Country Life Magazine – September 27, 2023: The new issue features The Need For Tweed; A perfect pre-trained gundog; A new Jacobean drawing room is the crowning glory at Shilstone, Devon, and more…
The need for tweed
A true Hebridean hero weaves his magic to create an ‘estate’ Harris tweed for David Profumo
Here’s one I trained earlier
Has your over-excited pup left you red-faced on a shoot day? Katy Birchall has the answer: a perfect, pre-trained gundog
Loved to life
A new Jacobean drawing room is the crowning glory at Shilstone, Devon, discovers John Goodall
Aeon Video (May 2, 2023) – With a deep view of time, a regenerative forester extracts resources to cultivate growth in an ancient English rainforest.
Living and working in the woodlands of the Teign valley in Devon, England, the regenerative forester John Williamson has cultivated a deep connection to and unique understanding of this rare patch of English rainforest. This includes knowing that a healthy ecosystem means an eclectic variety of landscapes rather than perfect tree cover; that no parcel of land in Great Britain has gone untouched by humans; and that, while storms can mean devastation for people, for woodlands they’re simply another phase in an ancient cycle.
In this short documentary, Williamson explains how, through viewing these woodlands in terms of the deep past, present and future, he’s developed a sustainable method of extracting wood and creating charcoal that actually encourages biodiversity.
Torquay is a seaside resort town on the English Channel in Devon, south west England. Known for beaches such as Babbacombe and cliffside Oddicombe, its coastline is nicknamed the English Riviera. Torquay Harbour near the town centre offers shops, cafes and a marina. Torre Abbey, a monastery founded in 1196, has art galleries and extensive gardens featuring plants from local writer Agatha Christie’s novels.
Over in West Devon, the village of Horrabridge in the Dartmoor National Park, four miles south of Tavistock, grew up around an ancient crossing over the fast-flowing River Walkham, a famous salmon river, its 15th-century bridge one of the oldest in Devon.
In the late 1800s/early 1900s, the south wing of the original Elizabethan building was rebuilt after ‘three successive fires’ destroyed ‘the hall and one wing’.
In the late 1800s, three sisters sold the 400-acre Sortridge estate to a Plymouth stockbroker who immediately sold it again in lots, thereby doubling his money.
The manor and 140 acres of land were bought by Col Marwood Tucker, whose widow sold the property to George Porter Rogers in 1955. In November 1961, Mr Rogers sold the manor with three acres of grounds for £5,500 to Cmdr C. R. Smythe, who sold it in turn to Cmdr Stubley.
The grandiose Chanters House, in Ottery St Mary, Devon, has astonishing links to history and literature: it was the place where Oliver Cromwell declared the Civil War, and where the Coleridge family created one of the West Country’s most impressive libraries.
It originally dates from the 14th century but first rose to national fame in the 17th century, when Oliver Cromwell hosted a meeting of local people in the dining room — and apparently declared the start of the Civil War from there.
A little more than a century later, the property became home to another illustrious family, the Coleridges, in whose hands it would remain for about two centuries. The Reverend John Coleridge was made headmaster of the Kings’ School in 1760 and brought his huge family to live in Ottery St Mary.
It was in the town that his youngest son, the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, was born in 1772. But it was his eldest son, James, a distinguished soldier married to local heiress Frances Taylor, who bought Chanters House in 1796 and turned it into the family’s home.
Still in use today, the 70-ft-long room houses the 22,000 books of the Coleridge collection in oak carved bookcases that occupy the entire ground floor of the house’s west wing.
Boomers Daily 