THE weather that May was cold and dry, 'dust being everywhere, in street, road, and fallow Queen Victoria celebrated her Diamond Jubilee when ruling over some 450 million people in her Empire and Dominions. The Sultan of Zanzibar abolished slavery. Aspirin first appeared on the market. The Klondike Gold Rush began. Those low temperatures meant the 1897 mayfly hatches were late.
By the year of COUNTRY LIFE's founding, angling had become hugely popular throughout Britain. The sport had been formally subdivided into 'coarse' and 'game' in the 1884 Freshwater Fisheries Act; a year earlier, more than two million enthusiasts had visited the capital's Great International Fisheries Exhibition. Thousands of miles of railway track were opening up the countryside. Prominent pundits included Harry Cholmondeley-Pennell, William Senior and R. B. Marston (redoubtable editor of the influential Fishing Gazette, tuppence each Saturday). Within a few years, COUNTRY LIFE would publish a two-volume compendium, Fishing (1904) covering everything from trout to tarpon and running to 1,000 pages. Those were the days!
The majority of anglers fished for coarse species and there was a proliferation of clubs and associations, particularly in the industrial North and Midlands, which organised competitions and sweepstakes on the canals and other waterways, fielding all-male teams from pits and pubs. Prizes might include a sewing machine, calf's head or a bottle of rum. Despite the often polluted waters, tiddlers were caught with whole-cane roach poles and, on the Trent, a long-trotting style was evolved using a wooden ‘Nottingham centre-pin reel (ancestor of the revolutionary metallic Coxon Aerial, which appeared in 1896). Working mens' outings thrived on the Thames, too: there were more than 600 clubs attached to London pubs alone. In 1897, a 10lb trout was taken at Shepperton.
Denne historien er fra May 11, 2022-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Denne historien er fra May 11, 2022-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Happiness in small things
Putting life into perspective and forces of nature in farming
Colour vision
In an eye-baffling arrangement of geometric shapes, a sinister-looking clown and a little girl, Test Card F is one of television’s most enduring images, says Rob Crossan
'Without fever there is no creation'
Three of the top 10 operas performed worldwide are by the emotionally volatile Italian composer Giacomo Puccini, who died a century ago. Henrietta Bredin explains how his colourful life influenced his melodramatic plot lines
The colour revolution
Toxic, dull or fast-fading pigments had long made it tricky for artists to paint verdant scenes, but the 19th century ushered in a viridescent explosion of waterlili
Bullace for you
The distinction between plums, damsons and bullaces is sweetly subtle, boiling down to flavour and aesthetics, but don’t eat the stones, warns John Wright
Lights, camera, action!
Three remarkable country houses, two of which have links to the film industry, the other the setting for a top-class croquet tournament, are anything but ordinary
I was on fire for you, where did you go?
In Iceland, a land with no monks or monkeys, our correspondent attempts to master the art of fishing light’ for Salmo salar, by stroking the creases and dimples of the Midfjardara river like the features of a loved one
Bravery bevond belief
A teenager on his gap year who saved a boy and his father from being savaged by a crocodile is one of a host of heroic acts celebrated in a book to mark the 250th anniversary of the Royal Humane Society, says its author Rupert Uloth
Let's get to the bottom of this
Discovering a well on your property can be viewed as a blessing or a curse, but all's well that ends well, says Deborah Nicholls-Lee, as she examines the benefits of a personal water supply
Sing on, sweet bird
An essential component of our emotional relationship with the landscape, the mellifluous song of a thrush shapes the very foundation of human happiness, notes Mark Cocker, as he takes a closer look at this diverse family of birds
