Country Life: December 1, 2021 Early Property Pages

EVERY WEEK

DECEMBER 1, 2021

Take the high road Eight drives of your life

The white-tailed eagles have landed Why cathedrals need colour, by Simon Jenkins

Your indispensable guide to the capital THE LEGENDARY RECORDING STUDIO ENTERS ITS 10TH DECADE The world’s first purpose-built recording studio is celebrating its 90th birthday.

In November 1931, after years of renovations to turn an unassuming townhouse into a state-of-the-art recording space, Elgar conducted the London Symphony Orchestra in a rendition of Land of Hope and Glory and recording sessions of his music­—caught on film by Pathé. Fred Astaire, Radiohead and Adele would all follow suit, as would the soundtracks for the ‘Star Wars’ and ‘Harry Potter’ films.

Recording carried on during the Second World War, often by the BBC for news and propaganda broadcasts.

The extraordinary technological achievements of the site’s sound engineers (left) include the invention of the stereo and artificial double tracking, an analogue recording technique that enhances the sounds of voices and instruments.

The Georgian building at 3, Abbey Road, however, is most synonymous with The Beatles. Formerly EMI Recording Studios, it was later renamed after the band’s 11th studio album. It’s where Britain’s most famous musical act recorded the majority of their music, experimented with cutting-edge and creative recording techniques; where they spent their last working day all together; and where the four members were photographed crossing a (then) innocuous zebra crossing.

Adam Clayton, bassist of rock band U2, describes the place as ‘the temple of music—you have no idea who you’re going to meet there. Music gods and goddesses. Although every time we [U2] go in we bump into Paul McCartney.

I think he lives there. He played some of the remastered Beatles tracks to us in our down time’. If only walls could talk. RP

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Abbey Road Studios, NW8

LONDON LIFE

News

A clean bill of health Claridge’s, London W1, has unveiled the hotel’s spectacular Christmas tree, designed

by Kim Jones, artistic director of Dior’s men’s collections. Nicknamed ‘The Celestial Snow Globe’, the tree is a spellbinding mixture of holographic projections and white toile, topped with the figure of Mr Jones’s faithful canine companion Cookie embracing Monsieur Dior’s lucky star.

This is the 12th year that Claridge’s has invited a creative luminary to decorate the hotel lobby in their own non-traditional take on the festive season. Mr Jones follows in the footsteps of Burberry’s Christopher Bailey (who fashioned a tree out of golden umbrellas) and Apple’s Sir Jony Ive and Marc Newson (who used natural and photographed silver birch trees to create an immersive experience)

A Christmas cracker

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ORTNUM & MASON has partnered up with Matthew Bourne’s Nutcracker! for the duration of the ballet’s limited run at Sadler’s Wells (www.sadlerswells.com).

As well as themed window displays—brought to life by Nutcracker! designer Anthony Ward—shoppers will be able to pick up sweet new creations in The Parlour, try a Nutcracker-inspired afternoon tea in the Diamond Jubilee Tea Salon and enter a prize draw for the chance to win a spectacular Fortnum’s Nutcracker! Hamper, with proceeds going towards New Adventures, the choreographer’s charity (www. for t nu ma nd m a son.com / nutcracker).

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Be there or be square

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AYFAIR’S oldest garden square has emerged from a decade of noisy building works in time to welcome some brand new, prestigious commercial and retail residents. Scaffolding and heavy machinery have blighted Hanover Square since 2011, when work on the Bond Street Crossrail station ticket hall began. In 2018, the building of a £600 million office, retail and restaurant development started, too.

Last month, the gardens re-opened, together with a New England-style brasserie called The Maine. Among other arrivals are The Residences Mandarin Oriental Mayfair London, a fashion academy founded by shoe designer Jimmy Choo, US private equity firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts and a Parisian-style courtyard.

Hanover Square was laid out in 1716–20 and named for George I, Elector of Hanover.

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HE River Thames has breezed through its first full health check, more than 60 years after it was declared ‘biologically dead’. The research and subsequent report, which was undertaken by the Zoological Society of London (ZSL), found that seahorses, oysters, seals and 115 species of fish live in the river, the latter providing food for three species of sharks.

The report findings are in keeping with the river’s increasing numbers of grey and harbour seals: there were 797 harbour seals in 2013 and 932 in 2020; 2,866 grey seals (above, in the Thames Estuary) in 2013, compared with 3,243 in 2020.

ZSL has been working hard to restore the Thames’s delicate ecosystem since 2003 and it’s not only the water that has benefited. Multiple protected areas along its banks means that numbers of wading birds has doubled between 1993 and 2017.

In the same week, it was revealed that when the 15-mile-long Thames Tideway Tunnel—London’s ‘super sewer’—opens in 2025 it will still allow 2.5 million tons of sewage-infected water to flow into the river. Although this number seems rather large it is a massive improvement on the current Victorian-era sewer system, which can release up to 39 million tons of sewage into the Thames every year, according to regulator OFWAT. In a speech to the House of Commons’s Environment Committee, Thames Water boss Sarah Bentley said that the new tunnel was big enough to fit three double-decker buses. ‘It would need to be twice as big to reduce it down to zero spills,’ she added.

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LONDON LIFE

Let there be light

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HE Ever After Garden returns to Grosvenor Square in Mayfair, W1, today and will remain until December 23. A kind of garden of remembrance, it comprises 25,000 illuminated roses. Visitors are encouraged to dedicate one of the flowers to a lost friend or relative, with funds raised going towards the Royal Marsden Cancer Charity. The garden will be open daily, with free entry and dedications starting at £10 (www.royalmarsden. org/support-us/give/everafter-garden).

Fast and furious

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Alamy; David Parry; Knight Frank

LANS to build a Formula One circuit at London’s Royal Docks are said to be at an advanced stage.

If realised, the race would be in addition to the Silverstone Grand Prix, rather than instead of the 71-year-old race in Northamptonshire.

The proposed track, which will circle London City Airport and the ExCel centre, is part-funded by US investment firm 777 Partners. In a boost to the area, the firm’s founder Josh Wander said that there would be ‘an electric atmosphere… an international fanbase and the world’s largest companies as sponsors.’ The plans have been met positively by Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff and Red Bull’s Christian Horner.

London mayor Sadiq Khan is also believed to have offered his support.

8,035

The number of second homes in the borough of Kensington and Chelsea, the second-largest number in the UK behind Cornwall. Camden and Tower Hamlets have 7,648 and 6,530 respectively, leaving the whole county of Dorset trailing behind with only 5,726. The large number is believed to be down to a rise in homeowners moving out of London and converting their properties in the capital into holiday lets

In their prime

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NEW generation of young and superrich buyers is behind a sharp increase in prime property sales, according to The Times. The newspaper quoted a report by estate agency Knight Frank that said 102 homes worth more than £10 million were sold between October 2020 and October 2021, more than in the same period in either of the two previous years. Interestingly, fewer homes worth more than £30 million (nicknamed trophy assets) sold in the same period.

Marc Schneiderman, director of luxury London estate agency Arlington Residential, described the ‘new breed of super prime buyer’ as ‘in their mid thirties working in tech’, going on to say that ‘they don’t need the profile that goes with living on Kensington Palace Gardens. It’s not that they can’t afford it. Some of these guys are worth a fortune, but they’re keen to retain their anonymity’.

Knight Frank also revealed that there are 68,000 homes in London worth £2 million or more, more than any other capital city.

