Coton Manor Garden, Northamptonshire The home of Ian and Susie Pasley-Tyler
SINCE 1925, the garden at Coton Manor has been cared for by three generations of the same family, each of which has left their not inconsiderable mark on this south-west-facing landscape that slopes away from the formal stone terraces around the manor house and across flamingo-fringed lawns to a wildflower meadow and bluebell wood and so to the valley beyond.
The garden’s current custodians, Ian and Susie Pasley-Tyler, took over in 1991 and have built up the garden’s reputation—not only for its entertaining birds, magnificent borders, plants and garden areas, a garden school, café and plant nursery—but as a place that local people visit regularly, often weekly, such is the friendly family welcome. Faces are recognised and greetings exchanged as Mrs Pasley-Tyler wanders the grounds taking notes of what plants need dividing or moving. Until recently, her husband manned the plant stall, too, totting up the sales in his head. An exercise in keeping house and garden in good order has thus become a way of life. No wonder that a recent poll elected Coton Manor garden as the nation’s favourite.
There has been a manor here since Domesday and, in 1597, its owner, Sir Fulke Greville, required the annual rent to be paid with a pound of cumin. That house was razed to the ground after the Loyalists were routed by the Parliamentarians at the Battle of Naseby (only three miles away) in 1645, after which a farmhouse was built in 1662 using Northamptonshire stone from the recently demolished royal palace of Holdenby. From then, the land was farmed, with cattle grazing up to the front door until 1923, when it was bought by Mr Pasley-Tyler’s grandparents, Harold and Elizabeth Bryant.
This story is from the April 13, 2022 edition of Country Life UK.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber ? Sign In
This story is from the April 13, 2022 edition of Country Life UK.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Sign In
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.
