Episode 2 Land of Hope and Glory - British Country Life

The British are known

for their enduring love affair with our landscape.

Some would say

that our obsession with the rural dream comes with a question...

if we could, would we choose to live in it

and if money was no object, what sort of house would we have?

You get the breeze off that sea, you smell the cutting of grass

and the farmers working.

You're just in a part of merry old England and it's lovely.

There we are.

For almost 120 years, Country Life magazine

has been aspiring to capture the elusive soul

of the British countryside.

This is the place of dreams.

This is the place where people just sit back

with their cup of tea

and they dream that they can live in a place like this.

It's a weekly bible for the middle and upper classes.

When I was 11 my father inherited, um,

a very crumbling stately home in North Yorkshire

and we had no heating

and literally hip baths catching leaks in the corridors.

Its readers may aspire to the status

of a large house in the country...

When I drove down the avenue, I could feel the magical energy

and power of this house.

Within an hour of arriving, I'd made the offer to buy it.

..but with just 18% of us living in the countryside

and the majority residing in cities, towns and suburbs,

many of us are increasingly divorced from a rural way of life.

-DOGS HOWL

-They nearly eat a cow a day.

A whole cow a day.

Yeah, they eat a lot of meat.

We spent a year seeing cottages, manor houses and castles

through the eyes of the magazine

and discovering the reality behind the rural dream.

Come on, Danny Boy. Come on, then.

Sit, sit, sit, sit, sit, sit. Sit!

Sit, you horrible little dog.

Come on, then. Oi!

Milton Manor in Oxfordshire first featured in the magazine in 1948.

The present owners have agreed to another article being written

to celebrate a very special anniversary.

250 years ago this year, um,

the Barrett family bought this property

and the person who bought it

is a really remarkable and interesting figure.

Bryant Barrett. And he's a London merchant.

He makes fabrics with gold in them

and he has a shop on The Strand.

And he buys Milton Manor

and he expands it as a family seat, because he is vastly wealthy.

And who lives there now?

Well, um, a descendant, uh, Anthony Mockler-Barrett...

Well, actually, that's wrong.

-Um, what is...? Annie, is it Mockler?

-Mow-ckler.

Giddle up, giddle up, giddle up. Giddle up! Giddle up, giddle up...

He is a great enthusiast for its contents.

And this one is Arabella and the other one,

what is the other little one's name? Um,

really they're not much use for anything, these tiny Shetlands.

So just ornamental, to amuse children, really.

Where do you want to go, through the back, or...?

Yes! That sounds lovely, wherever you like.

Through there or in the house?

In the house, shall we go in the house? We'll come in the house.

All right, I'll close the door to this lavatory.

-That's your famous lavatory.

-Probably don't want a shot of that.

Well, he has a partner, uh, Gwenda, who was formerly an actress.

She worked in the early days of television.

This is the old part of the house, 1663 here.

Cos Tony's great-great-great grandfather

built on the wings in 1764.

She's a comedienne and she worked, amongst others,

I believe, with Tony Hancock and also Benny Hill.

It's a beautiful room.

Well, this is Strawberry Hill Gothic, of course.

When we came here, this room was covered in 1952

Sanderson's wallpaper.

And it took me 20 years to persuade Tony to get rid of it.

'24 years ago, yes, we moved in,'

on the death of Tony's mother. He inherited the house then.

How many bedrooms have you got?

There are about 10 bedrooms.

10 to 12 bedrooms, but they're all big, you see,

so you can't really... One big room with two single beds in.

Because being a Catholic, Tony's mother

never had double beds in the bedrooms.

This is my mother over here.

This portrait of her when she, when she came out as a deb,

um, and that was,

that was her looking, er, slightly touched up, one feels.

She sort of started collecting teapots

and then people started giving her teapots.

She was a fervent monarchist,

so she collected coronation teapots particularly.

Did you ever give her one?

Do you know, I don't think I ever did.

Not one.

Too late now.

The house tells the story

of the association of a particular family with a particular place.

This is the nursery where we spent most of our childhood,

the four of us and Nanny.

That was me, my sister's christening.

One of the things that is so fascinating about it is that,

of course, the house is interesting architecturally,

but the continuity and contents

make this house exponentially more interesting.

This is the will of Bryant Barrett's father, Nicholas Barrett.

To the parish of St Clement Dane.

And this is our...living room, really.

It's a lovely bright room.

Well, this is a morning room, of course,

it gets the sun in the morning.

What's very unusual about it is that it is possible,

through Bryant Barrett's manuscripts,

to come very close to not only a particular person,

but also to a perspective on the world.

There you have the details of a marriage settlement.

In that sense, you're stepping straight back 250 years.

That is really exciting.

-At least, I find it exciting.

-HE LAUGHS

Anthony is the 9th generation descended from Bryant Barrett.

As the eldest son, he inherited Milton Manor in 1990.

This is the family conversation piece

that my mother insisted on having done.

We were all forced to come in one by one

and sit here for hours, which for children was a bit of a strain.

But I think we hated it less than my father, who really loathed it.

But my mother insisted on doing it.

He put up with quite a lot.

Um, particularly in his old age,

having to sit in the little sitting room

huddled over a little stove, uh,

cos it was the only warm room in the house.

Tony's mother wouldn't have fires in the house.

She said it was bad for the furniture.

So everybody who came here was frozen.

In fact, some chap spent a whole Christmas in the airing cupboard

because it was the warmest place in the house!

So, yes, this is,

this is a way of bringing visitors up and getting an "ooh".