LONDON LIFE Editor Rosie Paterson Editor-in-chief Mark Hedges Sub-editors Octavia Pollock, James Fisher Art Heather Clark, Emma Earnshaw, Ben Harris, Dean Usher Pictures Lucy Ford, Emily Anderson Advertising Katie Ruocco 07929 364909 Email firstname.surname@futurenet.com

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LONDON LIFE

Bloomsbury

In full bloom

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LITTLE BLACK BOOK The Coral Room A favourite with Winkworth’s Adrian Philpott, it combines country-house grandeur and London buzz (16–22, Great Russell Street) Ciao Bella A ‘great traditional Italian restaurant’, according to Marion Hardman of Hardman Communications (86–90, Lamb’s Conduit Street) Pentreath & Hall One of London’s most intriguing interiors shops (17, Rugby Street) London Review Bookshop Top selection of fiction and non-fiction books, as befits a store owned by London’s prestigious literary magazine (14–16, Bury Place)

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For centuries before literary greats and intellectuals borrowed its name, Bloomsbury was a bucolic slice of countryside. Carla Passino takes a look at its history

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HE British Museum gleams in the morning light, dwarfing the much taller buildings that surround it to tower like a novel Parthenon.

But where the Parthenon was the apogee of Classical Greek culture, the British Museum was the foundation on which Bloomsbury’s intellectual fortunes were built.

Life started humbly for this venerable cradle of British Arts and literature—as vineyards and woods for at least 100 pigs, according

to the Domesday Book—and continued peacefully for many centuries, the Dissolution of the Monasteries proving a mere disturbance that saw Bloomsbury pass from the hands of the Carthusian monks to those of a sequence of aristocrats, who built themselves houses to match their title’s grandeur. One of them, Montagu House, became notorious both for the many duels fought in the fields behind it and for one of its residents: Elizabeth Monck, Duchess of Albemarle. The immensely rich,

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Bloomsbury

but mentally ill widow of Christopher, 2nd Duke of Albemarle, she had declared that she would only marry again to a monarch— so Ralph, 1st Duke of Montagu, passed himself off as the Emperor of China to court her. ‘Until her decease, she is said to have been constantly served on the knee as a sovereign,’ wrote John Timbs in Oddities of History.

About 25 years after the Duchess’s death, Montagu House was sold to become the museum that changed Bloomsbury’s history. It started with royal physician Sir Hans Sloane’s voracious appetite for collecting. After he passed away, his treasures—more than 80,000 ‘natural and artificial rarities’, some 40,000 books and manuscripts and about 32,000 coins and medals—were bought for the nation to create a free, public museum, which opened in 1759.

The collection soon outgrew the original building, which was replaced with Sir Robert Smirke’s Grecian confection in the 19th century.

Since then, the museum has continued to embrace new objects (now numbering at least eight million) and new architecture with equal gusto: in 2000, sleek white lines and a tessellated roof made with more than 3,300 individually shaped panels of glass enveloped the old Round Reading Room to form Europe’s largest covered public square.

‘They lived in squares, painted in circles and loved in triangles’ In the years immediately following the museum’s opening, Bloomsbury remained rural—in his late-18th-century recollections, John Thomas Smith wrote of a Russell Street farm inhabited by two sisters who found

LONDON LIFE

‘spiteful delight’ in riding ‘with a large pair of shears after boys who were flying their kites, purposely to cut their strings’ or seizing the clothes of those who trespassed on their premises to bathe.

Eccentrics would soon become a memory; a development wave saw the area turn into an upper-middle-class haven, with another of its grand mansions, Bedford House, growing into ‘a new city’ where squares, streets and churches covered the fields that had once been famous for peaches and snipes. As Edward Walford noted in Old and New London, the streets around Bedford Square and Russell Square—conveniently close to the Inns of Court—were particularly popular with ‘gentlemen of the long robe’.

It was this distinguished set of residents that attracted a young Charles Dickens. ‘He was very conscious of his poor background, and wanted to create the sense that he 25

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Bloomsbury

was someone of means,’ says Cindy Sughrue, director of the Charles Dickens Museum, which is situated at 48, Doughty Street (where he wrote Oliver Twist, now the subject of an exhibition running until March 13, 2022).

‘Bloomsbury was a seat of knowledge, culture and artistic sensibility, and he wanted to absolutely be at the heart of that.’

However, poverty rubbed shoulders with wealth, with the streets south of the British Museum housing ‘a floating population of 1,000 persons who had no fixed residence,’ according to Walford. For Dickens, this was a constant source of inspiration. ‘He needed both the grittiness and the glamour to feed his imagination,’ says Dr Sughrue.

A tireless social reformer, he must have felt a particular affinity for the Foundling Hospital, which was only a few steps away from Doughty Street. It had been founded in 1739 by Capt Thomas Coram, who had campaigned for 17 years to open a place that could take care of London’s abandoned babies and had kept it going with help from William Hogarth, who donated money and artwork, and George Frideric Handel, who ran annual concerts that raised almost £7,000 over the years. But even Coram couldn’t have imagined the impact his initiative would have: in the 215 years in which it operated, the hospital

educated about 25,000 children. Today, it has morphed into a group of charities, Coram, that continues to support vulnerable children and the Bloomsbury building (redeveloped in the 1930s) has become the Foundling Museum, which tells the story of those who grew up between its walls. No wonder that Dickens, in the words of Little Dorrit’s Mr Meagles, described Coram as ‘a blessed creature’.

Where Dickens first trod, many other literary greats soon followed. In 1904, siblings Vanessa, Virginia, Thoby and Adrian Stephen moved to 46, Gordon Square, where, on Thursday evenings, they entertained a circle of young intellectuals. Artist Clive Bell, whom Vanessa married in 1907; essayist Leonard Woolf, who married Virginia in 1912; writer Lytton Strachey (pictured with Virginia Woolf, precding pages); civil servant Saxon SydneyTurner; painters Roger Fry and Duncan Grant and economist John Maynard Keynes were all part of this Bloomsbury Group.

Together, they championed a new approach to Arts and literature, a greater role for women in culture, gay rights, bisexuality and open marriages—as American writer Dorothy Parker pithily put it: ‘They lived in squares, painted in circles and loved in triangles’. Their unconventional thinking fuelled some of the most influential works of early-20th-century

THE UPS AND DOWNS

Residents love the eclectic mix of Georgian, Victorian and modern architecture and the history of the area Residents like Bloomsbury’s scholarly atmosphere, accepting culture and a vibrant, but less frantic lifestyle than the rest of the West End Residents could do with greater protection from unsuitable development

Britain, from Keynes’s Economic Consequences of the Peace to Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway and Roger Fry’s Vision and Design.

Although they eventually moved on, their former headquarters at Gordon Square remains one of London’s culture engines to this day. Bought by the University of London in 1951, it houses several departments—from University College London’s Urban laboratory at No 29 to the Birkbeck’s School of Arts in the very building where the Bloomsbury Group started. With the British Museum only eight minutes away, no other area of London brings together in such close proximity the past and future of British culture.

At home in Bloomsbury

Great Ormond Street, £4.95 million This early Georgian house, which is listed Grade II, is ‘a historic reminder of Bloomsbury’s more bucolic times’, according to the selling agents: it has a walled garden and ancient sheep pens that can be used for storage.

The interior encompasses three to four bedrooms, three reception rooms, gym, games room and sauna.

Winkworth (020–7240 3322; www.winkworth.co.uk)

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Duke’s Road, £2.3 million Duke’s Road, says Nick Moore is ‘a pretty cobbled street with a distinctly Dickensian feel’ and this Grade II*listed, late-Georgian townhouse is the perfect place to enjoy it. It has three bedrooms, three reception rooms and many original features.

