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Front Covers: Country Life Magazine – SEP 22
Tag Archives: Country Life Magazine
Front Covers: Country Life Magazine – SEP 15
Scottish Country Houses: 18th C. ‘Wedderburn Castle’ In Berwickshire
Wedderburn Castle, Berwickshire, is one of Robert Adam’s less familiar commissions — yet just as extraordinary as many of his more famous buildings. Recently rescued from neglect by owners David Home Miller and Catherine Macdonald-Home, it has a fascinating story to tell about the development of his castle style.
The ‘castle style’ of the Georgian era might be said to have been invented by Vanbrugh, who aimed to give ‘something of the castle air’ with his additions to Kimbolton Castle, Huntingdonshire, in 1707–10 .
In practice, that amounted to little more than a battlemented parapet applied to a completely symmetrical building. In the late 18th century, the architect Robert Adam was undoubtedly influenced by Vanbrugh, whose mastery of what he called ‘movement’ in architectural composition — ‘the rise and fall, the advance and recess with other diversity of form, in the different parts of a building’ — he admired (although he deplored the Baroque master’s ‘barbarisms and absurdities’).
Profiles: British Painter William Lee-Hankey – ’19th Century Rural France’
William Lee Hankey RWS, RI, ROI, RE, NS was a British painter and book illustrator. He specialised in landscapes, character studies and portraits of pastoral life, particularly in studies of mothers with young children such as “We’ve Been in the Meadows All Day”.
Flight Views: Lake District, England In An Autogyro
There is a certain ecstasy in flight. Travel with no constraints of speed, boundary or traffic, surmounting geography without effort, looking down like a god or a hawk.
The best place to do this is the Lake District, where I went in June. Modern autogyros (also called gyrocopters) are usually slender aircraft about 3ft wide and 15ft long.
They have no wings. Instead, an unpowered rotor provides lift and a small engine and propeller at the back give forward speed.
Recent video of Lake District autogyro flight:
The delights of our flight were marvellous: floating buoyant in the summer air, deftly absorbing or avoiding updrafts and downdrafts, thrumming softly over the tapestry of lakes and fells, skimming steep, dun-coloured slopes or the meadows where poets wandered, Ruskin enthused and Beatrix Potter conjured small animals to human life.
Front Covers: Country Life Magazine – August 25
English Cottages: ‘Micro-Hamlet’ Of Dulwich, UK
With its white weather boarded exterior, blue plantation shutters, lush sprawling garden and exquisite interiors, you may well think that this enchanting Georgian property was situated by the coast in Cornwall, or even tucked away amongst the lavender in Provence.
Situated in ‘its own private micro hamlet’ in the Sydenham Hill Conservation Area of Mount Gardens, the property has undergone a complete renovation, having been transformed into a ‘bright and airy four bedroom detached home that is full of character.’
The results really will inspire – with a kitchen/dining room that flows seamlessly out into the leafy garden, that leads to a covered outdoor terrace. Also helping to create a flow between indoor and outdoor living is a garden room plus a detached art studio/ separate annexe.
Views: The Wild Coastlines Of Britain And Ireland
The spectacular coastlines of Britain and Ireland get battered by weather in autumn and winter, but on a fine day in spring or summer they’re the equal of anything in the world.
The west coast of Ireland bears the brunt of some of the Atlantic Ocean’s most terrific swells. As a result, its beaches are a Mecca for surfers. Lahinch — a mile-long, sandy crescent — is regarded as one of the best. And remember your golf clubs: the links course at Lahinch is a joy, one of the finest in the country.
On a sunny day, Luskentyre beach could easily be mistaken for somewhere in the Caribbean — something that could be said of all the best beaches in Scotland. The sand is a brilliant sugar-white sweep and the sea a vivid shade of blue. Sand dunes to the north provide protection on windier days and there are excellent walking trails for those who don’t fancy a dip. If bad weather sweeps in, you’ll certainly feel ready for a dram afterwards.
English Country Estates: Flete House In Holbeton
Twelve glorious acres of manicured grounds surround partly Elizabethan Flete House, former seat of the Mildmay family, which overlooks Ermington and Dartmoor, enjoying ‘probably the finest situation in Devonshire’ according to Cornish poet and historian Richard Polwhele (1797).
At Holbeton in the South Hams, not far from Georgian Modbury, it was used as a maternity hospital in the Second World War and has now been converted into 29 apartments, retaining the principal rooms (library, dining, drawing and billiard rooms and others) for communal use, exclusively for over 55s.
English Gardens: 19th-Century Brodsworth Hall In South Yorkshire
The mid-19th-century Gardens of Brodsworth Hall in South Yorkshire are striking. House and grounds are a perfect complement of Italianate green architecture and are linked by formal terraces with three staircases decorated by marble urns and recumbent — probably Italian — greyhounds acquired by the Italian sculptor Chevalier G. M. Casentini.
If this all feels rather unlikely in Yorkshire, that is because it reflects the taste of one man, Charles Sabine Augustus Thellusson, who came into an extraordinary inheritance in 1858 and devoted much of it to creating the hall and its gardens in his own personal style.
‘Today, he would be an oligarch,’ says Michael Klemperer, senior gardens advisor for the North and Midlands regions at English Heritage (EH), which now looks after house and gardens. ‘The money he received from the will was £700,000, which, with interest, equates to £140 million today.’ With the cash came the estate that had belonged to his great-grandfather Peter Thellusson, a Swiss financier, who had moved to London in 1760 and built up a fortune as a merchant and banker.
Charles Thellusson was an avid traveller, sailor and photographer. ‘He was a big, robust Victorian gentleman, a patrician walrus,’ notes Dr Klemperer, who sees Brodsworth as representing a transition between Continental styles and the Victorian era. ‘It is a garden that is interesting on a number of levels,’ he adds, citing influences as varied as Caspar David Friedrich (1774–1840) and Blackpool pier.
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