Anthony and his forbears

have been established at Milton Manor for two and a half centuries.

Making the tenant at King John's Hunting Lodge

appear a relative newcomer.

Why can't pinks work in my garden? They just don't work.

Nor does lavender, I can't make it grow.

And the bloody rabbits.

Can't win, you can't win in a garden.

-Can you win in a house, in a room?

-Yes, cos it's static.

HE LAUGHS

Nicky Haslam

has rented his country home from the National Trust

for a mere 30 years.

Why is the Englishman's home his castle...

-do you think?

-Is it?

I suppose we, more than almost any other nation,

prize our own nest...

..because we've been so lucky to have had them

for so long, undisturbed.

We haven't had revolutions that burnt down country houses.

-DOORBELL RINGS

-'There's always been that sort of,

'having a nest of your own is very English.'

-Oh, you are on time.

-Thanks very much.

-How wonderful.

-Nicky, hi, I'm Bella.

-How nice to see you...

Arabella Youens, the property editor of the magazine,

has come to interview Nicky

about his eclectic approach to decorating a home.

The violin is a chocolate box from Vienna sprayed white.

I just collect white, anything white like that.

I found the lamp in the gift shop at the Louvre on the top shelf.

-Tat?

-And this goblet came from Moscow.

I quite like inexpensive things,

-I don't have anything valuable here at all.

-No.

-Well, you've got some...

-And I love souvenirs, I love,

I love remembering where I found things.

-And is that your mum?

-Yep, my mother.

-It's fairly unflattering too.

-Oh, really?

-It isn't over flattering.

-Well, that's pretty unusual.

-She looked quite like that, yeah.

-Is there somewhere I can sit?

-Anywhere you like.

-Just anywhere?

I think something will resonate really well with Country Life

readers, who I think have sometimes been a bit nervous

of the idea of interior design.

A lot of our readers will have lots of, um,

-furniture that they've inherited.

-Yeah.

Um, invariably quite a lot of brown furniture,

which certainly the younger generation, my generation, you know,

don't know what to do with it.

-Paint it white.

-Paint it white. Brilliant, I love that.

-Even if it's the finest mahogany.

-Yeah.

BELLA LAUGHS

I've read Country Life, I suppose, all my life

cos we came to my parents' house in the country

and we used to pounce on it when it came

and it was the bible of...

English life in, the...

Well, especially after the war I remember it.

And it was very thin

and black and white covers.

Actually, if you read the property section of old Country Life,

you see sort of mansions in, I don't know,

in Hertfordshire with 800 acres of land

going for £4,000, you suddenly realise what,

what life's all about.

CORK POPS AND CHEERING

First published in 1897,

the magazine can sell over 60,000 copies a week

when it's a special edition.

-Thank you very much indeed.

-This is the "Best of British" issue.

We work on an issue every week but this has been the big, er,

the big issue this year.

And what are you thinking as you open that box?

-What are you hoping?

-I'm hoping there's not some absolutely ghastly mistake.

It's like an exocet, a mistake comes out at you

and that's what I'm slightly looking for at the moment.

What we've sort of done here is that we tried to get...

This is the variation of the great houses.

So, you know, we've got sort of Castle Howard,

-a modern house in Hampshire.

-I have a vision of the Queen...

I don't know whether the Queen does read it,

but it's my sort of fantasy that the Queen

sort of having her, you know,

sitting there with her toast and marmalade

on a Wednesday, reading the magazine.

The magazine certainly wouldn't,

wouldn't have entered in my terraced house in north London.

It is upper class.

It's an upper class magazine, it always was.

I mean, all those bits in Country Life that go on,

you just think of Downton Abbey,

well, the ancestry of that goes, that type of thing goes back

to Jane Austen and the great house

and the mythology of the great houses.

It all runs all through Country Life,

runs through our literature.

And then I think it counts for the fascination with the past

and old things and even desire, always,

to be deeply rooted in the past, in continuity and tradition.

And what do people make of the house when they come to it?

They usually love it. They always describe it as being very lived in.

National Trust stuff, you know, is always immaculate, isn't it?

I think they quite like seeing rather shabbier sort of...

rooms and things like that.

-Hello, Gwenda.

-GWENDA LAUGHS

-And Anthony...

-Thank you for coming, it's great of you to come.

-Couldn't be a better day, couldn't be a better day, very hot.

-It's lovely.

Lovely to see you, Anthony. Nice to see you.

-Right, lovely, come inside.

-Thank you so much.

Shall we look at this? Cos, I mean, I've never seen a complete,

um, a complete set. Are these all the same?

All hand-painted in 1791, of the house.

-So by looking at this...

-'The house still has all its contents.

'You know, that is truly extraordinary.'

Capability Brown...

'The interiors are full of marvellous things.

'Things that if they were taken away from the house

'would be a quarter of as interesting.'

So this is Mary Belson, the first wife here.

Which I think is a lovely painting, don't you, John, this one?

It's really, it's a really...

Yes, and this is Winnifred Easton, his second wife,

as I say, no good looker.

But very good at child bearing.

And very rich.

This is, uh, Bryant Barrett's

business accounts,

"A general inventory of all my effects in 1767.

"Due from the King,

"£301.16.7."

So why the decision to move out

and have a big, sort of status symbol in the country?

Well, the English have always been fascinated,

you know, we may make our... Wherever we make our money,

lots of English people, British people,

like to invest that in the countryside.

They like to have a country seat. It's, it hasn't changed!

