Northamptonshire Countryfile

Northamptonshire. The county of squires and spires.

Majestic limestone manors dot the rolling countryside.

I'm starting my journey in the north of the county,

in the small village of Rushton.

But all is not quite as it seems

within the landscape. Beneath the quaint is quite a lot of quirk.

Tucked away on a lonely country lane sits this striking

but slightly bizarre building.

It's an intricate riddle, a maze of secret codes.

Rushton Triangular Lodge.

It's a celebration of the Holy Trinity - God the Father,

the Son and the Holy Spirit.

It was completed in 1596 by one of the county's most famous sons,

Thomas Tresham, a man for whom three was most definitely the magic number.

A Catholic politician living under Queen Elizabeth's Protestant reign,

he designed the Lodge while serving time for his beliefs.

I'm meeting up with historian Emily Hughes who can hopefully

tell me a thing or three about the place.

I know the number three is significant

but you're the one doing the PhD. How did he construct it?

He constructed it very symbolically.

His name, Tresham, "Tres" means three in Latin,

so quite obviously, a symbol of the Holy Trinity

and also a pun on his name.

So the walls are all 33 feet long, there's three sides,

there's three floors, the Trinity is obvious here.

On the face of it, it seems a fairly innocent declaration of faith

but there are other secret, treasonable messages.

The letter S under the water spout stands for "sanctus",

part of the Catholic Mass.

And celebrating mass under Queen Elizabeth could lead to execution.

What would he have done inside the building?

Well, he built it for his rabbit keeper, a Lodge for him.

-Elaborate.

-Yeah.

Once we get inside, you can see that's completely impractical.

I think, actually, it's a place of devotion and a place

he could come with his family and practise their faith

in secret and in private.

CHOIR SINGS IN LATIN

-So this is what it would have been like.

-It might well have been.

The music, I found it within papers from the Tresham household

so it might have been composed by Thomas Tresham.

The music itself are the last words of an executed priest.

And the symbolism within the music, like the building,

there's cross symbolism, so there's four notes in the shape of a cross,

and then throughout the four voice parts are 33 allelujahs.

So the three is making a comeback again and again.

But this isn't the only puzzling building in the county.

The hidden symbolism continues to intrigue at the home of another

notable Northamptonshire family.

The Triangular Lodge was just a twinkle in Tresham's sketchbook

when this place, Canons Ashby, was built 40 years earlier.

With its formal gardens, its stunning views and its fancy topiary,

it's a pretty textbook stately home.

But step inside, and there are some hidden clues to a secret past.

Welcome to Canons Ashby.

I'm hoping Laura Malpas can shed some light on its dark secrets.

A lovely hallway.

Both the families I'm looking into today clearly had money

but they were very different, weren't they?

Well, they were because the Drydens,

-who lived and built Canons Ashby...

-Here.

-..which is here,

they were extreme Protestants, Puritans.

Whereas the Treshams you've been looking at over at Rushton,

they were extreme Roman Catholics.

So, you've got opposite ends of the spectrum.

-Now, this is the great kitchen.

-Very nice.

But this isn't what I want to show you. This is over here.

-This is our servants' dining hall.

-Interesting decoration.

What do they all mean?

Well, we've got some theories about what they all mean.

-Can you see there's some dividers, holding a white scroll?

-Yes.

And then you've got these reeded columns with the set squares on top,

with an eye in the middle.

And then we've got family crests all around walls.

What is unusual is that we've got lots of Protestant families up here

but we've also got some well-known Roman Catholic families here, too.

-So they're intermingled?

-Yes,

something is uniting them that is bigger than religion.

-What's bigger than religion?

-Quite.

If you put a modern day Freemason in this room and show him

these symbols, they go, "Oh, that looks really Masonic to me."

But the Grand Lodge in London of Freemasons say freemasonry

-wasn't established in England until 1717.

-So this is too early?

This is at least 100 years too early,

-probably more than 100 years too early.

-Right.

-It's very mysterious, isn't it? It's very Da Vinci Code.

-Oh, it is.

So, the symbols may hold the key to a secret society

but another mystery has recently been unearthed in the room.

-Inside here...

-You're getting into the cupboard.

-Yes, indeed.

We were just having a look around.