Outside is a Yorkstone paved walled courtyard garden that enjoys views of St Pancras New Church.

Knight Frank (020–8022 7427; www.knightfrank.co.uk)

Bloomsbury Street, £1.5 million It’s hard to beat the location of this bright penthouse in Bloomsbury Plaza, which is minutes from the British Museum, Covent Garden and three different Tube stations.

It has three bedrooms on the fourth floor and kitchen, dining room and sitting room on the fifth—both reception rooms open onto a delightful west-facing terrace. Chestertons (020–3040 8300; www.chestertons.co.uk)

LONDON LIFE

The great and the good

Seasonal suggestions What to do Mince pies are Christmas’s bread and butter. Learn how to make them on a three-hour, Bread Ahead workshop, available in the company’s Wembley, Pavilion Road and Borough Market bakeries, from December 3 (www. breadahead.com/product/mincepie-workshop) What to eat A free-range turkey of course. Pipers Farm (www.pipersfarm.com), Frenchbeer Farm (www.frenchbeerfarm.co.uk) and Farmison (www.farmison.com) will all deliver to your door What to buy Christmas decorations from Joanna Wood (57, Elizabeth Street, SW1; www.joannawood.com). They also make excellent presents for hosts of those last-minute drinks parties

Here’s looking at Brown’s Hotel • Brown’s Hotel was founded by James Brown, butler to Lord Byron, and his wife, Sarah, Lady Byron’s maid, in 1837. Today, it’s owned by Rocco Forte Hotels group • The Kipling Suite is named after author Rudyard Kipling, who wrote The Jungle Book during one of his many stays at the hotel. It was designed by Olga Polizzi, Rocco Forte Hotels’s director of design, and the hotelier’s sister. Other famous

guests include Theodore, Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, Agatha Christie and numerous members of European royalty • In 1941, the Dutch government in exile declared war on Japan at Brown’s • The restaurant—currently called Charlie’s —was the first hotel restaurant in London.

It opened in the late 1800s. Before this, hotel guests traditionally dined in their rooms or hired out a suite in which to eat

Paxton & Whitfield 9 3 , J E R M Y N S T R E E T, S W 1

Open Monday to Saturday, 10am to 6.30pm, and Sunday, 11am to 5pm (020–7930 0259; www.paxtonandwhitfield.co.uk)

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ACROSS the road from St James’s Church on Jermyn Street, sandwiched between a shoemaker and an Italian clothier, Paxton & Whitfield sits behind a box hedge at the bottom of a four-storey townhouse. ‘Cheesemonger since 1797’ is emblazoned twice across the windows, above bottles of fortified wines and artisanal knife sets, and a blackboard, smudged with chalk, advertises the Cheese of the Day (Sparkenhoe Shropshire Blue at the time of writing). Inside, beneath enamel pendant lights, cases lined with rye straw are organised by type and territory, beginning with the British blues and finishing with hard, imported rounds from the Continent.

In the run-up to the holidays, customers nose through the black and gilt shopfront and comb the displays for ‘Stilton, alpine cheeses, and Vacherin Mont d’Or,’ says Alex Lambert, the assistant manager.

A back-pocket suggestion of Mr Lambert’s, however, is Old Groendal from Belgium, an eye-poppingly-rich, Gouda-style cheese with notes of salted caramel. It’s at its peak with a glass of tawny Port. Annie Meakin, the London manager, has been guiding people to Schnebelhorn, an alpine cheese with added cream that can act like a Cheddar on a cheeseboard, and to a long-time favourite blue, Stichelton, made in Nottinghamshire using the same method as Stilton, but with unpasteurised milk. It’s a toasty, buttery cheese—fresher and more variable than the original. Anything else we can’t miss? ‘One standout chutney,’ says Mrs Meakin. ‘The No 93 Ale is a classic, but the Spiced Apricot and Cranberry is wonderful for Christmas.’ Jo Rodgers

Illustration by Polly Crossman; Getty Images

Shop of the month

LONDON LIFE

M Y P L AT E O F V I E W

The Colony Grill Room, The Beaumont, 8, Balderton St, W1

A green space PETERSHAM NURSERIES, CHURCH L ANE, T W10

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NLY a short stroll along the river from Richmond, but a world away from the city rush, lie the flower-filled greenhouses of Petersham Nurseries. Beautiful at any time of year, they’re particularly magical at Christmas, when garlands of fairy lights twist around the foliage, steam condenses on the tea-house windows and branches of pussy willow, pots

London curiosities ON THE FACE OF IT

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RITANNIA and Asia in the door case of 14-16, Cockspur Street, SW1, by E. G. Gillick. The doorway was added in 1918, when the building was handed to Peninsula and Oriental company as a wartime reparation.

of paperwhites and urns of scarlet and goldpainted leaves sparkle in the light. Time your visit to suit your mood: the cold, clear light and blue skies of a sunny morning make anything feel possible, and a heavy frost, which can sometimes last all day here, turns the focus inward, intensifying scent and sound and frosting each leaf and petal with crystals of ice.

Natasha Goodfellow is the author of ‘A London Floral’ and her next guide, ‘A Cotswold Garden Companion’, will be published in March 2022 (www.finch publishing.co.uk)

Psst... pass it on

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HE Painter’s Room has opened at Claridge’s —the hotel’s fourth bar—in a sliver of space behind the lobby and next to the ballroom. The boudoir-like pink walls, glassy pink, onyx bar and Art Deco velvet stools all feel unashamedly sexy (www.claridges.co.uk)

Something old, something new. That could be the motto of The Colony Grill Room, which both is and isn’t. Confused?

It will make sense when you get there.

Get dressed up and arrive hungry.

The restaurant is on the ground floor of five-star The Beaumont on Brown Hart Gardens in Mayfair. Initially part of Jeremy King and Chris Corbin’s empire, it’s now under new management and has had a lavish refurbishment. After the obligatory brace of martinis at Le Magritte Bar— all wood panelling, leather and Dashiell Hammett-esque lighting, with dynamite cocktails; you can tell the manager has stints at Rules and Dukes under his belt —we’re ushered into the buzzy dining room, with its murals, thick white tablecloths and clubby booths. It all feels as if it’s been there forever; nothing about this place smacks of will-this-do pastiche.

Head chef Ben Boeynaems’s menu walks a similarly deft line between old and new that nods to his time at The Goring.

The shrimp cocktail is a luxe modern update, whereas the whole-leaf Caesar salad is a crisply executed classic. The mains are stylish and clever: a monkfish wellington, replete with braised salsify, pressed celeriac and hen of the wood mushroom really stands out. From the Colony’s eponymous grill come superb steaks matured in the restaurant’s own salt chamber for at least 42 days, together with whipped béarnaise, triple-cooked chips, buttermilk mash and even a Café de Paris snail butter.

Puddings—sundry sundaes, bananas Foster, a towering baked heesecake, French toast with brown-butter ice cream —are as lavish as you’d expect. As is the Saturday brunch menu: the Full New York (over-easy eggs, salt beef, hash brown, fried dill pickle, portobello mushroom, served with a toasted rye and caraway bagel) is the kind of plate you build a weekend around.

The new owners have honoured the formula that won it so many fans since 2014: no-expense-spared, 1920s-style interiors, cosseting service and a specialoccasion menu. Light it ain’t—you might need to take the rest of the day off after lunch, but for indulging in a transatlantic time travel, it’s unbeatable. Emma Hughes

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LONDON LIFE

The great and the good

December at a glance We’re all guilty of ignoring what’s on our doorstep, so we’ve made it easier for you. Here’s what’s happening this month

Above: Vaisselle’s gingham dinner plates make the perfect gift.

