ON October 13, 1886, the septuagenarian Patrick Allan-Fraser was presented with the freedom of the burgh of his native Arbroath. It was an honour that, according to J. M. M’Bain’s Eminent Arbroathians (1897), ‘he appeared to value more highly than any of the others which had been conferred upon him’. M’Bain’s judgement rings true. In the course of his long life—funded through the inherited fortune of his wife, Elizabeth, which he managed skillfully—Allan-Fraser was an unusually energetic patron of the institutions and amenities of his home town, including its water supply, library and infirmary.
No less notable was the settlement of his estate when he died a few years later without issue on October 18, 1890. All his Scottish properties and possessions, including an impressive collection of drawings, paintings and sculpture, were placed in a trust with two clearly stipulated responsibilities.
One of these was to ‘provide for the comfortable maintenance and support’ of 10 ‘aged or infirm... painters, sculptors and literary men’. The other was to establish what was, in effect, a school for the Arts at his former home—also inherited through his wife— at Hospitalfield on the outskirts of the town.
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Denne historien er fra August 26, 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.
