A room for all reasons

Party barns were once little more than useful venues for large social gatherings, but now, former agricultural buildings are being converted into multifunctional spaces that are transforming rural properties, finds Arabella Youens

Nature's way

THE Michelin-starred chef of Berkshire’s Coworth Park, Adam Smith (formerly of The Ritz), has just opened Coworth’s new restaurant, Woven, and it is outstanding.

Taking the right turn

Joey Richardson's artwork is so exquisite that the Royal Warrant Holders Association asked her to create a gift for the Queen. Serena Shores meets the master craftswoman taking the ancient art of woodturning to new heights Photographs

Fair-feather friends

Come autumn, millions of migrant birds flock to Britain to overwinter here. Stephen Moss charts their gruelling journeys from the Arctic, Scandinavia and Siberia and considers why they are prepared to fly so far

Each month of this 125th-anniversary year, COUNTRY LIFE illustrates a period in the development of the English country house. In the 11th of this 12-part series, John Goodall looks at the early 20th century

ON September 7, 1918, the critic and biographer Lytton Strachey wrote to his cousin Mary Hutchinson from The Bird in the Bush Inn at Elsdon, Northumberland.

The Mousetrap

A DECADE ago, an entry on The Mousetrap in the Methuen Drama Dictionary of the Theatre noted that audiences for the long-running West End phenomenon were said to have consumed more than 395 tons of ice cream and 80,000 gallons of drinks, as backstage staff ironed about 100 miles of shirts.

Show me the way to go home

Plodding home in the gloaming, through a wood stripped bare by November gales, John Lewis-Stempel stumbles across a magical fairy ring of wood-blewit fungi

Littered with snags

ONCE we sign up to litter picking in the countryside, we never get let off. It’s an unending task, in which we soon get to know the worst offenders.

Off balance

RECENT figures that appeared in your magazine (Town & Country, October 26) showed that, off Blakeney Point in Norfolk, grey-seal pup birth numbers were 25 in 2001, a little more than 3,000 in 2019 and predicted to be 4,500 this year. Their main diet is fish and crustaceans.

Castle gates clang shut

NOTTINGHAM CASTLE closed its doors to the public last week, after the trust that manages it fell into liquidation.

From a jester to The King

LAST week, The King visited St Bartholomew’s Hospital, Smithfield, London EC1, in anticipation of a major restoration project and the 900th anniversary of the hospital’s foundation.

Beauty in a bridge

THE footbridge that connects the rugged headland of Tintagel, Cornwall, to the mainland, completed in 2019, has won the Building Beauty Awards organised by the Royal Fine Art Commission Trust.

Tasty and trustworthy

ATERRIFYING statistic I heard recently is that there are more food banks in this country than McDonald’s,’ says S. J. Hunt, CEO of the Country Food Trust (CFT).

Harrying back

WE might soon see hen harriers circling above the skies of the congested A303 after a conservation breeding scheme was announced by Natural England.

Let there be light and song

WHEN thinking of the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols, you would be more than forgiven for training your mind to turn on the radio at 3pm on Christmas Eve to hear the soft solo treble of Once in Royal David’s City echo from the lone chorister at King’s College, Cambridge.

No time for sentiment

After shovelling silage and feeding his sheep on a damp October morning, John Lewis-Stempel takes aim at a grey-squirrel drey in a bid to warn off its absent occupants from targeting songbirds

The phoenix rises

London is the centre of all things Eastern and Oriental this week

Changing places

A modern masterpiece leads a pack of three fine homes in the north of England

Clamberers not climbers

AS do most gardeners, I have a clear image of what I expect from a plant. Dahlias must be bright and bold, sweet peas overloaded with perfume and delphiniums the colour of a Mediterranean sky.

All fired up: The garden at Gresgarth Hall, Caton, Lancashire The home of Sir Mark and Lady Lennox-Boyd

In a non-stop firework display of sulphurous yellow, flaming scarlet and glowing amber, this garden lights up the soul–and the autumn skies, reports Non Morris

A song of chance and fire

Autumn colour is often fleeting and notoriously hard to predict, but pick the right plants and, sooner or later, you will revel in a glorious blaze, says Steven Desmond

COUNTRY LIFE BEST IN CLASS 2022

COUNTRY LIFE'S editorial team has pooled knowledge and instinct to share a highly curated selection of 70 items that epitomise craftsmanship, aesthetics, function, durability, quality and are a pleasure to own Compiled by Carla Passino

Dabbling with pretty ducks

Ornamental waterfowl are an endlessly cheering and fascinating addition to any stretch of water, but they can make a mess. Vicky Liddell asks experienced keepers for their advice

‘Governed for God’s praise’

In the first of two articles, David Robinson revisits an exceptional and little-known survival of the Premonstratensian canons, one of the less-familiar monastic and religious orders of medieval Britain

This fortress built by Nature for herself

COUNTRY LIFE’s Picture Editor Lucy Ford salutes the wild and often untamed beauty of Britain with her pick of the striking images from this year’s Landscape Photographer of the Year Awards

The empathy of accompanists

A soloist may get top billing, but, as all professionals know, the recital is really a team effort of equals with their piano accompanist. Henrietta Bredin talks to one of the great exponents of that art

Newt tales

HAVE you seen The Newt?' It was the question everyone asked me back in the summer of 2019. Friends said that I would like it.

Burnished credentials

The garden at Blackland House, Calne, Wiltshire The home of Mr and Mrs Ed Nicholson Famous for its spring bulbs, this garden comes into its own in autumn with its crisp underpinning of geometric forms, says Mary Keen

Manors maketh Man

Two centuries-old manor houses wear their history well-one is connected to our Nine Days' Queen, Lady Jane Grey

A passion for pattern

Tess Newall has taken time off from painting murals to design a collection of wallpaper and lampshades, finds.