IT lies well within the commuter belt, yet Benington Lordship sits in lovely country, seemingly deeply rural and timeless. The estate is very old indeed, traceable back to Saxon times. Today, an 18thcentury brick house and its gardens occupy the site of what had been a classic Norman motte-and-bailey castle. In a rather special way, traces of that fortification erupt here and there, as the pared-down remains of stout, flint walls set above a deep, dry moat, lying immediately east and south of the house.
Down the centuries, Benington Lordship was occupied by various well-connected families through periods of expanding and declining fortune. In the early 1830s, during one of its expansive phases, the substantial house was enhanced with the addition of faux-medieval follies, an early work by the famous Pulham Brothers, whose rockwork and patented composite fake stone launched a family business that achieved enormous popularity throughout the Victorian period. The work at Benington (COUNTRY LIFE, February 13, 2019) emphasises—and picturesquely enhances—the estate’s connections with its former Norman grandeur.
It all provides a romantic backdrop for the gardens, the present form of which was laid out as long ago as 1905, by one Arthur Bott, a Staffordshire engineer who bought the property after a career building railways in India. His wife, Lilian, is credited with its refinements of planting in the Edwardian taste and her watercolours of various garden views, painted in the 1920s, show topiarised hedging, an elegant iron gateway leading to the walled garden and a spring border lit up by the clustered, orange bells of crown imperial fritillaries. Since those days, the gardens have enjoyed continued renown; they were among the first to open for the National Garden Scheme in 1927 and several generations of Botts have been involved.
Denne historien er fra April 29, 2020-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Denne historien er fra April 29, 2020-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.
