Very much on song
Country Life UK|March 24, 2021
The reimagined gardens at Nevill Holt, Leicestershire, have stepped into the limelight to offer a powerful overture to the summer opera festival, explains Kendra Wilson
Kendra Wilson
Very much on song

NEVILL HOLT feels like a place that is, after 700 years of ups and downs, finally entering its prime. Closeted on a hill in a quiet part of Leicestershire, the ironstone hall at Holt was home for four centuries to the recusant Nevill family, who added their name and many extensions. By 1877, when the shipping heir Sir Bache Cunard took possession of the house, its centuries of layering made for a look that was much in vogue, ready for the neo-Gothic detailing Cunard added with enthusiasm.

A golden age almost began with the arrival of opera-loving Lady Cunard (later known as Emerald), a gregarious Californian heiress. If only Sir Bache himself had been musical. When he was away fishing, his wife’s friends would take over the house, singing Wagnerian arias out of bedroom windows in the middle of the night. Lady Cunard’s departure for London (together with her daughter, Nancy, a style icon and agitator) was Nevill Holt’s loss.

As Lady Cunard was establishing herself as an influential hostess and great supporter of the opera at Covent Garden (‘There was no limit to the number of boxes she could fill,’ noted Osbert Sitwell), her former home went into hibernation as a prep school. When it closed and, in 1999, was put up for sale as one dwelling, it was a threadbare proposition. But David Ross—businessman and now chair of the Royal Opera House—saw the potential. He resolved to turn his home into a setting for music, partly as a pragmatic way of opening the gates to like-minded people, as well as former pupils. Nevill Holt Opera eventually came into being and the garden, teased back to life by designer Rupert Golby, has a starring role.

هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة March 24, 2021 من Country Life UK.

ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.

هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة March 24, 2021 من Country Life UK.

ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.

المزيد من القصص من COUNTRY LIFE UK مشاهدة الكل
Save our family farms
Country Life UK

Save our family farms

IT Tremains to be seen whether the Government will listen to the more than 20,000 farming people who thronged Whitehall in central London on November 19 to protest against changes to inheritance tax that could destroy countless family farms, but the impact of the good-hearted, sombre crowds was immediate and positive.

time-read
1 min  |
November 27, 2024
A very good dog
Country Life UK

A very good dog

THE Spanish Pointer (1766–68) by Stubbs, a landmark painting in that it is the artist’s first depiction of a dog, has only been exhibited once in the 250 years since it was painted.

time-read
1 min  |
November 27, 2024
The great astral sneeze
Country Life UK

The great astral sneeze

Aurora Borealis, linked to celestial reindeer, firefoxes and assassinations, is one of Nature's most mesmerising, if fickle displays and has made headlines this year. Harry Pearson finds out why

time-read
3 mins  |
November 27, 2024
'What a good boy am I'
Country Life UK

'What a good boy am I'

We think of them as the stuff of childhood, but nursery rhymes such as Little Jack Horner tell tales of decidedly adult carryings-on, discovers Ian Morton

time-read
3 mins  |
November 27, 2024
Forever a chorister
Country Life UK

Forever a chorister

The music-and way of living-of the cabaret performer Kit Hesketh-Harvey was rooted in his upbringing as a cathedral chorister, as his sister, Sarah Sands, discovered after his death

time-read
4 mins  |
November 27, 2024
Best of British
Country Life UK

Best of British

In this collection of short (5,000-6,000-word) pen portraits, writes the author, 'I wanted to present a number of \"Great British Commanders\" as individuals; not because I am a devotee of the \"great man, or woman, school of history\", but simply because the task is interesting.' It is, and so are Michael Clarke's choices.

time-read
3 mins  |
November 27, 2024
Old habits die hard
Country Life UK

Old habits die hard

Once an antique dealer, always an antique dealer, even well into retirement age, as a crop of interesting sales past and future proves

time-read
4 mins  |
November 27, 2024
It takes the biscuit
Country Life UK

It takes the biscuit

Biscuit tins, with their whimsical shapes and delightful motifs, spark nostalgic memories of grandmother's sweet tea, but they are a remarkably recent invention. Matthew Dennison pays tribute to the ingenious Victorians who devised them

time-read
3 mins  |
November 27, 2024
It's always darkest before the dawn
Country Life UK

It's always darkest before the dawn

After witnessing a particularly lacklustre and insipid dawn on a leaden November day, John Lewis-Stempel takes solace in the fleeting appearance of a rare black fox and a kestrel in hot pursuit of a pipistrelle bat

time-read
4 mins  |
November 27, 2024
Tarrying in the mulberry shade
Country Life UK

Tarrying in the mulberry shade

On a visit to the Gainsborough Museum in Sudbury, Suffolk, in August, I lost my husband for half an hour and began to get nervous. Fortunately, an attendant had spotted him vanishing under the cloak of the old mulberry tree in the garden.

time-read
3 mins  |
November 27, 2024