I don't know if you can notice, we've got a secret chamber.

For what?

Well, it's too small for a person,

but it's just the right size for things.

So if you have things you don't want anybody to find,

then you'd put them in here.

So many questions, Laura, so many questions!

We know that there's a lot of story here.

We've got lots of people who've given us little ideas

and hints about various things.

We would love people to, if they've got any ideas,

come and have a look and come and tell us what they think.

If you're watching and you know what any of this means, let us know.

Get in contact.

Hopefully, one day, someone out there

can unravel the secrets wrapped within the symbols.

While we're careering around Northamptonshire, Tom has been

travelling from England to Scotland finding out why one of Britain's

most beautiful wild animals is becoming a victim of its own success.

Deer have always been a part of our rural landscape.

Yet a glimpse of our largest land mammal is still a rare treat

for many people in the countryside.

But this secretive temperament hides a population explosion

and now they're on the move.

Following in the footsteps of foxes, deer are now spreading further

and further into our urban areas.

They can now be found in many of our biggest cities,

like Bristol, Glasgow, and here in London.

They're becoming amazingly bold, brazen, even.

This is the middle of the day and I can get quite close to them

before they move off.

They're getting very used to being near humans.

It's hard to believe these usually timid creatures would want

to live closer to us.

To find out what's bringing them to the cities,

I'm heading into the heart of the countryside.

Dr Paul Dolman has been studying deer populations in Britain

for 12 years.

How have things been changing?

Well, you can see for all four of these species in the 1970s,

they were very localised and then in the last three decades,

they have spread. They've spread throughout much of the country.

It is a very consistent picture, isn't it?

Moving out from these small darker areas,

the lighter colours spreading out across the country.

What's driving this expansion?

Firstly, we have no natural predators. We don't have brown bear,

wolf and lynx in the UK.

Secondly, we've actually reintroduced the native roe deer

to England and red deer,

and we've released these introduced species, but we've released them

into an environment that's very favourable for them.

We've doubled the area of woodland in the last century

through planting and we've got highly nutritious croplands.

We now have food in the winter in the form of planted winter wheat.

All of these things have made it more favourable for deer.

And you can see that with London here.

They've spread throughout what is the M25 ring.

Well, particularly for muntjac, fallow and roe deer, yes.

They are colonising our cities.

Current estimates suggest there are now two million deer in the UK.

Such numbers are already damaging the countryside.

The problem is that hungry deer are eating their way

through our woodlands, stopping the growth of new trees

and destroying precious habitats.

They're even being blamed for sharp declines in woodland birds,

like the nightingale.

But as they move into more populated areas, new problems are arising.

One of the biggest issues is road accidents.

It's claimed that more than 40,000 collisions are caused by deer

every year in the UK.

Scottish Natural Heritage has been keeping

an eye on the problem in Glasgow.

-So, why have you brought me here?

-This is really a busy road

beside the roe deer habitat.

We've got lots of traffic, lots of deer,

and the potential for an accident between the two.

Have you actually had collisions here?

Certainly on this road and the M8 motorway just over the hill here.

So for this whole area, it certainly has its fair share of accidents.

We've also got problems with poaching,

antisocial behaviour, in terms of killing deer with illegal methods,

which has welfare implications for the deer.

We might have damage to woodlands and people's gardens,

-golf courses, public areas.

-Is it all bad?

-Absolutely not.

A lot of people love deer, and enjoy seeing deer.

For people in Glasgow, a roe deer is in all honesty the biggest

land mammal they'll see right on their doorstep.

That's a huge benefit to educate people,

they can see and enjoy nature.

Unless the population is managed,

it's likely the number of urban deer will continue to rise.

That doesn't mean marauding gangs of deer trashing our city streets

but if something isn't done,

it could lead to more conflict with us, and more suffering for the deer.

Later, I'll be asking if we need to take more drastic action now

to avoid further problems in the future.

'So much for spring having sprung!

'It's gone all Arctic in Northamptonshire, too.

'But I'm about to explore a rather unusual type of farming

'that should definitely warm the cockles.'

Gin. Now, that's my kind of farm diversification!

Just five months ago, Tom Warner and Sion Edwards started harnessing

the spring water beneath Tom's family farm to make artisan gin.

