THE recent launch onto the market of the exquisite, Grade II*-listed Studley Royal House near Ripon, North Yorkshire, at a guide price of £8 million through Savills Country Department (020– 7409 8881), offers a rare chance to enjoy the privacy and pleasure of a grand country estate with none of the bother, thanks to its location at the heart of the magnificent, 800-acre Studley Royal Deer Park, now owned by the National Trust.
North Yorkshire’s only World Heritage Site, the park is not only home to a large herd of fallow, red and sika deer, it also boasts famous 18th-century water gardens fed by the River Skell, which meanders past the atmospheric ruins of Fountains Abbey—a setting described by Christopher Hussey in his English Gardens and Landscapes 1700-1750 (1967) as ‘one of the most spectacular scenic compositions in England’.
Fountains Abbey was founded in 1132 and, by the mid 13th century, was one of the richest religious houses in the kingdom. Following the Dissolution, the abbey was sacked, before the buildings and more than 500 acres of land were sold to Richard Gresham, an MP and former Lord Mayor of London. He later sold them to Stephen Proctor, who further despoiled the abbey, using the stone to build the Elizabethan Fountains Hall.
In 1699, John Aislabie, an ambitious politician who was appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1718, but expelled from Parliament in 1720 following the South Sea Bubble debacle, inherited the Studley Royal estate, where, for the rest of his life, he indulged his passion for landscape gardening. It was a passion shared by his son, William, who inherited the estate in 1742 and began extending the pleasure grounds into the eastern part of the Skell valley.
Bu hikaye Country Life UK dergisinin May 17, 2023 sayısından alınmıştır.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber ? Giriş Yap
Bu hikaye Country Life UK dergisinin May 17, 2023 sayısından alınmıştır.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Giriş Yap
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.