You've got one long curtain and one short curtain.

Is that a particular style?

No, that was because we had one pair of long curtains

and one pair of short curtains,

uh, because we took down the other curtains

and we've never got it together again.

GWENDA LAUGHS

When Anthony was a child, the house had a staff of six.

Now he's down to one gardener and a part-time cleaner.

This is my office.

I've got four tables

and the idea was each would concentrate

on a different aspect, you know, farming or cottages

or house opening, or whatever it might be.

And it hasn't actually worked out like that.

I really wish I could afford a secretary.

-Are you computer literate?

-Absolutely not.

There's not a computer in the house.

In recent years, Milton Manor has fallen on more testing times.

What are the challenges of keeping a house like this alive in 2014-15?

You need a good woman around, really, to do, you know, cleaning,

cooking, that sort of thing.

Um, ironing.

GWENDA LAUGHS

-Gardening, cleaning one's shoes...

-Gwenda, are you getting that?

What do you say to that?

Well, I'm completely astounded.

I didn't even know Tony had noticed I did either of those things.

THEY LAUGH

For all Anthony's bluff humour,

Milton Manor's future is looking bleak.

You do need to sort out the money, this is the trouble.

The various bills and taxings and that's what Tony does.

Muddle them up, you get...

Um...

-Bloody hell...

-ANTHONY MUMBLES

The readers of the magazine are obsessed

with country houses and it's the first place of call

if you're looking to buy a grand one.

This is a £9 million house...

in Sussex.

It's rather beautiful.

And you've got seven million on the Cote D'Azur.

£9 million place in Notting Hill, but now we are in,

there's New York, Florida, Miami...

Everybody dreams of, well, many people dream of country life

and I guess they start out with

a wish-list of ten things they want to achieve.

So there'll be a certain look, a beautiful facade

down a lovely leafy lane, peace and quiet, water, beautiful gardens.

You know, lovely accommodation, bedrooms, all the things you want,

tennis courts, swimming pools, staff accommodation.

However grand they want to live.

Uh, but inevitably,

if they achieve seven out of those ten things, they've done very well.

Kinross House looks the dream home to many.

It's an architectural vision conceived in 1685

by Sir William Bruce, a royal courtier.

When the house was sold over three centuries later,

it was in dire need of restoration

and a modern saviour with deep pockets.

It was meant to be.

It was a matter of destiny.

I mean, I couldn't have imagined just a number of years ago seeing

a property, uh, I owned on the front page of Country Life.

Absolutely wonderful.

Kinross House has featured in the magazine five times

since 1912, such is its architectural significance.

"The interest of Kinross House

"extends far beyond the stately building which represents,

"at its best, the art of Sir William Bruce,

"its architect and first owner."

There it is.

"The estate on which it stands includes Loch Leven

"and its island with a castle

"where Mary Queen of Scots languished a prisoner."

Clive Aslet has returned to write about the spectacular

renovation which was completed in just 18 months by the new owner.

I had absolutely no intention of buying the house.

In fact, until 45 minutes before I actually arrived,

I didn't even know I was coming here.

Within an hour of arriving, I made the offer to buy it.

We shouldn't really be coming by car,

we should be coming by some other means, really.

Because this is like...

a piece of music which you should be enjoying in time.

Thank you. Thank you very much.

-Hello, Clive. How are you? Good to see you.

-Hello.

-Good, well, let me show you round.

-Thank you very much.

A number of people have come through

and said, "My God, you've put a new floor down."

-Yes.

-No, Sir William Bruce put this floor down.

-Oh.

-Some time after 1683, during the building of the house.

-Right.

It's exactly the same floor.

I have seen Kinross House described as the coldest house in Scotland,

because I think there were six or ten radiators in the whole property.

-When you came?

-When I came, yeah.

-Wow.

And there are now more than that just in the entrance hall.

-But you don't have underfloor heating or anything...?

-No...

-No.

-Too far.

-THEY LAUGH

Donald Fothergill is the chairman of the UK's oldest

and largest lift-making company.

He bought Kinross House for £4 million

and spent a further 13 million on restoring it.

When I drove down the avenue...

three or four years ago, whenever it was,

I could feel the magical energy and power of, of this house.

I was just drawn to it like a magnet.

I immediately knew that there was a partnership with me,

the house,

perhaps even Bruce himself.

I felt an overwhelming urge to finish what he had started.

-And that's the great man himself.

-And there he is.

-There he is.

-Gosh.

And he's in a sort of dressing gown or something.

-Yes, it looks like a sort of kimono.

-Kimono, yes, it's a wonderful silk.

I know.

It's a very compelling image because it shows him

obviously as he wanted himself to be portrayed in this, uh,

easy, rather artistic way, with his lace at his neck,

but actually in this very striking and colourful sort of, uh,

dressing gown.

This is one of the, um, Montgomerys, here we are.

Wonderful.

-Bruce's grand salon.

-A knock-out room, isn't it?

-Yeah.

-In every way.

I always felt, when I bought the house,

was the sense that there was Bruce

-wanting me to finish the house off.

-Yes.

It's wonderful to see these things being done,

because for a lot of the time when I was editor of Country Life,

everything was going wrong with the countryside.

And now...wonderful to see a great success.

This is the dining room.

This table, which is solid mahogany, was purpose built for this room.

-Oh, gosh!

-I won't tell you the price, it's embarrassing.

Some people might look at it and think, "Why on earth?"