Below: Christmas coal is among the offerings at Fortnum & Mason

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OW many times have you uttered the words ‘I cannot believe it’s nearly Christmas again’ in the past week?

We’re guessing quite a lot, so for those of you taken by surprise once again, here’s how to get through it in style.

Let’s start with presents: you cannot go wrong with a book and Marchpane, in Cecil Court, WC2, specialises in rare children’s literature, including signed first editions of the early ‘Harry Potter’ novels (www.cecilcourt.co.uk/ marchpane). For smaller trinkets–such as Bridie Hall’s alphabet pen pots (£40) and Vaisselle’s gingham dinner plates (£55)–head to Liberty London, W1, a 15-minute walk away (www.libertylondon.com). Keep some space free in your bag for a bunch of decorative blooms from the Nikki Tibbles Wild at Heart flower stall, next to Liberty’s Great Marlborough Street entrance.

Nearby, you’ll find Brasserie Zédel, Sherwood Street, W1, and Ralph’s Coffee (a pop-up coffee shop on the ground floor of Ralph Lauren’s New Bond Street flagship store)–perfect for lunch or a quick caffeine hit respectively (www.brasseriezedel.com; www.ralphlauren. com). No Christmas shopping list would be complete without some sweet treats. Lina Stores delicatessen, Brewer Street, W1, sells London’s best cannolis. For something a little more traditional, make for the Fortnum & Mason food hall (www.fortnumandmason.com). Choose between Christmas coal (chocolatedipped honeycomb), glacé fruits (they’re excellent diced and scattered on a pavlova) and mini marzipan Christmas puddings. You can even buy a Fortnum’s chocolate adventcalendar refill pack, so that, when Christmas comes around again next year, you’ll finally be ready.

Left: Cecil Court-based Marchpane sells signed ‘Harry Potter’ first editions.

Bottom: Get your blooms at the Wild at Heart stall

OUR CAPITAL’S

ENDANGERED HERITAGE The dinosaurs of Crystal Palace Park and the beleagured Gunnersbury Park are under threat.

We must work to save them, says Jack Watkins

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LONDON LIFE

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HE Crystal Palace Dinosaurs have delighted children and adults for generations, so when news filtered out last year that they had been placed on the Heritage at Risk register, Historic England’s annual list of historic sites and structures with uncertain futures, it drew a public reaction. ‘People were upset at the state of the sculptures, but glad that the site was being acknowledged as in need of attention,’ says Ellinor Michel, chairman of the Friends of Crystal Palace Dinosaurs.

She reveals that they even had a letter from Sir David Attenborough, who described the dinosaurs as ‘the first attempt to visualise the dramatic creatures from the distant past in the country where they were first discovered, recognised and named’.

‘Despite repeated efforts to stabilise the site, the lichen-encrusted creatures are ailing’

Standing proud, but on shaky foundations: two giant Iguanodon sculptures in Crystal Palace Park

The 30 sculptures sit on a 20-acre island site in an atmospheric spot at the bottom of Crystal Palace Park. Only four of the sculptures are dinosaurs in the strict zoological sense (two Iguanodon, a Hylaeosaurus and a Megalosaurus. Others include pterodactyls, crocodiles and a giant sloth). However, as the chairman says, as an ensemble they are ‘huge, ominous and exciting’. Created by Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins between 1852 and 1855 as part of works to mark the relocation of the Crystal Palace (Masterpiece, page 82) from Hyde Park to Sydenham Hill, they effectively launched our ongoing dinomania.

The first attempt anywhere to model extinct animals as three-dimensional, active creatures within their geological environment, the internationally important collection is Grade I listed. Yet, despite repeated efforts to stabilise the site, the lichen-encrusted creatures are ailing. The Megalosaurus, the biggest, most famous statue, recently lost its jaw and the antlers fell off one of the Irish elk stags.

A temporary jaw has been made for the Megalosaurus, thanks to public donations that Historic England matched. But, Dr Michel explains, ‘the sculptures need regular checks, oversight and maintenance from professional conservators to identify and repair any damage so it doesn’t propagate. Long term, we don’t know where funding will come from’. Although she is hopeful the site may eventually come off the register, by their nature, outdoor sculptures need regular attention. ‘The sculptures are around to 37

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delight us today because people in the past cared for them. We want to pass on that mantle to future generations.’

Gunnersbury Park, on the outskirts of Ealing, has been on the register since the list’s inception in 1998. A treasure trove of old buildings, including a museum, garden follies, towering cedars, flowery walks, and standard recreational amenities, it was the home of George II’s daughter Princess Amelia in the 18th century and rivalled Kew in prestige.

Daniel Defoe, the author of Robinson Crusoe and a regular visitor, stood on the terrace of her Palladian villa and hailed ‘an exceedingly fine prospect of Surrey, the River Thames, and all the meadows on the borders for some miles’. The romantic setting was depicted in watercolours by William Payne.

The estate was subdivided in the 19th century, and what are now known as the Large and Small Mansions replaced Princess Amelia’s villa. The Rothschilds owned the bulk of the estate in that period, but the park was decaying badly when it was purchased for the nation as a public park—Neville Chamberlain, then Minister of Health, performing its opening ceremony in 1926 (an event captured in a Pathé News film clip, now on YouTube.)

However, underfunding has long been a major issue. ‘We started the Friends of Gunnersbury Park in 1981 because the park was in a terrible state,’ explains chairman James Wisdom. ‘Various buildings had been demolished and the William Kent-designed Temple only survives because permission to knock it down was refused.’ The register noted the 38

landscape was ‘generally in poor condition’, but a conservation plan was drawn up and progress has been made in the past decade.

‘The big picture is that we are halfway through, with the Large Mansion restored and the museum back in it,’ says Mr Wisdom. Princess Amelia’s bathhouse and the orangery have been restored. A herb garden has been planted between the former and the sham Gothic arches that resemble the ruins of a medieval abbey. Plaques name notable trees, such as the rare daimyo oak and a Japanese pagoda tree, survivors from the old Japanese garden that, on its opening in 1901, was hailed ‘as the most strictly true and magnificent garden of Japanese design and composition’, in Britain by the Journal of Horticulture.

Although another folly, the ghostly, castellated Gothic boathouse, still resembles a genuine ruin and the Small Mansion presents a sorry spectacle, Mr Wisdom reveals that the latter is ‘next up for restoration. The scaffolding is a sign of money being spent on the roof and various structural essentials to prepare it for a better future, thanks to Historic England funding’.

Mr Wisdom, who has written a short description of the park, explains that it ‘has a long history of decay and then recovery. Each transformation has left traces in the landscape’. With the park anticipating the centenary of its public opening in five years, he describes ‘Gunnersbury 2026’, the 15-year master plan developed by the Ealing and Hounslow Borough Councils, as ‘the transformation for our generation’.

