Indholdsfortegnelse for April 9, 2025 i Country Life

Rodel House, Isle of Harris A home of Anderson Bakewell SEAFARING is central to the story of Rodel House. Overlooking a natural harbour at the eastern approaches to the Sound of Harris, it stands beside its little dock as a welcoming haven in the treeless, rock-crazed landscape (Fig 1). From its upper windows, the house surveys the sea highway of the Little Minch and, across the strait to the south, the Duirinish wing of Skye, a visible reminder of Rodel’s historic links with the MacLeod chiefs, whose vast landholdings included Harris and St Kilda. They would sail over from Dunvegan to visit kinsmen and hunt deer; the swashbuckling Ruairidh Mor spent time living at Rodel before inheriting the chiefship in 1595. During his visit in about 1580/90, the mapmaker Timothy…

WHEN the 18-year-old daughter of a grocer celebrated Boxing Day, 1943, with Spam salad, had a whisper of Hollywood glamour descended on the Lincolnshire town of Grantham? Margaret Thatcher retained fond memories of that wartime Christmas spread: ‘We had friends in and I can quite vividly remember we opened a can of Spam luncheon meat,’ she recalled, decades later. ‘We had lettuce and tomatoes and peaches, so it was Spam and salad.’ Pink and flabby, greasy as Brylcreem and invented by Hormel & Co in Austin, US, during the Great Depression, Spam was a creative way of using pork shoulder meat, previously often discarded as waste because it took so long to cut from the bone. On New Year’s Eve, 1936, company president Jay Hormel offered a $100 (£80) prize…

Henriette von Stockhausen IN the same way that clothes have become less formal, nowadays, most people now also entertain a lot less formally. As a result, the drawing room has changed: it is still the place for gathering with friends and family, but it is much less likely to be for perching uncomfortably on upright seating. Although there might be the occasional formal dinner, it is not likely to happen every weekend—and a room shouldn’t sit empty for most of the year. Nor do people have staff to wait upon their every need in the way they might have done a century ago, so the drawing room needs to be designed differently, perhaps with a drinks tray so guests can help themselves and a layout with a good sense of…

THE restoration of a farmhouse in Northern Ireland became a labour of love for its new owner, who chose to celebrate his passion for meticulous craftsmanship in the build. ‘Every detail was carefully considered to create an authentic result, from the reclaimed materials used in the construction to the traditional techniques employed throughout,’ says Bruce Hodgson, the founder of kitchen and joinery specialist Artichoke. ‘We were asked to create a contemporary kitchen, in a breakaway from the other more traditional rooms in the house,’ explains Mr Hodgson, ‘but what unites all the joinery is a consistent palette of natural materials.’ Solid French oak has been chosen for the focal-point island, using mostly rift-cut boards selected from the straight section of the tree trunk to optimise their stability. Because solid timber…

THE Robber Barons, those late-19th-century American industrialists who grew spectacularly rich through harsh business practices, have long gone. John Jacob Astor, Andrew Carnegie, Andrew Mellon, J. P. Morgan, John D. Rockefeller and Cornelius Vanderbilt remain familiar even if the rapacity that underlay their wealth has been forgotten. Their names live on as symbols of plutocracy and of lives lived amid art bought wholesale from the old world to decorate the gilded mansions of the new. All these men sought to soften their voracious reputations through philanthropy—Rockefeller supported medical research, Astor and Carnegie endowed libraries, Vanderbilt helped establish the Metropolitan Opera, Mellon and Morgan became major donors to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. However, the Robber Baron who most successfully distanced himself from the source of his riches was Henry Clay…

Future Publishing Ltd, 121–141 Westbourne Terrace, Paddington, London W2 6JR 0330 390 6591; www.countrylife.co.uk SPRING may have sprung, but those with mental illness must shoulder their burden whatever the weather, relying on medication and psychotherapy to manage their symptoms as effectively as they can. Yet therapy also comes in other forms. For her book The Well Gardened Mind (2020), the psychiatrist Sue Stuart-Smith interviewed those suffering from trauma, depression, addiction and schizophrenia to understand how engaging with the natural world has a positive impact on their lives. Mrs Stuart-Smith delves into history, too, describing the work of the British physician William Tuke, who, in 1796, established The Retreat, an asylum near York that broke with tradition by allowing patients to walk freely in its grounds and do meaningful work, including…