But, fortunately, somebody had the vision to see it,

to realise this is such a very beautiful and precious house

and to secure its future, really, for the next 150 years.

I never realised how much dust a tapestry can accumulate.

We had about three sugar bags worth of dust that came out of it. Quite extraordinary.

CLOCK'S GEARS CLUNK

The whole thing is a drama unfolding through space

and, if you like, through time as well.

Does that mean he had a big ego?

Oh, he...he would've had a colossal ego!

You have to have a huge ego to build a place like this.

These little cupboards

were actually built by Sir William Bruce.

What they used to be were the little closets

where they would nip off and go to the loo.

So they ran the height of the building

and we've now turned those little old loo closets into...

mechanical and electrical services distribution.

And do you think Donald's got something of William Bruce in him?

Well, I think that everybody who makes a fortune,

and you need a fortune to do this kind of thing,

I suspect they do have things in common.

They have to have a lot of vitality.

And he was the top man practically,

or certainly one of the top men in Scotland,

and he was building this to establish a dynasty.

A simply enormous pressure vessel,

boiler...

..hot-water tank, pump control system,

and, I don't know if you can squeeze back here,

but, uh, probably a few more gubbins to look at.

It really does resemble a ship's boiler room.

It's a great industrial work of art.

-So, Donald, do you know how all this works?

-Absolutely not.

But I know somebody I can ask and who can,

so I think that's the key point.

Sir William Bruce's fate was not to create a dynasty.

The building of Kinross defeated him.

He fell from royal favour and died a pauper with no known grave.

It seems incredible he had no grave.

Poor, poor, poor Sir William Bruce.

But, no, of course, this is his memorial

and this is why we're here talking about him.

-Do you sense him around at all?

-Oh, definitely. Oh, definitely.

I tend to fall in love with and buy places that I actually connect with.

Whilst I don't want it to let it...to let it get the better of me,

like it got the better of Bruce,

you have to have the passion, uh,

to see a project, particularly one of this size,

through and make it work.

420 miles south of Kinross,

the troubles facing Anthony and Gwenda at Milton Manor

may well be getting the better of them.

There's no big budget to keep the place going.

So I've just spotted, uh, that lovely creature out there. A llama?

-No.

-It's an...

-Try again.

-A large poodle?

-No, looks like a large poodle. It begins with an A.

-Alpaca?

-Yes.

-Yes. Well done.

An alpaca. A sheared alpaca,

which is why it looks like a poodle at the moment.

-It's been clipped.

-Why do you have an alpaca?

-Well, you know, why not?

-HE LAUGHS

In 2014, the Grade I listed manor

was put on English Heritage's at risk register.

They have a statutory role

to protect buildings of national importance

and were alarmed by the poor state of the decaying windows,

the chapel roof and cornices.

Life in the country is not a pastoral idyll,

it's, uh, it's full of little challenges

that sort of mount up all the time.

So one starts putting one's head in one's hands

and thinking, "I've had enough of this."

Tell us about the challenge you've got with English Heritage.

Oh, don't get me on to English Heritage.

Um...those blank, blank, blank!

Censor that remark!

Right, this is a sort of appeal to the public

over the head of the bureaucrats, one might say.

"Milton Manor is a Grade I listed building,"

which, of course, English Heritage actually did the listing.

"Recently, it was put on the 'at risk' list

"to the astonishment and, indeed, indignation of the owners,

"who...whose family has been here for 250 years this year."

So since 1764 to 2014.

It was like a dagger to my heart.

When there's a dagger to one's heart,

I suppose one wants to plunge it in someone else's back

-and extract it.

-SHE LAUGHS

"The first they heard of it

"was when they read the news in the local paper.

"Who by? The querulous quangocrats of English Heritage."

"What exactly is it at risk of, falling down?

"Hardly. Being blown away? Hardly. Submerged? No."

What exactly are they trying to do?

Sort of close the building down, force me to sell it? You know.

Technically, if repairs aren't done in time,

the local council has the power to compulsorily purchase.

The trouble with English Heritage

is they're concerned with the fabric of a house,

and they're not really at all concerned

with the people who live there.

They couldn't care less if it's a Russian oligarch preserving this place.

As long as it's sort of chocolate box perfect

and all the shutters are painted and there's no cracks in the ceiling

and their ruddy inspectors

can come round and take little photographs with,

not with great big cameras like yours,

but with tiny little things of every crack and thing in the ceiling.

That just puts one's back up.

-Have you anything to add?

-BOTH LAUGH

I don't think it's necessary for me to add anything.

Anthony may grumble,

but English Heritage have helped save over 400 historic houses

since they were founded in 1983.

And do you feel much better for having had the opportunity

to express yourself in this way?

Moderately better. I mean, I wish it had never happened.

It's a bit of, yes, an Englishman's home is his castle,

and he can put what he likes at the castle gates.

This is a terrible thing to ask you,

but have you ever thought of selling?

My mother's ghost would come to haunt me

for the rest of my life if I ever considered such a step.

-Oh, that's true.

-So, that's rejected almost immediately

for fear of the supernatural.

Anthony may not want to sell the manor,

but he's going to have to do something to save it.

200 miles west of Milton lives Nicky Philipps,

whose family have been in residence in Picton for over 700 years.

They too have had to make some harsh decisions

to keep the roof on their castle.

Well, this is Picton. It's been in the family since 1260.

We are about as far west as you can get, actually.

We are six miles from the south Welsh coast.

How old were you when you first came here?

Oh, I mean, I was a baby.

I really spent most of the summers in my childhood here.