A RISKY BUSINESS There are some sorry cases on the At Risk Register, but, with Historic England’s stated aim ‘to focus attention on those places in greatest need’, inclusion doesn’t always mean the end, as the hopeful futures of these sites also shows Savoy Cinema, HA8 A former 2,000-

seat Grade II-listed cinema, designed

by Art Deco master George Coles, it retains all its internal Moderne fittings, but has been closed since 2014. Consent was recently granted to restore the exterior of the building and convert the interior into flats St Pancras Old Church, NW1 An immensely historic church, one of the capital’s oldest, next to the former St Pancras Workhouse. Sir John Soane and Mary Wollstonecraft are buried in its churchyard. The register describes the church’s state as ‘very bad’ and a Next Millennium Project seeks to raise £500,000 to complete a restoration programme by the end of 2025 Pope’s Grotto, TW1 The last surviving element of Alexander Pope’s Thames-side villa and gardens. Efforts to arrest the declining condition of the decorated imitation of a natural cave have been ongoing for 30 years and a recent pilot restoration project, with money from the National Lottery Heritage Fund, was successful. The aim is to complete full renovation in 2022

Alamy; Historic England/Chris Redgrave

Left: New addition: Streatham Hill Theatre. Right: Gunnersbury Park, on the list since 1998

LONDON LIFE

Where do you live in London?

I have a mews house in Belgravia, behind my shop [25, Elizabeth Street, SW1]. I’ve been there for four years and I designed and built it myself from the ground up. It’s completely contemporary, whereas, in the Cotswolds, I have a 1720s William and Mary-style house so I have the fun of living in both.

‘I’ve got the grandest garage you’ve ever seen, with stacks of Fortnums tins’ Is there a particular part of London or shop that you look forward to visiting at Christmas time?

Absolutely yes. Unequivocally, Fortnum & Mason. People come from all over the world to look at the windows. They’re the most famous windows on the planet.

Ever since I was a tiny child, I’ve gone there to buy a Christmas pudding and mince pies and the nuts and the sugared almonds and the dates and crystallised fruits… which I absolutely hate, but tradition dictates you must have on the table. I still do it with children. We make the trip every single year. I don’t think I’ve ever missed a visit, even in lockdown.

The packaging is so wonderful, isn’t it?

I adore decorative tins. They are a bit like a copy of COUNTRY LIFE, you can’t chuck them away. I’ve got seeds in the tins, and vegetables and beans, nails and screws and biscuits.

I’ve got the grandest garage you’ve ever seen, with stacks of Fortnums tins.

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The soaring interior of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, a favourite of the designer

T H E C A P I TA L A C C O R D I N G T O ...

Joanna Wood Rosie Paterson talks to the interior designer about life in Belgravia and changing her mind about Constable

Where do you like to shop in London?

The Piccadilly Arcade, on the same side of the road as Fortnum & Mason. My absolute favourite shop is Santa Maria Novella. It sells the best pot pourri in the world, made to a recipe that dates back three centuries, which comes in a special, lined bag so it doesn’t lose any moisture. It’s the best secret in the world.

There’s also St James’s Art Books and New & Lingwood, where Father Christmas buys socks for everyone in the most exotic colours, such as emerald green and egg-yolk yellow.

Across the road is Aesop, which sells the most expensive and best dog shampoo in the world.

There’s nothing wrong with lunch at Oswald’s [Club, 25, Albemarle Street, W1], and the new Charlie’s at Brown’s hotel, run by the amazing Jesus Adorno who used to work at Le Caprice.

The other place that’s brilliant for Christmas shopping is Trevor Pickett [10–12,

Burlington Gardens, W1]. A really lovely, oldfashioned jeweller has just moved off the arcade and into the shop, so you can find presents there for absolutely everyone.

Trevor will be holding court in the run up to Christmas with his famous purple ribbon.

He’s the most fantastic person.

If you were in charge for a day, what is the one thing you would change about London?

The traffic. I’d like to be in charge of changing all the traffic because I’m sure I could do it better. Otherwise, I absolutely love London.

I’m a big theatregoer and a great supporter of the Royal Opera House.

I’m a friend of the Royal Academy, too, and the new Constable exhibition is amazing.

I’ve never been a fan, he’s been on too many chocolate boxes, but I’ve changed my mind.

The man is a genius.

Alamy; Astrid Templier

What do you like about living in Belgravia?

I’ve lived in Belgravia really since my early twenties. Curiously, it’s a village. People come and go of course, but there’s a number of stalwarts who have been here for forever and it’s held together partly because so much of it was built by [master builder Thomas] Cubitt and the Grosvenor estate, so the integrity of the place is held together in a really attractive and charming way.

As well as the people, I think it’s got the most wonderful, independent shops. Motcomb Street, Pimlico Road, Elizabeth Street… you don’t have shops like that on every high street. Another thing is the farmers’ market on Pimlico Road, which I helped set up with David Linley [2nd Earl of Snowdon] about 20 years ago. It’s an important part of that village spirit [every Saturday, 9am to 1pm].

Island hopping in the Caribbean From Antigua to St Vincent, Caribbean countries are known for their pristine beaches, crystalline waters and luxuriant vegetation, but there’s more to them than scenic beauty. Carla Passino discovers some of their perks and quirks, plus superb properties for sale Antigua & Barbuda

Claim to fame Cricketers. Despite its diminutive size, the country has produced a large number of great players, including Sir Andy Roberts, Sir Viv Richards and Sir Richie Richardson.

Don’t miss The annual mango festival, held in July and packed with fruit, but also mango jams, candles, ice creams and even wine.

Residents past or present Almost too many to count, from local writer Jamaica Kincaid to Italian designer Giorgio Armani and, among the British, Ken Follett, Timothy Dalton and Eric Clapton. Boxer Maurice Hope came from Antigua to London—and on to the 1972 Olympics.

The Bahamas

Claim to fame The world’s largest underwater sculpture (Jason deCaires Taylor’s 18ft-tall Ocean Atlas, off the coast of New Providence), plus a sequence of almost records, from the the second-deepest sea-water sinkhole (the 663ft Dean’s Blue Hole, off Long Island), to the third-largest barrier reef (around Andros Island) and even the third-largest wine cellar: part of the Graycliff Hotel in Nassau, it had originally been built as a jail. The islands are also ‘almost’ part of the Caribbean: although they belong to the Caribbean Community organisation, they are not in the Caribbean Sea. Don’t miss Big Major Cay, a beach in the Exuma Cays, home to a herd of swimming pigs.

Residents past or present Olympic sportsmen and women—in Tokyo, the Bahamas ranked second for gold medals per capita —and film stars: Sir Sidney Poitier was brought up in the Bahamas and many have bought homes on the islands, from the late Sir Sean Connery to Eddie Murphy and John Travolta.

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Barbados

Claim to fame Being the birthplace of grapefruit, but also having more than 3,000 hours of sunshine a year—something the country’s tourist board gleefully pointed out to rain-soaked Britons with the slogan: ‘Barbados, where the sun always shines.’

Don’t miss Nelson’s statue in Bridgetown’s former Trafalgar Square (now National Heroes Square), which pre-dates the one in London’s own Trafalgar Square by several decades.

Residents past or present Anyone who is anyone, from George Washington to Oliver Messel, spent some time in the country, but singer Rihanna is its most famous ‘export’.

Although she now mainly lives in the US, she also has a house in Barbados and has been appointed ambassador for education, tourism and investment.

St Kitts & Nevis

Claim to fame Being the smallest country in all the Americas. Despite its diminutive size, St Kitts was the first British settlement in the Caribbean and both it and Nevis at times vied with Barbados for the title of wealthiest colony.

Don’t miss The green vervet monkeys.

Brought here by European settlers as pets, they are now thought to number more than 60,000. Adorable as they are, the pesky simians cause a lot of trouble to local farmers and gardeners by eating the fruits of their labour.

Residents past or present Founding Father and first secretary of the US Treasury Alexander Hamilton was born and spent his early childhood on Nevis. Horatio Nelson arrived soon after Hamilton had left and he met and married his wife, Frances Nisbet, there.