From young scamps helping out on their parents' farms,

these two grew up to be best friends at agricultural college.

Kindred spirits with a clear vision,

they are now bezzie mates in a distilling business.

-Hi, Tom.

-Hi, Julia.

-Cor, bumpy old field you've got me walking across!

Yeah, they are the parks and gardens of an old mediaeval manor house.

-Really?

-Yeah, where we are right now is actually the fishponds.

And this is one of the springs that would have fed the ponds.

Handy for the gin business.

Very handy for the gin business, because the water is very important.

It wasn't always gin for you, though, was it?

We really wanted to get back to some form of agriculture

that was more exciting than day-to-day running of the farm

and that's where this idea came from.

It originally started around growing crops for essential oils

and you need to distil those crops to extract the oil from them.

What can you do with a still for the rest of the year?

We can make alcohol.

So we dropped the whole essential oil idea

and just started focusing on alcohol.

Who's the brains and who's the brawn in this operation, Tom?

I think, as I'm here on a freezing cold day bucketing water,

and Sion's up there in the warm, I think

I can be the brawn and he's the brains.

This old stable is now home to a beautiful, hand-made copper still

that looks like something straight out of a Wallace and Gromit film.

Into the spring water goes a mix of juniper, cinnamon, cardamom,

elder from the farm and a whole host of other secret goodies.

Time for me to get warm and find out how it all works.

-Hiya, Sion.

-Hello, there.

-She's a beauty, isn't she?

-Absolutely.

So we've got all the ingredients in here bubbling away,

looking very appetising.

Basically, we've mixed alcohol, water and botanicals,

so things like juniper and things that go into gin,

and we then have to separate the alcohol out.

As we heat the pot up, it vapours and condenses,

which is the distilling, basically.

And it goes all the way through and comes out as liquid,

-pure distillate, which is full of flavour and about 89%.

-Wow!

89%? But that's not how you deliver it

as a final product, at 89%?

No, the water that Tom brings from the spring,

we make sure it's clean, then it's called cutting back.

We cut back the distillate down to 44%,

which is what we produce our gin at.

-A mere 44%?

-Yeah.

Oh, gosh.

'Once distilled, it's ready for bottling

'and these two do everything with their own fair hands.'

I feel like some sort of techno milkmaid.

-Yeah, it does look like the back end of a robotic cow, doesn't it?

-Yep.

-And, remarkably, that will do 500 an hour.

-500 an hour?

Not with me at the wheel!

THEY LAUGH

With the elite bottling crew on it, me and Sion, it can, yeah.

Where do you sell your gin now?

Because you've just started, it's a very specialised business

and you've got a lot of competition.

We try to target upmarket bars, hotels and restaurants,

good cocktail bars and independent wine shops around the country.

And where do you want to be in five years' time? Still doing all of this?

Because you want to keep it niche, don't you?

Ultimately, we always want to keep it as an artisan product,

so everything's done by hand.

But we also want to bring in more ingredients from the farms,

using the sloes, the blackberries and the damsons

from the hedgerows around the farm to make different liquors.

We were thinking of curing meat as well.

The smell from the pot, once distillation is over,

is so fantastic and we think and we could possibly cure meat

in that distillate, because the smell is so great.

That would be interesting, wouldn't it?

All of this is making me thirsty. We need to taste some now.

I think that's a tremendous idea, Julia,

-and we've also got a little surprise for you.

-Ooh?

We've got you your very own label

-produced for your very own bottle of gin.

-Look at that!

That is brilliant!

-Cheers!

-Cheers!

-It's very flowery.

-It's beautiful gin, yeah.

-It is good gin.

-What's it like to be working with your best mate, then?

-It's fantastic.

Best friend for the last 16 years of your life, can't go wrong.

Have arguments sometimes,

I have to get stuff from the tall shelves for Sion,

but no, it's great.

People say you shouldn't work with your friends, but it works with us.

Deer are thriving in Britain, and their rapid spread

could in many ways be celebrated as an ecological success.

With no natural predators and plenty of suitable habitat,

deer numbers have been booming.

And whilst that is a really welcome sight

while we are out in the countryside,

when they come very close to our own doorsteps and our own roads,

that can put real strain on our relationship.

In Scotland, they are tackling the problem head-on.