My grandparents were living here.

I remember it being very enormous as one does when one's that big.

So how much land do you have?

Well, the farm is 1,200 acres, but that belongs to my mother,

so it's... The trust really just has the 45 acres of...of garden.

And then the sort of thing you'd expect round a castle,

just a lot of flat lawn that needs mowing every ten minutes.

-Did you come up here with your sister?

-Uh-huh.

Sunbathing, tinfoil.

You know what teenagers are like.

You lie on tinfoil, you get twice as brown,

-or rather twice as red.

-NICKY LAUGHS

Well, it's a Norman castle.

I can almost see the water if I cut the trees down.

I mean, no wonder they built these places so high,

you could see people coming for miles.

And who would the Philipps have been trying to keep out?

Um, probably the Welsh.

NICKY LAUGHS

This is the chapel.

We sat in these boxes.

Um, you do slightly disappear.

NICKY LAUGHS

This is the vestry where my sister signed the book at her wedding.

It's actually my grandfather's bathroom,

because his bedroom is on one side and my grandmother's bedroom is on the other.

My grandmother built dress cupboards here which...

I mean, talk about sacrilegious. I think that's why God

probably hasn't looked after Picton as well as some other houses.

CLOCK CHIMES

Back in 1986, Nicky's grandparents faced the unimaginable prospect

of losing Picton and took steps to protect its survival.

CLOCK STRIKES

My grandparents made it into a trust,

really to keep the roof on and to keep it going.

I think a lot of people were doing it at the time, you know.

Because the tax was so bad in those days,

I think they ran out of options.

They ran out of money.

And so if you open your house to the public and the gardens,

you do get tax breaks.

CHATTER

On the scale of a lot of big houses, this is really quite small.

You still do need to have staff, you need help.

You know, you look at the size of the fireplace.

I mean, you could get through half the log basket in one evening.

That's my grandfather, painted by Graham Sutherland.

And that's a really lovely portrait. He looked exactly like that.

And this one is extraordinarily good of my grandmother.

But...we feel in the family

that he didn't like her terribly.

He sort of muddled her head up with a lot of foliage,

as if to say, you are less important than your background.

Here. Come on, babe. Come on. Up here. Up here. Come on. Come on.

Good girl. Good dog.

Despite owning a cluster of turrets,

Nicky still paints for a living.

She now commands upwards of £20,000 a portrait.

-No, no, no, no. Sit.

-She has featured in the magazine

and her spaniel Lola appeared on the frontispiece page in 2009.

Stay.

-NICKY LAUGHS

-Lolee! Stop it.

Come on, up here. Up here. Good girl. Sit. Sit.

Sit.

The Queen and Prince Philip came in 1968,

they were opening some new tanker

and they came on Britannia and came up here for lunch.

-And was that their last visit?

-No.

No, she was here the other day. It was really exciting.

Uh, she did a...a visit to south Wales,

and this was care of the council,

and the Lord Lieutenant actually recommended Picton

as somewhere to...to have lunch.

So, in fact, they organised the lunch in there.

But I sat on her table and she suddenly looked at me very directly

and said, "Are you still painting?" Cos I painted her a couple of years ago.

I think she'd obviously been briefed but, you know,

-I like to think she remembered that.

-NICKY LAUGHS

-I don't suppose you get much time with the Queen when you paint her, do you?

-You get three hours.

Which actually is quite a long time, isn't it?

I had three hour-long sittings.

Stay.

Stay.

BARKING

The Chiddingfold, Leconfield and Cowdray

is one of 176 remaining foxhunts in England and Wales.

Over 120 foxhounds live in its original 18th-century kennels

along with huntsman Sage Thompson,

who is tied to his cottage through his job.

We start in the kennels at six, they go up to exercise,

probably this time of year we're probably taking 'em,

yeah, probably about three mile at this time of year.

And then as the summer goes on, we build the work up.

By the end, before we start autumn trail hunting,

they'll be doing six, seven, eight mile in the morning to get them,

mainly to get them fit and to get their pads hard.

The ground in the summer months is very, very hard,

if you don't harden their feet off,

when they start to hunt they scuff the top of their pads off

and become very foot sore.

HORNS BLARE

BARKING

The magazine's deputy editor, Rupert Uloth,

regularly rides out with the Chiddingfold, Leconfield and Cowdray,

it's his local hunt.

It's very, very historic,

because it is the scene of something called the Grand Chase.

And the Grand Chase still, although it happened in 1739,

is still the longest recorded foxhunt in history - 57 miles.

The huntsman still lives in the house

that was provided for the huntsman then.

So it's...it's a real sign of continuity.

Still very much a part of the fabric of the countryside.

Ever since I was a young boy at 10 or 11 years old,

I first went out with a pack of foxhounds

and something just must've clicked inside of me.

That's what I wanted to do.

Come on, boy. Statesman.

Obviously, I'm the top dog in the pack,

they've got to respect what I say. No means no.

There can't be any other way with a pack of foxhounds.

If you say no, it means no.

Grafton. Grafton. You've had one, Rebel.

-So do you know the names of all these hounds?

-Yeah, every single one of 'em.

That's Boswell. And the white dog beside him's Halifax.

The dog right out in the middle is called,

now you've got me, um, Gramby.

Gramby! Gramby! Good boy. Gramby.

I must admit the older I'm getting,

I am struggling to get the names as quick as I used to when I was a young man.

I think I must be struggling from Alzheimer's or something.

-BARKING

-Here!

