministry and church and to ensure all of our buildings are suitable for the needs of mission in the 21st century’. ‘The upshot is a sale portfolio endowed with architectural works of art’ The upshot is a sale portfolio endowed with architectural works of art. Right now, that includes the pinkish…

Keeping the faith

If you want colour…

PRIMULAS are amazing. No genus of ornamental plants has so many species of such diverse origins. Consider tiny Primula egaliksensis. It lives in soggy hollows above the Arctic permafrost. Then, ponder P. verticillata, which is a yellow giant at home on mountainous cliffs in Saudi Arabia. Such different habitats, such different plants, but both of them primulas. There are more than 500 Primula species, but only four are native to the British Isles—primroses, cowslips, oxlips and P. scotica, our own bird’s-eye primula, endemic to the far north of Scotland. Mainland Europe has another 29 species, most of them true Alpines. But it is to eastern Asia that we must look for the most spectacular garden plants—the candelabra primulas, whose flowers are tiered up around a slender stem, whorl after whorl,…

If you want colour…

The gentlemen in black velvet

I HATE moles. When we used to open our garden for charity, moles could be relied upon to make a mess of our lawns just in time for our see-the-roses day. How well I remember those frantic conversations with the county organiser for the National Garden Scheme. Could we cancel at short notice? No, because the punters would come anyway. Are we insured if someone trips over and breaks their neck? No, because opening the garden—even for charity—counts as a commercial activity. Could we put up a notice saying ‘Dangerous Moles. Proceed At Your Own Risk’? Yes, but it would not be enough to let us off an action for negligence. The only safe solution was to lay on such splendid teas that no one bothered to look at the…

The gentlemen in black velvet

Some like it hot

I HAVE a very distinct memory of my first close encounter with black mustard. I picked a single large leaf from a substantial plant growing in a grassy area above a Dorset beach and started chewing. It was almost without flavour at first, but then came a burn that was difficult to tolerate after a minute and insufferable after 90 seconds. Much drinking of water was required. Black mustard is, indeed, very hot, yet other flavours developed that formed an appealing complexity beyond the heat. Moderation is required for most people, although if (as some do) you like it hot, then you will be very well served by this spicy plant. Black mustard (Brassica nigra) is a true native in that it has been in these islands for millennia. It…

Some like it hot

Kitchen garden cook Rhubarb

Rhubarb, orange and almond cake with amaretto, burnt Swiss meringue and rhubarb bows Ingredients For the cake 250g rhubarb, cut into bite-size pieces2tbspn caster sugar3tbspn amaretto liqueur200g unsalted butter, softened200g caster sugar1 orange, zest of 4 large eggs150g ground almonds100g plain flour1tspn baking powderA pinch of salt50g flaked almonds, lightly toasted For the rhubarb bows 150g rhubarb, sliced lengthwise into thin ribbons with a vegetable peeler100g caster sugar100ml water For the Swiss meringue 4 egg whites240g caster sugar1tspn vanilla Method 1. Prepare the washed rhubarb by trimming the ends and chopping into bite-size pieces. Toss in the two tablespoons of sugar and set aside to macerate for 30 minutes. Reserve the excess liquid to make a syrup. 2. In a small saucepan, heat the reserved juices with the amaretto for…

Kitchen garden cook Rhubarb

ONE morning, two men sat, tired yet satisfied, at the top of a steep climb. They surveyed the landscape and nibbled on Kendal Mint Cake. It is a scene that has been played out on hilltops across the world over the past 150 years—but here, the two eating the confectionery were Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay, perched on the summit of Mount Everest. That Kendal Mint Cake—in this case, the brown variety made by Romney’s—should have become the first sweet to reach the top of the world’s highest peak was not so surprising. After all, the Lakeland treat had been carried on the first European expedition to attempt the climb in 1922, on that occasion produced by Wiper’s. The confectionery’s ascent to becoming the world’s first energy bar began…

Coming up roses

CHATSWORTH is in bloom and not only in the garden. A new exhibition opening on March 15 at the Derbyshire country house draws inspiration from flowers and plants to create what curator Allegra Pesenti calls ‘a gathering of gatherings’. Her eclectic selection of pieces—whether Domenichino’s Madonna della Rosa or 18th-century floral lace collars—traverses eras and art forms to raise questions about the environment, but also convey a message of hope. ‘There is no more poignant time than now to be focusing on flowers and all that they represent amid the dramatic climatic changes the world is experiencing and the scourge of the environmental crisis,’ explains Dr Pesenti. ‘In Nature, there is vulnerability, but also resilience and adaptability; death is followed by rebirth and regeneration; beauty is often accompanied by horror;…