St Vincent & the Grenadines

Claim to fame Mustique, which went from being a neglected backwater named after mosquitoes to the beau monde’s favourite hideaway, is the obvious one, but lately the island of Bequia has made the headlines for having the world’s first Bitcoinenabled development, where people can use the cryptocurrency to pay for property, food and services.

Don’t miss St Vincent’s botanical gardens.

Established in 1765, it not only is one of the oldest in the Americas, but it also houses a third-generation sucker cloned from the breadfruit tree originally sourced by HMS Bounty’s Capt William Bligh.

Residents past or present St Vincent & the Grenadines must have more jet-setters per square mile than anywhere else in the world, with Mustique taking the palm. In the

Residents past or present Sir Richard Branson is one of the BVI’s best known faces, having bought Necker Island in 1978. Although intrigued to find out that he could buy an island with the same name as his company, he only booked a viewing to impress the woman who would later become his wife.

However, he fell for the beauty of the place and ended up buying it (despite some resistance from the then governor, who clearly didn’t have an eye for entrepreneurship and deemed him to be ‘an unsuitable investor’).

Richard Branson only booked a viewing to impress the woman who would later become his wife French Antilles

The volcanic plugs of The Pitons in St Lucia are a UNESCO World Heritage site

past six decades, the island has been home to Princess Margaret, who famously called it the only place where she could relax, Sir Mick Jagger, David Bowie and fashion designer Tommy Hilfiger (who created a replica of the local Basil’s Bar for one of his catwalk shows), among many others.

were both born and spent their early years on the island. The country also had one of the world’s longest-serving female head-of-state representatives: Dame Pearlette Louisy, the first woman to be appointed governor-general, held the position for more than 20 years.

St Lucia

The British Virgin islands

Getty

Claim to fame Being the only UN-recognised sovereign country to be named after a woman, St Lucia of Syracuse.

Don’t miss Sulphur Spring, known as the world’s only drive-in volcano because cars can drive up to the edge of bubbling pools, from which rise clouds of ‘fragrant’ vapour.

Claim to fame The territory’s saintly connection—Christopher Columbus named the archipelago ‘St Ursula and the 11,000 Virgins’.

Thankfully, this was soon shortened to The Virgins, but the day of St Ursula remains a public holiday in the BVI and the local coat of arms features the saint surrounded by 11 lamps, each representing 1,000 virgins.

Residents past or present Despite its small size, St Lucia counts two Nobel prize winners among its scions. Sir Derek Walcott (Literature) and Sir William Lewis (Economics)

Don’t miss The Baths in Virgin Gorda. These granite boulders of up to 40ft in diameter rise from the sea and form secret caves and rock pools.

Claim to fame The islands’ complicated political arrangements. Although they all belong to France, Guadeloupe and Martinique are part of the EU and use the euro as their currency, yet St Barts, which also uses the euro, is outside the EU. However, the title for the strangest arrangement must go to tiny St Martin, which, at 34 square miles, is the world’s smallest inhabited island divided between two sovereign states. The Collectivity of St Martin, in the north, is French and part of the EU; the southern portion, Sint Maarten, belongs to the Netherlands and is not part of the bloc.

Don’t miss The rum distilleries on Martinique (thought to be the world’s most numerous per square mile), diving off Guadeloupe (named one of the best diving spots in the world by ocean explorer the late Jacques Cousteau), the bilingual French and Swedish signs in some streets of St Barts (which was, for a time, Sweden’s only Caribbean colony) and crossing the only border between France and the Netherlands—more than 4,000 miles away from either country—on St Martin.

Residents past and present Martinique gave France its first empress, Joséphine Bonaparte. Several athletes, including threetime Olympic gold-medallist Marie-José Pérec, come from Guadeloupe. St Barts has long been a playground of the rich and famous, but was also home for a time to the world’s oldest woman: nun Eugénie Blanchard died in 2010, having made it almost to 115 years of age.

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Turks & Caicos, $15 million (about £11.17 million) Point House is one of 12 properties on the privately owned island of Parrot Cay. It stands on the beachfront and has been designed by celebrated architect Cheong Yew Kuan to make the most of the views with tall oak-frame windows and glass doors. The interior, which has a Balinese feel, connects seamlessly with the outdoors, not only from the reception areas, which open onto a covered terrace leading to the pool, but also from the bedrooms: two have landscaped outdoor showers, with another, which sits on the upper floor, having its own terrace. There’s also a further bedroom in the main house, which could be converted into a media room, and a guest or nanny suite in the leafy grounds. Regency Christie’s International Real Estate (001 649 432 7653; www.christiesrealestate.com) Barbados, $1.3 million (about £970,000) Set on the top ridge of the Apes Hill Polo Club, this villa with a mouthful of a name (Garden Wall 13 G) overlooks both the golf course and the Caribbean sea. The airy interior has an open-plan living and kitchen area that leads to an outdoor dining area and the pool beyond—perfect to entertain alfresco or simply soak up the sunset with a cocktail in hand. There are three bedrooms, of which two are on the upper level (including the panoramic master suite) and one on the ground floor. Owners have access to the many amenities of the Apes Hill Polo Club, which include a gym, restaurant and clubhouse, as well as the golf course. Realtors Limited (001 246 537 6946; www.realtorsluxuryestatesales.com) Antigua, $4.3 million (about £3.2 million) A private beach is one of the draws at this striking villa, which stands in Jolly Harbour on Reeds Point’s westernmost tip. Steps carved in the stone link the waterside to the house, which is split into several pavilion-like bungalows. There are three bedrooms and many entertaining and dining areas, which enjoy fine views of the sea and the neighbouring islands. But the best place to enjoy the panorama, particularly at sunset, is the infinity pool with its covered terrace. Chestertons (001 268 562 2626; www.chestertons.co.uk)

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St Lucia, from $2 million (about $1.49 million) Scheduled to open next year, Cabot St Lucia is a new golf resort by the same company behind the award-winning Cabot Cape Breton, in Nova Scotia, Canada. Situated in Point Hardy, a scenic peninsula in the north of the island, the new resort will centre on an 18-hole golf course designed by Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw and will feature 170 turnkey villas and townhouses, plus 130 custom-built homes and a 50-suite hotel. Understated, environmentally sensitive architecture, spearheaded by British master architect Richard Evans, looks set to make the most of the beautiful surroundings.

Buyers will have access to the resort’s amenities, which include a spa, a choice of restaurants and bars, tennis courts, a fitness centre and a full-service beach club. Directly via the developer (001 902 258 4651; www.cabotsaintlucia.com)

Mustique, $16 million (about £11.91 million) Moorish architecture meets magnificent views at Oceanus, an extraordinary house built by Swedish architect Arne Hasselqvist in Mustique’s Endeavour Hills. The six bedroom suites look out towards either the sea or the hills—the master suite, with its own plunge pool, is especially attractive. There are two indoor reception rooms and multiple areas for outdoor entertaining, linked by walkways and interspersed with two pools—a west-facing infinity one and a 34ft one that looks to the north-east and takes in the morning sunshine. Knight Frank (020–7861 1553; www.knightfrank.co.uk) Nevis, $5 million (about £3.7 million) A palm avenue sets the scene for this contemporary house that borders the Four Seasons Golf Course in St Thomas.

Built five years ago to a design by award-winning architect McLean Quinlan, Paradise is arranged into three connecting pavilions where high ceilings and large windows frame views of the sea and the grounds, which are planted with more than 250 palm trees. There are four airy bedrooms, each complete with stylish bathroom. The west-facing infinity pool is a great place to unwind and admire the panorama. Savills (020–7016 3744; www.savills.com) 108

Bahamas, $3.2 million (about £2.38 million) Set high above the waterfront on Guana Cay, in Abaco, Crashing Waves takes in long views of the Atlantic Ocean.