A lot of people will think that hunting's been banned

and they won't understand why hunting carries on.

I know, it's interesting. I mean, there is this Hunting Act,

which prevents hunting with a whole pack of hounds,

but there are all sorts of exemptions.

Sage's hunt, like all others, is not allowed to chase foxes.

Instead the hounds follow a scent trail laid by a hunt member.

It makes it much more awkward

because there are many more rules to comply with.

And it's had a bit of a negative effect in fox control.

What is amazing is how these hunts have managed to carry on.

BARKING

The magazine gives a voice to people

who are fighting to keep rural traditions alive.

Repealing the Hunting Act is a campaign it supports.

-Just put one foxhound stood up...

-Yeah, stood up.

..enormous on the page.

-What about the breeding of the foxhounds over the last...

-And the occasion. Yes.

-Yeah.

-Hello, Sage.

-Good morning, sir. How are you?

-Very well indeed. Good to see you.

-Are you summering well?

-Very well indeed, thank you.

-Come to see the puppies?

-Yes, I'd love to.

-Come on, let's go and have a look. Let's go and have a look.

-How are they?

-Yeah, no, they're doing well, sir.

We've got three litters on the ground so far.

I think my mission in writing a hunting article

is not just for the diehards who...who go hunting everywhere.

Of course, they're important...they're very important as well.

-They look well for the summer, don't they?

-They look very well, don't they?

I want to try and include as many of the readers

about the pageant of hunting,

portray it through the characters I meet.

I think it's a sort of compelling subject, even if it's not something you do yourself.

Come on, Garter. You know who this is, he's hunted with you many a day.

-Yeah, you have, haven't you?

-You're a good girl, Garter.

-Do you remember we had Gadget and Garter?

-That's right, yes.

-Yeah. OK.

-Hello, little boys and girls.

-Look at those.

-Lucky enough, there's six bitches and four dogs.

-Wonderful.

-So it's...it's the right ratio.

-Normally, it's the other way round.

-Yeah, that's exactly what we want.

They always seem to have more dogs in a litter than they do bitches.

And people start being too soppy with them, like this.

-Yeah, but to be quite honest, it doesn't affect 'em.

-Doesn't it?

-It doesn't affect 'em.

You'd think it would do and make 'em soft, but they're not really a soft animal really,

they're quite tough creatures.

They nearly eat a cow a day. A whole cow a day.

Yeah, they eat a lot of meat.

I know you think a cow's big, but by the time you take his stomach out,

his head off, his feet off, there's not...actually a lot left.

Hunting a wild animal with a pack of hounds was banned in November 2004,

as many thought it was a barbaric practice

and are determined it should remain illegal.

The day of the ban, we actually met outside the kennels here.

There probably was somewhere in the region of 1,000 people there.

And as soon as I got on my horse

and I stepped foot out in front of all those people,

the emotion just took over.

And for a man of, how old was I, 30...

38 something like that, to cry in front of all those people,

and I did cry, nothing I can do about it.

I was just emotional.

BARKING

It was very, very, very sad. I thought this was the end.

Get out! Get out! Go on!

I thought, "That's it. What on earth are we going to do now?

"All these lovely hounds are going to be put down."

But here we are nine years later

and our hunt and a lot of the hunts are going from strength to strength.

You know, people are just so passionate about it.

Come on, Leila. Where are you? Leila?

WHIRRING

The reason I'm doing this is because I'm impatient, very impatient.

I think probably any watercolourist

would...would be horrified.

But it helps me speed up so I can get on to the next layer of water colours.

Annie Tempest is the resident cartoonist in the magazine,

weekly portraying the comings and goings of life in Tottering Hall.

Dicky is my father.

Daisy and Freddy are my children.

-And I use them at any age.

-But Dicky and Daffy are always the same age?

-They're always the same age, yes.

-And how old are they?

-I'm not telling you.

Dicky's my dad, he keeps very quiet,

he has his opinions and you can see in his face that he doesn't agree with her but he won't say it.

He'll just, you know, "Have another glass of wine, dear."

He's reading the Telegraph.

Or is it the Times he reads? I'm not quite sure.

Actually, real Dicky Tottering

went through a stage of reading the Guardian. Ohh!

Daffy was based on a neighbour in Norfolk who I admired hugely,

she was just a very fun woman, always drinking too much gin and tonic.

And she loves being in her bed with all the dogs on top.

You know, she's normal, she's a person.

-She's got good legs, though, hasn't she?

-Yes, yes.

But that's very... An English body type,

very nice thin legs and a big fat middle, you know.

And her bosom is splendid, isn't it?

Ever descending.

She's...she's very like country people.

She's straightforward, pragmatic and gets on with life,

and doesn't cry over spilt milk and expects the grandchildren to behave.

And what's their house like?

Well, it's Tottering Hall.

When I was 11 my father inherited a very crumbling stately home in North Yorkshire.

And we had come from Africa, so we were used to heat and we had no heating.

Literally, hip baths catching leaks in the corridors and stuff.

Yeah, half an inch of snow on the billiard table one morning.

It's now a very smart rental, if you've got a lot of money.

"Fancy a top-up of red, Veronica?

"Oh, you poor thing, I forgot you're driving. Better stick to white, then."

It was an overheard comment.

How on earth do people without horse boxes

manage to take their bottles to the bottle bank?

And that's another real comment I've heard.

What does living in the country mean to you?

It means no traffic jams.

It means... Well, look out of my window.

Who's got an office like this in London?

