HOUSES designed by architects for themselves and their families occupy a special place in the history of domestic architecture. They represent a particular canvas onto which an architect projects their ideas and personal dreams—Vanbrugh’s Goose-Pie House in Whitehall and his miniature castle at Greenwich are cases in point, or Sir John Soane’s Museum in Lincoln’s Inn Fields and Pitzhanger Manor in Ealing, west London. We may assume that such buildings are a full demonstration of their values, unrestrained by a client’s controlling hand: dream houses of a special and instructive kind.
Nithurst Farm, designed by Adam Richards and completed in February 2019, is, on one level, a beguilingly simple buff-brick structure sculpted into a deeply verdant setting between Blackdown and Petworth in West Sussex. At first, it seems almost an illusion, set down in a sloping, wedge-shaped field amid dense oak and beech woodland. On closer inspection, it reveals itself as a complex artistic endeavor, entirely contemporary and yet also subtly layered with forms that echo with ancient Rome, like a great gate or small fort; there is also a hint of a simple Tuscan villa. The architect himself cites the work of Vanbrugh—especially the hill-top castellar brick garden belvedere he designed from 1715 for the Duke of Newcastle’s house at Claremont House in Surrey (Fig 2).
Denne historien er fra August 05, 2020-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Denne historien er fra August 05, 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.