Coming up roses

It’s a Scream

IN 1892, an exhibition in Berlin, Germany, was shut down in outrage, causing instant notoriety for the 28-year-old artist whose work was on show: Edvard Munch. ‘This is the best thing that could have happened to me,’ he wrote to his aunt, ‘a better advertisement I couldn’t have wished for.’ German audiences didn’t know what to make of the Norwegian’s wild, hallucinatory paintings that expressed intense emotions. ‘Art is in danger!’ headlined the Frankfurter Zeitung: only a ‘demented character’ could have painted such ‘poison’. ‘Die Affaire Munch’ all but canonised the Nordic painter as a pioneer of Modernism. He has been subsequently revered by Symbolists and Surrealists, Expressionists and neo-Expressionists, pop artists and situationists and on into the present day, when Peter Doig considers him a major inspiration and the…

THERE will be a very special extra treat for visitors to this year’s Salon du Dessin—its 33rd staging—at the Palais Brongniart (March 26–31). Each year, a French fine-arts museum is the guest of honour, invited to present a selection from its drawings collection. This time, it is the Beaux-Arts in Reims, a city to which I have never been, so I was completely unaware of its 13 portraits (Fig 1) of notable German Protestants now attributed to the younger Lucas Cranach (1515–86), although, in the past, they have sometimes been given to his father. They are in combinations of chalk, charcoal, tempera and gouache, and were acquired by the city thanks to Antoine Ferrand de Monthelon (1686–1752), the founder of the drawing school there, who bequeathed it more than 3,000…

The joys of spring

Spring: The Story of a Season Michael Morpurgo (Hodder & Stoughton, £16.99) Spring is the Only Season: How it Works, What it Does and Why it Matters Simon Barnes (Bloomsbury, £18.99) MORE than 50 years ago, Michael and Clare Morpurgo bought a farm cottage where there had once been one front door for the humans and another for the pigs. The celebrated children’s author and his family may not have co-habited with livestock on quite the same levels of intimacy, but, nevertheless, the couple so loved their interactions with Nature that they sought to share them with as many as they could accommodate, especially schoolchildren. To date, their charity has enabled more than 100,000 young people to experience the delights of land-based living. Here, the former Children’s Laureate takes us…

The joys of spring

Bridge and crossword

Bridge I CAN’T lie—I wasn’t really looking forward to the United States Bridge Federation Fall Nationals in Las Vegas late last year. I’m not a gambler (well, okay, maybe a little flutter on the cricket or golf, but absolutely not a fruit machine) and walking in Vegas is famously tricky. Actually, however, I had a really nice time—and played quite well (there’s often a correlation). Here are a couple of pleasurable low-level defences with partner Alex Allfrey from the increasingly prestigious Soloway Knockout Teams. West led the ace of hearts, winning the trick. Now what? Clearly West needed to find an entry to his partner’s hand for the trump switch (which would have to come from partner’s side, through declarer’s King). That side-entry was surely the King of Clubs. At…

Bridge and crossword

I AM agnostic about cattle, en masse. I know of two people who have been fatally trampled by cows and I won’t walk through them. The family divides neatly on the issue. Two of my children will trek a mile to avoid cows in a field and the rest of us skirt cautiously around the boundary. Cattle are naturally inquisitive, so the trick, I am told, is to cross the field without arousing their interest. If you have read this far, you’ll probably think I could manage that easily, but no. Small dogs don’t help; they are like fascinators bobbing in a lady’s hair. Often, some of the cows will start to point. I remain studiedly uninteresting. The cattle start to amble. Ambling becomes a rumbling. I quicken my pace…

TOTTERING-BY-GENTLY

Visit Tottering-By-Gently on our website: www.countrylife.co.uk/tottering We are committed to only using magazine paper which is derived from responsibly managed, certified forestry and chlorine-free manufacture. The paper in this magazine was sourced and produced from sustainable managed forests, conforming to strict environmental and socioeconomic standards. All contents © 2024 Future Publishing Limited or published under licence. All rights reserved. No part of this magazine may be used, stored, transmitted or reproduced in any way without the prior written permission of the publisher. Future Publishing Limited (company number 2008885) is registered in England and Wales. Registered office: Quay House, The Ambury, Bath BA1 1UA. All information contained in this publication is for information only and is, as far as we are aware, correct at the time of going to press. Future…

TOTTERING-BY-GENTLY

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