I am very much a country girl.

Nature's everything to me. It's my religion, if you like.

I'm not religious in the formal sense,

but if I need some kind of solace I'll go for a walk.

I hear the corn popping.

And I...I notice how a thistle head,

you know, from one day to the next changes.

When I was very stressed as a younger person, I didn't see it.

And I almost remember the day that I suddenly became open to nature,

and it was... And so now I...I so appreciate it.

I can't tell you how much I appreciate it.

I'll go out into my garden in a minute and have a break

and I will smell the rose.

I'll stick my face in it and sniff it. And I just love it.

So I couldn't live anywhere else,

I've created paradise here.

BELL CHIMES

Wardington Manor. It's got a very good history.

It started off as a 14th-century nunnery.

Externally, it's very beautiful in a sort of mellow, Cotswold stone way.

It's not of any great sort of architectural significance.

But I think the most amazing thing about it is its interior

and this incredible plasterwork which, you know,

you really aren't prepared for, I've never seen anything like it.

I remember coming through this door and seeing the plasterwork

and, quite frankly, thinking, "Oh, my God!"

Because I didn't actually see the detail,

but the more I've got to know and see the house,

it's...it's so full of fun,

that actually the more I've lived with it, the more I've grown to love it.

The plasterwork was created by society beauty

and romantic craftswoman Molly Walters in the early 1920s.

Some of it has enormous chevrons,

which zigzag up the walls in these really bold patterns,

and then at other places a little delicate character,

a little...animal or a face or a bird or something,

surrounded by patterns or shapes.

Though any surface was...was game for a bit of plaster.

Walls, cornices. Yes, you name it,

whenever there was a gap,

fill it with plasterwork. If in doubt put some plasterwork there.

Throughout her life men were charmed by Molly,

including the first Lord Wardington, who employed her and her husband Randall Wells

to carry out the decoration on his newly-purchased manor.

With this particular story, I'm telling the reader

the whole history of this rather wonderful and enigmatic house.

Since I've started researching it,

I've sort of opened up some wonderful avenues

and some fascinating characters.

And I've got completely obsessed

by following every little detail I can find out about it,

because it's just sort of gripped my imagination.

Oh, my goodness! Isn't it amazing?

I mean, I know what you mean,

somebody said it's a bit like being in a wedding cake.

And there is the feeling of being smothered by this icing,

cos it really covers every surface.

I think possibly this could be a wheat sheaf

and there's the pears or maybe quinces and apples

and the sort of whole abundance of...of nature, I suppose.

There's a real delicacy about all the flowers

and then the sort of exaggeration of some of the elements.

And this wonderful creature playing her lyre or whatever it is, and the lovely little boots.

So it'd be wonderful if we didn't have to have this glass,

but with children kicking balls and things,

I think it was very wise that they put that up there.

It took Molly three years to complete the work,

which flows across two floors.

I love the fact that none of it's perfect.

You know, it's all different.

Every bit of it has its own imperfections

and has been made lovingly by hand.

"Since for refreshment one cometh hence,

"let wit cast off the dear dull yoke of sense."

There's a real element of the circus.

I mean, I'd love to know more about

the story behind all these little scenes.

It's just completely over the top, really.

Where have you ever seen anything like this?

I mean, it's just incredible.

Here we are from floor to ceiling.

And ceiling with no, you know, sort of break in the whole

sort of look of this sort of iced world of different references.

My, my grandmother described her as being quite beautiful,

in the way she moved.

You know, she wasn't just photographically beautiful.

That she was obviously quite elegant and, the way she moved

and her faced moved was obviously entrancing...

Oh, yes, her movements and her presence is always elegant.

So, it was lovely meeting her.

Always well-dressed, in beautiful, beautiful dresses.

And then lived this wonderful life in the 1890s and 1900s,

where she networked terrifically and knew everybody,

with a capital E, and she records everybody.

They're all called Lord this and Princess that

and the Duchess of whatever.

And she's constantly having tea parties

and so on and living this amazing life. Erm, but...

she was also being pursued by other men, it seems!

Together with her second husband,

Randall, Molly set up a design studio for the well-heeled.

Here is one of their little business cards, which

talks about St Veronica's workshops at 94 Horseferry Road, Westminster.

Erm, bookbinding, leather work and rug making...

Embroidery, painted furniture, so, it's really, it's a

complete interior design business.

They would take your house and they'd paint your crockery,

paint your furniture, they would do the embroideries, they'd make

the rugs, they'd paint the walls, they could do a complete house for you.

-Of course...

-How did she learn all this, do you think?

I don't know! She, I think, was a natural.

I think she just took an enthusiasm to something and off she went.

Got the materials and started. That was it!

-Birds, tiny little birds up there as well.

-And little angels' wings, are they?

-Or birds' wings, in the ceiling?

-I think they're angels' wings, somehow.

It's quite controlling, in a way, isn't it?

Because it's almost as if this space won't change at all, because you

can't... I mean, people's tastes can't come into this environment.

It's basically her...her thing.

Since Molly decorated the house, almost 100 years ago,

everyone who's lived here seems to have fallen in love with her

romantic vision. Her plasterwork has captured people's hearts.

I like the plasterwork. I find it amused me.

And I think it's attractive.

It gives the house a sort of, erm,

friendly feeling.

My husband was devoted to this house. Absolutely loved it.

And, well, you see, he was born here and, you know,

he really cared about it.

In 2004, whilst the second Lord and Lady Wardington were on holiday,

the house caught fire

and valuable collections of old books,

as well as much of the plasterwork, were destroyed.