Combining a beach-cottage feel with contemporary luxury, the house centres on an open-plan living and dining area with sleek marble-topped kitchen and vaulted ceilings, which flows into a covered terrace overlooking the beach.

There are four en-suite bedrooms, two on either side of the reception room. Downstairs is a storage space large enough for golf carts and myriad water toys. Damianos Sotheby’s International Realty (001 242 367 5046; www. sirbahamas.com)

Property market

Penny Churchill

A medieval legacy Age and beauty combine at two ancient manors and a hall house The Old Palace in Kent is listed Grade II* and sits in two acres of established gardens with 5,985sq ft of family accommodation. £4.25m

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RITAIN’S oldest inhabited houses are lasting monuments, both to the skill and ingenuity of the craftsmen who built them and to the life and times of the owners who lived in them, as the history of three houses of medieval origin currently on the market clearly shows.

For sale through Savills (01732 789700) at a guide price of £4.25 million, The Old Palace at Wrotham, near Sevenoaks, Kent, was one of several ancient manors owned by the Archbishops of Canterbury that lined the ‘Archbishops’ Trail’ from Canterbury to 110

Lambeth. Although the exact date of its construction is unknown, reliable sources, which include the Domesday Book, indicate that the palace was granted to Christ Church, Canterbury, by the Anglo-Saxon King Ethelstan in the year 964.

According to Hasted’s History and Topographical Survey of the County of Kent (1798), ‘the archbishops had very antiently a palace here, in which they frequently resided till the time of Archbishop Simon Islip, who came to the see in 1349 and, having a desire to finish the palace at Maidstone which John

Offord his predecessor had begun… pulled down the greatest part of this house and transported the materials thither’.

The ruins and surviving buildings remained in the hands of the archbishops until 1538, when Thomas Cranmer returned them to the Crown. During the brief reign of Henry’s son and successor, Edward VI, the site of the former palace and the park of Wrotham were granted to Sir John Mason, who sold the estate to Robert Byng in 1556. The Byng family restored the remaining buildings, which included a large, substantial stone

Find the best properties at countrylife.co.uk

Grade II*-listed Prior’s Hall in Essex stands in some 11 acres and comes with stabling, stores and outbuildings that include a Grade II-listed medieval timber-framed barn. £2.9m

building—thought to be the former kitchen wing of the old palace—as a manor house with gardens.

According to Hasted, following the execution of Charles I in 1639, John Byng sold the manor of Wrotham to William James, the owner of the adjoining Ightham Court estate, who was ‘a man much trusted in the usurpation under Oliver Cromwell, as one of the committee members for the sequestration of loyalist estates during which time he was in five years thrice chosen knight of the shire for Kent’. The James family owned the manor at Wrotham until the early 20th century.

The Old Palace, listed Grade II*, is located in Bull Lane in the heart of Wrotham village, where the Bull Hotel was originally part of the manor’s stable complex. Set in more than two acres of established gardens and grounds that include a splendid magnolia and some majestic trees, the beautifully proportioned manor house comes with a two-bedroom annexe, six-bay garaging, and a four-acre paddock and field with separate road access.

The main house offers 5,985sq ft of versatile family accommodation on three floors, with a spa on the lower-ground floor comprising a steam room, shower and a large heated swimming pool. Comprehensively refurbished in recent years, it combines an interesting mix of period and contemporary elements, including high ceilings, exposed timbers and stone mullion windows, aligned with groundsource heating, a home automation system, programmable lighting, a bright and cheerful Smallbone fitted kitchen and bathroom suites by Villeroy & Boch.

The drawing room, sitting room and family room all have feature fireplaces with

wood- or coal-burning stoves; the dualaspect games room has a fitted media cupboard on one wall. The first floor houses a stylish principal bedroom suite overlooking the gardens plus three further bedrooms, two with bathrooms en suite. The second floor is accessed by two separate staircases, one leading to two further bedrooms and an adjoining bathroom, and the other to a large seventh bedroom, a storage room and a further room currently used as a cinema.

Across the Thames in north Essex, Paddy Pritchard-Gordon of Knight Frank in Bishop’s Stortford (01279 213343) quotes a guide price of £2.9m for Grade II*listed Prior’s Hall at Stebbing, four miles from Great Dunmow and 12 miles from Bishop’s Stortford, which was one of three manors in the parish of Lindsell administered as a single unit since before the Norman Conquest.

Prior’s Hall takes its name from the Priory of St Valery-sur-Somme in Picardy, to which it was granted by a grateful William I for the ‘spiritual help’ its Benedictine monks provided in the form of prayers to reverse an

Sources indicate that the palace was granted to Christ Church by King Ethelstan

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Property market

Grade II-listed Thatches in Suffolk is the home of conservation architect John Hyett and dates from the 15th century. £650,000

unfavourable wind for sailing during his conquest of England in 1066.

A History of the County of Essex (1907) recounts that ‘when the Norman fleet was prepared for the invasion in 1066, it lay for a fortnight at the mouth of the Somme waiting for a favourable wind. Prayers were offered up at the abbey of St Valery, and at last the monks brought out in solemn procession the shrine containing the body of the saint. The blowing of the south wind on Wednesday, 27 September, was piously ascribed to this, and there can be no doubt that the grants made to the abbey in England, whether by the Conqueror or others, were intended as a thanks-offering’.

In those days, tithes and fees were paid to asset-owners, and lands in foreign ownership became an increasing drain on the English economy. In 1377, Edward III confiscated Prior’s Hall and gave it to William of Wykeham, who was Lord Chancellor of England and Bishop of Winchester. In 1379, he founded New College, Oxford, and endowed it with Prior’s Hall and other manorial properties as a source of revenue and timber for construction. The land belonging to Prior’s Hall was sold by New College in 1923.

The hall itself stands in 10¾ acres of gardens, grounds and pasture and comes with 112

stabling, stores and extensive outbuildings, including a massive timber-frame barn, listed Grade II. One of the finest surviving medieval barns in the east of England, Prior’s Hall Barn was built of some 900 separate pieces of unseasoned oak felled between 1417 and 1442, to store the produce of New College’s Essex estates.

Prior’s Hall Barn was built of some 900 separate pieces of unseasoned oak According to RIBA, Prior’s Hall, previously known as Parsonage Farm, is a good example of a timber-frame house with wattle-and-daub infilling, built in about 1400 and rebuilt some 200 years later. The rear range, originally a separate late-15th-century building, was incorporated into the main building in the 20th century. The eightbedroom house boasts some fine reception rooms, including a drawing room, dining room, sitting room and snooker room, all full of historic character and charm, together with a large kitchen/breakfast

room that leads to the conservatory and on to the indoor swimming pool.

Across the county border in Suffolk, Sudbury-based conservation architect John Hyett, who trained with the late Sir William Whitfield and has been involved in the restoration of some of England’s most iconic buildings, is selling the 15th-century former hall house that has been his and his wife Carol’s much-cherished home since 1993, at a guide price of £650,000 through Bedfords in Bury St Edmunds (01284 769999). Small, but perfectly formed, Thatches, which is listed Grade II, is one of a handful of ancient thatched cottages in the pleasant small village of Ashen, a former farming settlement, the population of which has only about doubled since Domesday.