Elegance on horseback YOU published a photograph of the fine Munnings/Lutyens bronze monument of Edward Horner (below), who was killed during the First World War (‘The architect for me’, March 19). Reginald Hancock, an eminent veterinary surgeon, published Memoirs of a Veterinary Surgeon in 1952, in which he describes his friendship with Horner. He notes that ‘no statue has moved [him] more’. Yet ‘anyone who had seen Horner astride a horse could not fail to notice the extraordinary length of his limbs and Munnings has not caught this. However, the likeness of the features is remarkable and to a horse lover the charger is not only beautiful, but, as one would expect, impeccable in stance and moulding’. Alan P. Carter, Dorset The joy of a Norwich IT is such a…

Rowadill in Harris by William Daniell ‘Of all the views that Daniell captured on his circumnavigation of the British Isles, I’m particularly fond of the ones he made in the Hebrides, where he was captivated by the scenery and unfamiliar ways of life, as he journeyed on horseback through the difficult terrain, making treacherous crossings in small, open boats. A brilliant draughtsman, he provides so much absorbing detail about the places he visited at a time of great change–the ancient and polite new buildings, rural industry, harbours and busy sailing craft. All conveyed so atmospherically in aquatint, the most complex of techniques. I particularly love Rowadill because, allowing for Daniell’s Picturesque licence and the loss of the right-hand house, the view is the same today’ Charlotte Mullins comments on Rowadill…

IF it wasn’t for Collingwood ‘Cherry’ Ingram, our spring displays might not be so glorious. Ingram’s first passion, inherited from his parents (together with their wealth—his grandfather, Herbert Ingram, had founded The Illustrated London News), was for ornithology: his early years were spent identifying and cataloguing bird skins for the Natural History Museum. His enthusiasm for cherry blossom was sparked by a trip to Japan, where the plant is revered, in 1902 and, five years later, he honeymooned there. He saw how industrialisation and cloned varieties had damaged the diversity of species and sent more than 50 samples back to England for safekeeping. After serving in the First World War, Ingram moved with his family to The Grange in Benenden, Kent. The undeveloped garden there, which had only two flowering…

WHEN London’s Natural History Museum opened its new Evolution Garden last summer, its centrepiece attraction, a full-size replica of the diplodocus, was named Fern by local schoolchildren. The name was as appropriate as it was cute. When such creatures roamed the Earth 150 million years ago, they browsed among hulking tree ferns and horsetails that would have left the varieties and cultivars of today’s nurseries in the shade. Unlike the dinosaurs, ferns proved adaptable to a changing planet. Following mosses and liverworts on the evolutionary timeline as non-flowering plants, but with more complex structures, those planted in the Evolution Garden are scaled-down descendants of the giants of the prehistoric period. They include exotics such as the soft tree fern (Dicksonia antarctica) and king fern (Todea barbara), as well as the…

Pick of the crop Table lamps Pick of the crop Colourful side tables…

IN 1981, antique restorers Charlie Smallbone and Graham Clark opened a showroom off Westbourne Grove in west London, offering kitchens that featured simple cabinetry with recessed centre panels either painted or in natural wood. The style and feel were in stark contrast to the featureless melamine cabinetry that was prevalent at the time. The look, which became synonymous with English country style, quickly caught on. By 1986, Smallbone of Devizes had 12 showrooms in the UK’s smartest postcodes and three in the US. Since then, the kitchen has evolved to become a multifunctional space, often adjacent to the main living space. In many homes, this has precipitated a desire for kitchens that blend seamlessly into a succession of open-plan rooms where functionality is concealed and appliances hidden away. Typically, these…

