HAILE first became a seat of the Ponsonby family when one William Ponsonby married Constance, daughter of Alexander de Haile, in about 1295. Its recent and exemplary restoration, recognised by a special commendation at the Georgian Group Awards earlier this month (‘Georgian distinction’, October 2), and also at the Historic Houses Awards last year, is the most recent chapter in a remarkable story of revival and survival that has kept this family link alive against all the odds through the vicissitudes of the 20th and 21st centuries.
The family connection with Haile is a complex one. A 17th-century descendant of William and Constance, Sir John Ponsonby of Haile, one of Cromwell’s officers serving in Ireland, acquired land in Co Kilkenny. This Irish property descended to his younger sons Henry and William, who established one of the great Anglo-Irish Whig dynasties, the line of the Earls of Bessborough.
Haile, meanwhile, was inherited by Sir John’s eldest son and namesake and left the possession of his heirs when the senior Cumberland line of the family died out in the early 19th century. It was 100 years later that the junior branch returned to the property. It did so in the remarkable figure of Maj-Gen Sir John Ponsonby DSO (1866– 1952), son of Queen Victoria’s legendary private secretary, Sir Henry Ponsonby, and a grandson of the 3rd Earl of Bessborough.
After a military career in the Coldstream Guards and a distinguished role commanding the 5th Division during the First World War, Sir John bought back his ancestral home in remote Cumberland. In 1935, when he was 69, he married the 34-year-old Mary Robley, known as Mollie, who outlived him by 50 years, dying aged 101 in 2003. In her old age, as things fell into decay around her, Mollie used to say deprecatingly that she had promised Sir John to keep the house going, but ‘I didn’t know I would live to be so old!’
Denne historien er fra October 30, 2019-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Denne historien er fra October 30, 2019-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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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.
