NEVILL HOLT feels like a place that is, after 700 years of ups and downs, finally entering its prime. Closeted on a hill in a quiet part of Leicestershire, the ironstone hall at Holt was home for four centuries to the recusant Nevill family, who added their name and many extensions. By 1877, when the shipping heir Sir Bache Cunard took possession of the house, its centuries of layering made for a look that was much in vogue, ready for the neo-Gothic detailing Cunard added with enthusiasm.
A golden age almost began with the arrival of opera-loving Lady Cunard (later known as Emerald), a gregarious Californian heiress. If only Sir Bache himself had been musical. When he was away fishing, his wife’s friends would take over the house, singing Wagnerian arias out of bedroom windows in the middle of the night. Lady Cunard’s departure for London (together with her daughter, Nancy, a style icon and agitator) was Nevill Holt’s loss.
As Lady Cunard was establishing herself as an influential hostess and great supporter of the opera at Covent Garden (‘There was no limit to the number of boxes she could fill,’ noted Osbert Sitwell), her former home went into hibernation as a prep school. When it closed and, in 1999, was put up for sale as one dwelling, it was a threadbare proposition. But David Ross—businessman and now chair of the Royal Opera House—saw the potential. He resolved to turn his home into a setting for music, partly as a pragmatic way of opening the gates to like-minded people, as well as former pupils. Nevill Holt Opera eventually came into being and the garden, teased back to life by designer Rupert Golby, has a starring role.
Denne historien er fra March 24, 2021-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Denne historien er fra March 24, 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.
