Week beginning
January 6
Ashridge on the Chilterns was once the home of the 3rd Duke of Bridgewater, known as the ‘Canal Duke’ for his pioneering work on waterways. The 5,000-acre estate is also an important grassland habitat that includes the Iron Age hill fort Ivinghoe Beacon, part of the Ridgeway National Trail. A ‘Nature Detectives’ exhibition, open daily in January (10am–4pm), focuses on the citizen science that many wildlife bodies rely on to inform them about biodiversity health.
January 13
Much of Stourhead’s present glory is due to the work done by its last owners, Sir Henry and Alda Hoare, who, tragically, lost their only son, Harry, in the First World War and bequeathed their Wiltshire property to the Trust in 1946. Visitors can now take a Behind Closed Doors tour, available on weekdays (11am–3pm); this takes you into rarely seen rooms over four floors of Henry ‘The Good’ Hoare’s splendid 18th-century Palladian villa. Dogs are welcome in the landscape garden during January and February.
January 20
Victorian Gothic Tyntesfield near Bristol, which was saved from decay by public donation in 2002, is one of the Trust’s latest great acquisitions. This year, there is a focus on the house’s Hispanic connections—its founder, William Gibb, was born in Madrid —with many previously unseen artefacts on display. Tyntesfield is one of many properties to hold a wassailing event, on January 25 in the newly completed cider-apple orchard. Make your own rattle before taking to the fields, accompanied by traditional folk music and dancing.
January 27
Denne historien er fra January 01, 2020-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Denne historien er fra January 01, 2020-utgaven av Country Life UK.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
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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.
