CHIPPING NORTON comes with preconceptions. This town in Oxfordshire is synonymous with a particular kind of Cotswolds lifestyle: it has an old tweed mill, a princely little theatre and a semi-mythical ‘set’ that includes everyone from Jeremy Clarkson and the Camerons to Blur’s Alex James. None of whom live in the town itself, but that’s beside the point. Chippy holds cachet.
It also holds surprises, one of which is more Uncle Sam than SamCam. In the early 20th century, the town became the British hub for baseball. This claim to fame that, in 1926, saw the town’s ‘brawny Oxfordshire youths’ beating a select group of London Americans in front of hundreds of fans at Chelsea’s Stamford Bridge stadium, meant home runs were being hit here until as late as the 1960s.
The arrival of baseball into the Cotswolds —a move akin to bowling spin in the Bronx— was largely down to one man. Fred Lewis was born in Market Street in the summer of 1879. The son of a builder, he constructed his own legacy by founding the Chipping Norton Scout Group in his late twenties. It was when he was looking for a suitable team sport for the group, in 1909, that Lewis stumbled across an old handbook describing what he considered the perfect egalitarian option.
Denne historien er fra May 05, 2021-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Denne historien er fra May 05, 2021-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.
