Country Life 27-Apr-2022

Lot-et-Garonne, €1.89 million (about £1.58m) The Château du Fréchou soars above the Gascon countryside in Nerac, taking in long views to the Pyrenees from its towers. Originally dating from 1280, with 16th-century additions, it has preserved many magnificent features, including a stone staircase, open fireplaces and a library in the north-eastern tower. Despite its grandeur, it has a manageable size, with five bedrooms and about 6,400sq ft of living space. Outside is a range of outbuildings, including a pigeonnier and an orangery, plus formal gardens, a walnut orchard and grounds for a total of just under 17½ acres. Knight Frank (020–7861 1139; www.knightfrank.com) Gers, €3.71 million (about £3.1m) Built at the turn of the 19th century, this château near Auch has it all: graceful architecture, views so long that they reach as far…

FOR two months, the world has been inspired by the rhetoric and bravery of President Volodymyr Zelensky in Ukraine. In his previous life, he was an actor, making him practically an amateur at politics, one might have thought, but, cometh the hour, cometh the man. Our own MPs’ example sometimes suggests that politics ought not to be left only to politicians—we have a strong amateur tradition, still represented, in some enlightened cases, by the small number of hereditary peers in the Lords. In fiction, we admire Sherlock Holmes, who solved mysterious crimes because they stimulated his brain. John Ruskin, the influential Victorian seer and aesthete, could only take up cudgels against the ugliness of contemporary life because he had inherited a fortune from his father’s sherry business. We rejoiced in Sam…

ART DECO Saltdean Lido in East Sussex will benefit from a £7.5 million restoration, with work now under way, after a local campaign group opposed a proposed redevelopment that would have seen its permanent closure. Its pool, purpose-built beach and sunbathing lawns had only been open three years (entry sixpence) when the Lido was requisitioned by the National Fire Service in 1941 for training exercises. Restored in 1964 after years of postwar dereliction, it remained a popular attraction for decades. It’s hoped that repair work to its eroded concrete walls will see its removal from the Heritage at Risk Register. ‘The handsome Saltdean Lido was inspired by ocean-liner and aircraft design and is architecturally probably the finest in England,’ says Duncan Wilson, Historic England chief executive. ‘Heritage and wellbeing are so closely…

COVENTRY is celebrating the end of its run as UK City of Culture with Green Futures, initiatives that support biodiversity and improve the urban landscape. One highlight is Bee-Lines, a mass-planting project designed to create corridors for pollinators, after a report by Buglife raised the alarm about the city’s low pollen count. Thousands of seeds are being planted, with the first flowers coming into bloom in May. ‘Coventry has more than 3,400 allotments and greenspaces, but, for pollinators there are often no pathways connecting them,’ explains Green Futures producer Amber Merrick-Potter. The news has ‘thrilled’ Buglife, with Paul Hetherington saying: ‘[We] very much hope that other cities and towns take notice of what is happening in Coventry... Our pollinators are facing serious declines and providing new pollen-rich habitat, with connectivity, is…

THE new trophy for the Badminton Horse Trials (May 4–8), presented by Mars Equestrian, was revealed last week. Sculptor Judy Boyt, who produced the Mitsubishi Motors Trophy in 1992, has the distinction of being commissioned again three decades later. The trophy comprises three silver horses, representing dressage, cross-country and show jumping, and incorporates silver from Badminton House and a plinth of oak from the estate carved by Marc Stevenson of Stevenson Brothers Rocking Horses. ‘It’s been a huge honour,’ says Miss Boyt, who started work on the trophy in 2019, ‘but it has been hard keeping it a secret for two years. ‘We wanted to keep a link to the previous trophy, so it is again three horses, but with up-to-date tack and equipment. For instance, the dressage and show-jumping horses are…

IT’S hard to imagine a more eclectic company than Ed Sheeran, St Edmund, Charles Dickens, Maggi Hambling and our own Carla Carlisle. But they—and many more—come together in A New Suffolk Garland, an anthology celebrating this great county. This book combines recipes (Delia Smith’s version of Eliza Acton’s Hot Punch Sauce) with scholarly articles (an exploration of the Sutton Hoo helmet by former British Museum director Neil MacGregor) and lyrical takes on the Suffolk countryside (Roger Deakin’s ‘Swimming with Otters’), as well as new work by Craig Brown, Ralph Fiennes, India Knight, Olivia Laing, Lucy Hughes-Hallett and Lucy Walker. As the late Julian Tennyson put it, ‘Suffolk retains not the shell of some vanished glory, but the whole essential spirit’. Published on May 5, A New Suffolk Garland is available…