A stately hut

Whether folly or functional, ornate or ordinary, these idiosyncratic structures are indispensable to our sporting lives

- JANET MENZIES

According to Noel Coward, the function of a stately home is to prove the upper classes still have the upper hand. But, really, who cares about having the upper hand? The important thing is the sporting. For example, Historic England notes rather sniffily in its description for Grade I-listed The Stables at Goodwood House: ‘These are more distinguished architecturally than the outside of the house.’ Surely this is hardly worth commenting on? Horses, hounds, gundogs, shooting, fishing and hunting have always mattered more – hence the existence of the stately hut.

Sometimes architecturally significant, sometimes simply snug, the stately hut is both idiosyncratic and indispensable to our sporting lives. If you are lucky enough, you will take your shoot elevenses in one, perhaps a Georgian folly conveniently situated within celebrating distance of that high pheasant drive. Or having trudged up a serious grouse moor, you may discover an all-mod-cons log cabin perched like something out of the Swiss Alps. When it throws it down in the middle of your fishing, you can retreat for a cuppa in a charmingly random tennis pavilion once used by Benjamin Disraeli (whom it is hard to imagine actually playing tennis).

EQUAL PRIORITY

The smartest huts are sometimes 300 or 400 years old, but stately-hut building on great estates, shoots, fishing beats and even just in back gardens is thriving every bit as dynamically today as it did nearly a thousand years ago. When William I conquered England, he gave equal priority to building hunting lodges in his deer forests as to his chain of defensive motte-andbailey castles, a value statement embraced enthusiastically ever since.