MULCH is a beautiful word. It speaks to us of neat, contented gardens where well-tended plants luxuriate in rich nourishment and the mulch itself is piled in circles around each much-loved, cosseted plant. What exactly is mulch? The definition is fairly flexible and still evolving. It used to mean leafmould or homemade compost and mulching meant spreading it around plants, especially young trees and shrubs, to feed them and protect them from drying out. It was a natural way of fertilising the soil, conserving moisture and preventing weed seedlings from germinating. It looked good, too. When the late garden writer David Hessayon was asked what last piece of advice he would give to his readers, it came down to one word: ‘Mulch’. Mulch today means more than that. It extends…

IF we want to keep and enhance rural England, we’d better look out—the Government is after us. It’s not difficult to see why. Britain needs growth if we are not all to be worse off by the end of this decade and the planning system often seems to stand in the way of necessary development. It takes far too long; it is very expensive; and perfectly sensible projects are often stymied for reasons that are clearly disproportionate, hence the Government’s Planning and Infrastructure Bill, now before Parliament. The bill has the aim of making development and infrastructure improvement easier. Agromenes has already pointed to the idiocy of passing it before we have Defra’s Land Use Framework, currently under consultation (March 19). However, the Government is determined to proceed immediately and…

IF you want a few seats to yourself on an aeroplane, book your flight on Friday the 13th. Although many deny being superstitious, they don’t like tempting fate. Even those who are as down to earth as badgers generally have little things they avoid for ill fortune—walking under ladders, opening umbrellas indoors—or seek out for good (who doesn’t see a rainbow and instinctively think there’s a pot of gold waiting for them somewhere?). The days of the talismanic rabbit foot and the lucky sprig of heather may have faded, but most of us still instinctively fret about a broken mirror or try to save a money spider from a watery demise in the bath. We assure ourselves it’s only ‘a silly bit of nonsense’; yet, for at least one section…

CLEMATIS is one of the most useful and widely grown garden plants. Botanists tell us that there are about 300 Clematis species—some say the true number is nearer to 400—and that’s before you start counting the many ornamental hybrids that add so much beauty and versatility to our gardens. The RHS Plant Finder divides the genus into 15 distinct groups and lists more than 800 species and hybrids, which is a measure not only of their diversity, but also of their popularity. Clematis is a member of the Ranunculaceae family, which means that the plants have no petals because the four sepals do duty for them. The Montana Group is one of the best known—some garden-lovers consider it the most graceful and floriferous of all. All its members descend from…

IN the summer of 1862, the cry of ‘There’s gold in them thar hills!’ echoed across the land. Soon, adventurers were loading up their pickaxes and dynamite and dashing off in search of riches. In this case, the siren call of fortune came not from California or Australia, but from a place equally rugged, if a little less sunny—North Wales. Last month, the auction of three 1oz coins made of gold extracted from the recently reopened Clogau-St David mine in Gwynned was welcome proof that, after a 27-year hiatus, what locals might call twymyn aur is still alive in the Principality. Thanks to the use of cutting-edge technology, new seams of the precious metal have finally been discovered. Welsh gold has a long history. The Romans mined it so profitably…

WHAT did they change?’ That’s what Ian Wardropper, former director of The Frick Collection in New York City, US, believes one might wonder upon seeing the $330 million renovation—the most comprehensive in the history of the Fifth Avenue institution. In the best-loved parts of The Frick, the answer may appear to be—not much. After five years of closure, you bask in the familiarity of the monumental Turner portscapes hung opposite each other in the West Gallery, Dieppe and Cologne; their honeyed luminescence plays against the green velvet walls as it always has. You breathe a sigh of relief that well enough has been left alone, before recognising that almost nothing around you has been left untouched, precisely so that it can go on being the same. The wall hangings have…

Bird School: A Beginner In The Wood Adam Nicolson (William Collins, £22) FOR many years, Adam Nicolson, of impeccable landscape and natural-history writing pedigree, ignored birds. Schooled by his father to admire the view rather than the flora and fauna within it, birds seemed incidental to the main picture. In this charming account, he explains how he remedied the oversight by building a hut in an isolated part of his farm to immerse himself in their world—in other words, to attend bird school. What follows is a mixture of natural history and philosophy, first-hand observation and second-hand recycling, as well as expounding upon the latest avian science. The occasional eccentricity mingles with seriousness of intent. ‘Two willow warblers are described as “elegists for a previous world, singing their anthems for…

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