To find out how, I'm up early to visit a chilly woodland

just outside the town of Kilsyth, near Glasgow.

Ben Harrower manages the deer numbers in this area.

What's the plan this morning?

We're just on the edge of the town here, one of our woodlands.

We're going to go up this track,

go up to the back of the hill there,

onto a sensitive restock site, see if there's any roe deer.

To keep the deer at a level where human contact is kept

to a minimum, 12 need to be culled at this site every year.

And how far are we here from built-up areas?

Well, you've got a community

just a few hundred metres down the hill there.

You've got a large town, just on the road we came in there,

and on the south-east side as well, so we are surrounded.

When we are controlling an urban woodland like this,

we have exclusion zones near the towns and cities

and we will completely exclude going from that area.

So you will only stick to the back of the woodlands, the quieter areas.

The Forestry Commission culls 1,100 roe deer every year

in lowland Scotland, which is then sold on as venison.

But with the weather closing in,

there is little chance of seeing one today.

I can see it is a tricky job. Why is it worthwhile?

It seems odd, Tom, but we manage deer for the deer's own welfare.

You see the negative impacts with the interactions with people,

so it is for their own welfare

and to keep a healthy deer population on the ground.

Here, the approach to dealing with lowland deer has been led

by experience elsewhere in the country.

The law in Scotland generally supports the need for culling,

so even if a landowner was reluctant to see it happening on his land,

the authorities can make it happen

if they really think it is necessary.

But not everyone sees culling as the best option.

Across the border in England, some of the responsibility

for managing the animals falls on local councils.

Rather than shooting the deer, some go out of their way to protect them.

We are right on the edge of the M25. Why have you brought me here?

I've brought you here

because this is a tunnel specifically built

to allow deer to come underneath it,

so the herds can move.

And when the M25 was widened a few years ago,

I lobbied and campaigned to make sure these tunnels remained.

In the London Borough of Havering, Andrew Curtin has worked hard

to safeguard both deer and drivers.

But despite his best efforts, it has been claimed that this borough

still has the highest number

of deer-related accidents in the capital.

But why not control the numbers by shooting some?

Well, sometimes it is necessary, to control the numbers.

But we think there are more effective ways of doing that,

so not using culling, because that isn't our policy at all.

Whilst some are against culling, on the grounds that it is inefficient

or even inhumane, for Andrew, there is an even more practical problem.

There is no point in us doing something drastic

and then more deer just coming over the border from Essex.

If there is going to be a response, it needs to be

across the whole region, the Government needs to consult on it

and we respond to that and look at the measures being proposed.

In England, large numbers of deer are already shot,

around 100,000 every year.

The Government have been advised

that up to a quarter of the nation's deer should be culled,

but when it was suggested that that figure increase to 50%,

the press splashed the story.

The headlines were prompted by research

overseen by Dr Paul Dolman, who we met earlier.

But he is uneasy with the reaction.

This is not something that I would be comfortable with

being attributed to me.

Paul claims his findings have been widely misinterpreted.

Although he does think we need to cull more, he says that first,

we must get a clearer picture of our deer population.

We don't know how many deer there are in the UK.

You can see estimates of around 1.5 million or more.

But this is complex, this is six different species,

and every species of deer has to be taken on a case-by-case basis.

And every region of the country has to be taken individually.

Believing current estimates on deer numbers are wildly inaccurate,

Paul and his team have been running a thermal imaging study

in Thetford Forest, giving me the chance to see some deer in the wild.

They are going to come across the road now.

Wow, look at them in the sunshine!

What it's told us is that there are many more deer here than we thought

and that the deer management has completely underestimated

the number of deer here.

So although this is a highly managed forest,

there are nearly 1,500 muntjac and roe deer shot each year

in the area we were studying. What we have shown

is that that is not keeping a lid on the population

and that there are another 2,000 muntjac and roe spreading out

into the wider countryside every year,

fuelling the increase in deer numbers.

For Paul, until we have an accurate figure across the whole country,

it is impossible to say exactly how many deer we actually need to cull.

But it is likely to be far greater than the current

recommendation of one quarter.

So, the question for our society is, are we prepared to kill more?

If the answer is no,

we may enjoy the thrill of more regular sightings,

but also endure the peril of more regular friction between us.