Constructed from timbers imported from Silesia in about 1450—a fact confirmed by an expert colleague—Thatches was built on a north-south axis that allows the east-west sunlight to stream through the house, which offers versatile accommodation on two floors including a sitting room, dining room, snug/library, kitchen, three bedrooms, bathroom and garage/workshop. Gardens to the front and rear are designed both for privacy and to enjoy the sunshine at various times of the day.

Property News

Carla Passino

Bright lights, big city

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Land buying made easy England’s land may be green and pleasant, but it has also been remarkably hard to buy.

Now, a new digital marketplace, Addland (www.addland.com), promises to make the process of finding land for sale (and researching the details of a particular plot) much easier.

‘Addland was born out of the idea that the digital footprint of land is incredibly fragmented: as a seller you are listing your land on many different platforms;

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Conversely, the capital’s mainstream market will be significantly less buoyant, as the sharp rise in prices it saw between 2005 and 2016 limits the scope of further increases.

In regional markets, many of which have done phenomenally well in 2021, demand will continue to be supported by a work model that combines office presence with remote access, although the pace of price growth will be slower than in prime central London. Savills forecasts 4% in 2022 and 19.3% by 2026 for prime regions.

In the mainstream markets, the North-West and Yorkshire and the Humber should perform best, with an expected rise of 18.8% by 2026,

as a buyer, you are having to go to many different platforms.

Also, doing due diligence on land is either very manual or very expensive,’ says the company’s founder, Thomas McAlpine. ‘We thought of building a single destination that would bring together marketplace and research.’

Initially developed in April and relaunched in October, the map-based site now has

The prime housing market in central London, taking in areas such as Portobello Road in Notting Hill, is expected to outpace the rest of the UK in 2022, with a predicted growth of 8%

narrowing the gap with the South of England. ‘What’s interesting about a lot of the markets in the North is that they have their own local economy,’ says Miss Clacy. ‘The economic growth that we see in the local markets fuels a lot of the [property price] growth that we’re anticipating.’ The shift to a hybrid working model will also help, as it is ‘opening up an extended commuter belt and that will certainly benefit the Midlands and the North’.

The one possible dampener, particularly for the prime market, is the potential rise in both interest rates and taxation. ‘That might slow down price growth later on in the five-year forecast period.’

about 5,000 listings, ranging from woodland and equestrian property to shoots, riverbanks with fishing rights and country estates. Mr McAlpine explains

it was designed for rural property buyers, putting the power back in their hands by allowing them to access as much information as possible: ‘They can use our software to access all data relating to ownership, planning applications, listed buildings, flood zones and public rights of way.’

With the Environment Act coming into force, Addland is also planning to allow agents to sell biodiversity net-gain credits.

Alamy

OOMSDAY prophecies about the demise of the central London property market have proven wrong. Despite the lockdowndriven quest for more space, the capital looks set to enjoy an unprecedented renaissance in the next few years, according to research by Savills and Strutt & Parker.

The revival is already under way for prime central London properties priced at £5 million or more, with Strutt & Parker and Savills both seeing strong activity in this sector in the third quarter of 2021. But the prospects are even better for next year and beyond: Savills expect the prime central London market to outpace all others in the UK, growing at 8% in 2022 and 23.9% in the five years to 2026, and Strutt & Parker are even more bullish, predicting a 10% rise in 2022.

In the short term, says Frances Clacy of Savills, this growth is driven by the fact that—after the 2014 stampduty changes, the uncertainty caused

by Brexit and the pandemic—‘the market actually looks relatively good value when you compare it with historic terms’. In the medium and longer term, however, she expects fresh demand to come from global wealth generation, albeit ‘from slightly different sources than what we’ve traditionally seen—so those in technology and life-sciences, [as] global wealth is expected to increase most in these sectors. That will bring a new group of buyers looking to purchase in central London, specifically at the top end’.

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All the bells and whistles

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HE past 18 months have changed the preferences of country-house buyers. Forced to remain at home, they have come to appreciate not only the space a country property can offer, but also the many opportunities to keep family and friends entertained. As a result, many are now requesting ‘a wish list of toys’, in the words of David Carter, co-founder of House. Partnership, which ranges from fitness studios to garden rooms, automated garages and high-tech wine cellars. Similarly, he adds, ‘we are seeing a big investment in at-home spas. Popular equipment includes treatment rooms, sauna and steam rooms, ice baths and, in some cases, hydrotherapy pools and cryotherapy chambers.’

More established amenities, such as games rooms and bars, are having considerable upgrades: ‘It’s common to see smoking guns, immersion circulators and craft-brewing appliances in clients’ homes these days,’ says Mr Carter.

In games rooms, ‘buyers are favouring a mix of traditional and modern, with classic snooker and billiard tables next to table football, table tennis, pool and air hockey. Computergaming rooms are appearing more often, with arcade gaming chairs and VR headsets’. And in home cinemas, ‘the latest installations feature UHD 4K laser projectors or OLED 4K screens with integrated mood lighting, speaker systems and voice-controlled automation. James Bond never looked, or sounded, so good’.

#forsale

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IKTOK, the video-sharing platform, saw a huge rise in usage during the pandemic— and now it appears that vendors are looking to the app for advice on how to sell their properties.

Research for online estate agent Purplebricks found that more than half of sellers (55%) default to social media for tips on selling a property, rather than their estate agent or family and friends. In particular, more than a quarter (27%) of those based in London said they turned to TikTok’s short video clips for inspiration, with the image-sharing networks Instagram and Pinterest also proving popular. Vendors are increasingly creating a profile of their property on social media to boost interest.

But the study revealed a generational divide: only 1% of the sellers aged 55-plus that took part in the survey use TikTok, preferring to go to their estate agent for advice. Flora Watkins

The end of the affair T

HE backdrop to one of post-war Britain’s greatest scandals has come to the market. Originally built as a hunting lodge in the late 19th century, Grade II-listed Avon Carrow, in Warwickshire, had belonged to the Profumo family since 1925 and after John Profumo’s affair with Christine Keeler became public knowledge, ‘the family used the country house to escape the public eye,’ says Nicholas Rudge of selling agents Savills.

Sold by the Profumos in the late 1960s, the property was later split into separate homes. The one that has become available for sale, The Tower, sits in the centre, sheltered by two round turrets, and has plenty to recommend it, from the massive oak front door to the original stained-glass windows, magnificent stone fireplaces

and spectacular views of the surrounding countryside. The best place to take in the panorama is the roof terrace, which is accessed by a spiral staircase and looks out over the Edgehill battlefield, where the King’s army defeated the Earl of Essex’s Parliamentarians at the outset of the Civil War. ‘This is an excellent opportunity to buy a slice of architectural and political history and live grandly on a smaller and more manageable scale,’ says Mr Rudge. ‘Not only does the Tower at Avon Carrow feature an abundance of distinctive period features, the home has recently gone through a sympathetic restoration and now offers the very best of contemporary living within this historic building.’

Savills (01295 228000) are seeking offers in excess of £1.1 million.

Local heroes The ardent beagler Illustration by Emma van Zeller

Giles has never been keen on horses, partly because of humiliations associated with trying to impress girls at Pony Club and partly because he is the wrong shape—a longshanked 6ft 5in. Beagling was the saving grace at his public school—he was hopeless at rugby—and now he spends every Saturday whipping in, where his loping stride, effortlessly skimming heavy plough, comes into its own. The huntsman has become utterly reliant on Giles to retrieve hounds when they’ve got away from his portly form (which they do often, let’s be honest). Beagling is a friendly community; there’s a rather nice girl who’s started coming out and the tea afterwards is magnificent. KG

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