It was a terrible blow to him. Terrible.

He died a year later.

I don't think he would have died quite so soon,

if it hadn't been for the fire. The, the main fire was in the roof.

It fell in. I mean, that, that was a horrible moment, apparently.

SHE SIGHS

-SOBBING:

-It's extraordinary! It has this terrible effect on me.

Erm, I wasn't here, I couldn't do anything!

It's extraordinary that I should be so emotional about it now.

The damaged plasterwork on the second floor was restored.

Following her husband's death, Lady Wardington sold the manor in 2008.

For those who choose to make their home in the country,

whether they inherit it, buy it, rent it, or work in it,

there is a strong connection to the past and to those who've gone before.

Legacy and tradition run deep for countryfolk.

HOUNDS HOWL

It's the morning of the opening meet.

And Sage Thompson is up at 5.30 to prepare his hounds,

just like every huntsman across the country has done for over 200 years.

HOUNDS BARK AND HOWL

They, they sense it. They know that they are going out.

They probably all think we're all coming.

But unfortunately, for a lot of the old ones,

they can't come today, they can't keep up with the pace

that we're going to go at with the trails.

You can't have any old pensioners with me, unfortunately.

Gregory!

Since the ban, the hounds follow a trail laid by rags soaked in fox urine.

Granite, you can't come.

Unlike a real hunt, which meanders around in different directions,

the trail is direct, like a race track and only for the fastest

and the fittest hounds.

-Are they disappointed that they don't go out?

-I think they are.

I think they're, like, "Why hasn't he called me?

"What have I done wrong?" They sulk.

So, it must be hard for them.

That's the way, you know, the ban is.

It's, it's a shame, cos if we were still naturally hunting foxes,

them old hounds would still come with us.

HOUNDS PANT

Do you think you have the best job in the countryside?

In my eyes, yeah.

There'd be other jobs in the countryside

would earn a lot more money than I would.

But I wouldn't wish to do anything different.

And I wouldn't want to change anything different,

of what I've done in my life.

Yeah, we all make mistakes when we're young.

You know, I made a few mistakes when I was young.

I got in trouble with the hunt saboteurs.

I paid the price for it and get on with it.

-What do you mean, paid the price?

-Erm, prosecuted.

-Yeah. But it was me own fault. I was young.

-What did you do?

Just had a punch-up, with a few other...

But apart from that, I've never been in trouble in my life at all.

Now, you know, you know when you're putting your stock on,

the season is upon us.

I always get butterflies on the opening meet.

Maybe more so that, "Have I missed something?"

There'll be people there today that probably only come

out to the opening meet. You know, bless their hearts.

They just want to be part of that day.

Sometimes, it can end up with a bit of carnage, cos they don't

quite know maybe what they're doing or their horse may not behave.

Sage's special horn.

I can't actually do any more. I've done, to the best of my ability, to make it work.

This is one for the memory books. Truly.

Nothing like this have we experienced

in the United States.

It's Christmas at Milton Manor and spirits have lifted.

These are the Christmas decorations that stay with us

right up in the attic so they come down every Christmas.

It's much easier to have this sort of lift to bring it down.

Down a bit!

Down a bit more!

One more.

Bit more!

Anthony and Gwenda have come up with a plan to open more

rooms to the public.

They hope to raise extra money to keep the manor going.

We've got to exhibit to the public 244 items,

which means we've got to open 12 rooms, we reckon, to the public

instead of seven.

They've been advised on some dos and don'ts to maximise revenue.

The manor is still on the at risk register and to lose an ancestral

home on one's watch is the number one crime for country home owners.

This used to be my mother's sitting room.

Now this has to be open because we've got to show that desk

and that desk and that chest of drawers and that...thing.

There's probably...

All dead birds up there.

Probably, probably dead birds, absolutely, up the chimney

so that needs to be cleaned before we're open to the public again.

And these ones, or us as we were kids, the family,

don't have to be exhibited to the public.

This one does. St Francis.

And this one does too.

Any old 18th century gentlemen, one feels.

And I see you've got the fire going but you're in your coats

and scarves.

Yeah, because...

owing to unfortunate circumstances, we can't afford heating this winter.

The house is heated by oil and the tanks have run dry

because Anthony can't afford to fill them.

This apparently in the original house used to be

the servants' quarters and the kitchen.

You'll have to clamber over to get to the boiler room.

These are the tanks that need to be filled up.

And this sort of tube here is meant to show you...

At the moment it looks as if there's nothing in at all.

And what does it cost to fill them up?

Oh, £2-3,000 to fill them up

and the trouble is, it uses it extremely quickly.

So what will you do over Christmas?

Wrap up warm. Light the fires in every room.

Warm our hands on Gwenda's candles on the tree.

Anthony and Gwenda may be shivering

but their hearts have been warmed by an unusual early Christmas present.

The article in the magazine has just been published.

So were you very proud when you saw Milton Manor?

Oh, yes. Yes, absolutely.

Here is the library.

-The Strawberry Hill Gothic library.

-Library.

On the right...

The Strawberry Hill Gothic chapel and Milton Manor on the other.

Next week - every reader loves a dog.

He's eaten £250 in cash.

An entire chair, two pairs of specs...

Honouring the past in an English manor.

This is a document, if you like, of the whole

of the English countryside as it went to war.

And the celebration of luxury goes a little too far for some.

That is something this magazine has never, never aligned itself with.

It was never about money.