ALONG, L-shaped timber-frame house, set within a wide moat, Columbine Hall is a very English and beguiling house. From its late-14th-century origins, it has evolved, as manors do, modestly adjusting and adapting over time. But the building’s medieval character still predominates, the gabled form reflected in the encircling water (Fig 1).
Columbine Hall has been subject to a tactful and well-informed programme of restoration since the house and 30 acres were acquired by Hew Stevenson, formerly chairman of a large group of regional newspapers, and his wife, Leslie Geddes-Brown, a writer with a long association with COUNTRY LIFE, not least as a gardening correspondent. They have worked to provide a fitting degree of modern comfort, as well as bringing out the best of the house’s historic character. In 2014, for example, modern cement render that was damaging the ancient timbers was entirely replaced by traditional lime.
It is not only the house that has been transformed; the surrounding gardens, outbuildings, and landscape have all received careful attention. The large timber-frame barn, its walls painted in a terracotta wash, is now used as a function room, and for wedding receptions; the next-door gig house has been converted into a comfortable cottage. Most impressive are the changes to the farm office overlooking the moat on the north side. A workaday 1960s brick box now reads like an elegant late-17th-century building with sash windows and a jaunty cupola. Within the moated site itself, a new semiformal garden has been created, giving the house a fitting background and frame.
Esta historia es de la edición April 29, 2020 de Country Life UK.
Comience su prueba gratuita de Magzter GOLD de 7 días para acceder a miles de historias premium seleccionadas y a más de 9,000 revistas y periódicos.
Ya eres suscriptor ? Conectar
Esta historia es de la edición April 29, 2020 de Country Life UK.
Comience su prueba gratuita de Magzter GOLD de 7 días para acceder a miles de historias premium seleccionadas y a más de 9,000 revistas y periódicos.
Ya eres suscriptor? Conectar
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.
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.
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
'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
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
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.
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
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
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
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.
