A Trout-Fishing Haven On The Avon

Armed with Yellow Humpies and Danica duns, Editor Hedges and The Prof enjoy a successful afternoon in pursuit of giant trout on Wilsford Manor’s stretch of the Wiltshire Avon.

- Wiltshire Avon

NOT far from Stonehenge, and deep in chalk country, through Saxon villages and past dwellings of thatch and flint, flows the Wiltshire Avon—one of eight British rivers of that name (it derives from afon, the Welsh word for river). Over the years, I have fished here at Heale House and on the nearby Piscatorial Society water—where Sting’s guard dogs mounted a foray from the far bank—but perhaps the most exclusive stretch is that belonging to Wilsford Manor.

The Editor and I were invited along for opening day and were royally entertained by the owner, Miles d’Arcy-Irvine, and his wife, Lydia. Although now extensively remodelled in their own elegant style, the house has an aesthetic history that is notably colourful. Built in the 17th-century style by Detmar Blow for the Glenconner family, it became the home of that flamboyant artist and epistolist Stephen Tennant, one of the Bright Young Things of the inter-World War years, who held court here to chums such as Cecil Beaton, the Sitwells and his lover ‘Sieg’ Sassoon.

Stephen was the pasha of overblown taste and a poseur of some distinction. His writing paper was pink embossed with pink; he decorated the manor with lobsterpot lampshades, silver-painted lavatory bowls and a personally designed zebra-skin pouffe. At one stage, there were 16 gardeners.