KNEBWORTH HOUSE presents an architectural conundrum. The building is Tudor, yet bats and gargoyles stare from a stucco façade crowned with turrets and battlements. The additions were made in about 1813 by Elizabeth Bulmer-Lytton, with further alterations by her son, Edward, the novelist, of ‘It was a dark and stormy night’ fame. Inside, the house is deceptively shallow, belying the grand exterior. ‘There used to be four wings,’ explains the Hon Martha Lytton Cobbold, ‘but Elizabeth demolished three sides, to simplify the house and make it more manageable. It was a survival thing.’
As châtelaine of Knebworth since 2000, Mrs Lytton Cobbold is no stranger to tough decisions. She has been preoccupied with preventing the masonry from collapsing. She shows me around, apologising for the scaffolding, focusing not so much on the splendours of the house (the Tudor hall, the re-created grand staircase, the library with its fake-bookcase doors, the Queen Elizabeth Room, which has featured in several films) as on water damage, floating chimneys and cracks in the walls. ‘The north-west turret is twisting away from the underlying brick, causing 4in cracks to ricochet right through the building,’ she explains. ‘All the [leaded] windows had to be replaced and the stonework rebuilt. But we haven’t yet redone the gaps in the floorboards. It’s a work in progress.’
Denne historien er fra July 07, 2021-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Denne historien er fra July 07, 2021-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.
