On the move

8

Marriage

9

chap te r 1

MARRIAGE

T

his story is about my forty-six-year marriage to Fiona McGowan.

During those years I slowly came to realise that I had married a nomad.

That she was beautiful I realised from the first moment I met her while staying with my old friend, Charlie Shelburne, as he then was, at his beautiful house, Bowood. Had she married Charlie, which she might have done, this story could never have been written. She was attracted to him because he was good-looking but she was also attracted to him, I am sure, and I am sure he would not mind my saying so, because his house, set in one of Capability Brown’s most successful landscapes, was her idea of heaven.

Although intelligent, she was only partially-educated, but she had a strong and, from an early age, well-informed passion for architecture and a latent one for landscape. Had she become the chatelaine of Bowood she would probably never have wanted to move again.

This though did not happen. She married me instead, about four years later. I believe that towards the end of our married life we found for ourselves in our house in Dorset the nearest thing that I could provide to her teenage dream, but in the intervening years Fiona and I moved homes, if such you could call some of them, over thirty times. This is the story of those moves and of the many properties, from very ordinary to really quite grand, that we either owned or rented.

And I know that technically speaking nomads do not own homes, they travel. We travelled. The story therefore is not just about our houses, but also about the wonderful adventures we had along the way.

We had been married for only five days when the first move was forced upon us.

Our wedding took place at the Grosvenor Chapel in South Audley Street on 18 April 1968. This beautiful church

Our wedding

had been presided over in the 19th century by that colourful prelate and man of letters, the Reverend Sydney Smith, whose idea of heaven was to eat pâté de foie gras to the sound of trumpets. Trumpets played at our wedding. And the reception took place, sans foie gras, in the large garden of Fiona’s parents’ house in St John’s Wood, in a tent which only just survived the heavy rain the day prior to the event.

The garden bunfight was principally for aunts, cousins, godparents, elderly friends of our parents plus ushers, pages and bridesmaids and a few of our own friends to leaven the mix. I gave a dance that evening in Searcy’s Rooms in Pavilion Road which was huge fun. My old friend Patrick Lichfield took the photographs. There were quite a number of very nice ones of Fiona, a couple of me, but mainly they were of girls whom Patrick was fond of himself and more particularly of Janet Lyle who had just launched Annacat, for whom Fiona worked for a while in New York.

We retreated sometime after 3am to the Connaught Hotel to spend a very brief night in what had always been my favourite hotel in London. One

8

Marriage

9

chap te r 1

MARRIAGE

T

his story is about my forty-six-year marriage to Fiona McGowan.

During those years I slowly came to realise that I had married a nomad.

That she was beautiful I realised from the first moment I met her while staying with my old friend, Charlie Shelburne, as he then was, at his beautiful house, Bowood. Had she married Charlie, which she might have done, this story could never have been written. She was attracted to him because he was good-looking but she was also attracted to him, I am sure, and I am sure he would not mind my saying so, because his house, set in one of Capability Brown’s most successful landscapes, was her idea of heaven.

Although intelligent, she was only partially-educated, but she had a strong and, from an early age, well-informed passion for architecture and a latent one for landscape. Had she become the chatelaine of Bowood she would probably never have wanted to move again.

This though did not happen. She married me instead, about four years later. I believe that towards the end of our married life we found for ourselves in our house in Dorset the nearest thing that I could provide to her teenage dream, but in the intervening years Fiona and I moved homes, if such you could call some of them, over thirty times. This is the story of those moves and of the many properties, from very ordinary to really quite grand, that we either owned or rented.

And I know that technically speaking nomads do not own homes, they travel. We travelled. The story therefore is not just about our houses, but also about the wonderful adventures we had along the way.

We had been married for only five days when the first move was forced upon us.

Our wedding took place at the Grosvenor Chapel in South Audley Street on 18 April 1968. This beautiful church

Our wedding

had been presided over in the 19th century by that colourful prelate and man of letters, the Reverend Sydney Smith, whose idea of heaven was to eat pâté de foie gras to the sound of trumpets. Trumpets played at our wedding. And the reception took place, sans foie gras, in the large garden of Fiona’s parents’ house in St John’s Wood, in a tent which only just survived the heavy rain the day prior to the event.

The garden bunfight was principally for aunts, cousins, godparents, elderly friends of our parents plus ushers, pages and bridesmaids and a few of our own friends to leaven the mix. I gave a dance that evening in Searcy’s Rooms in Pavilion Road which was huge fun. My old friend Patrick Lichfield took the photographs. There were quite a number of very nice ones of Fiona, a couple of me, but mainly they were of girls whom Patrick was fond of himself and more particularly of Janet Lyle who had just launched Annacat, for whom Fiona worked for a while in New York.

We retreated sometime after 3am to the Connaught Hotel to spend a very brief night in what had always been my favourite hotel in London. One

26

chap te r 3

LATIN AMERICA

D

islike of yachts did not dim Fiona’s enthusiasm for travel and when, as a reward for helping Christie’s in London put together their first sale in Japan, we were offered a trip to Tokyo, the reason we did not accept was nothing to do with dislike of travelling. It was just that neither of us was particularly taken by the idea of Japan.

What did appeal to both of us, however, was a trip to South America, which in the most theoretical sense came under my sphere of influence at Christie’s. I had furthermore gained something of a foothold in what was then the rather charming city of Caracas, and I had one very good client there, Alejandro Pietri, who wanted another valuation. It was said then, and with some truth, that six families controlled Venezuela, of whom the Pietris were one. The Boultons, who had consigned a fine collection of pictures to Christie’s the year before, were another, and although I did not know it at the time, I had an extraordinary link with another of those six families, the Phelps.

Patricia Phelps, who married Gustavo Cisneros and later became a close friend of ours, was born in Caracas, as far as we can gather, within two hours of when Fiona had been born in London.

Christie’s also had an office in Buenos Aires which I had never visited and where our redoubtable representative, César Feldman, was keen to welcome us. My employers generously agreed to the change of destination and gave me quite a decent travel allowance which enabled us to go not only to Caracas but also to Rio de Janeiro, our office in Buenos Aires, and then back via Cusco, Machu Picchu, Mexico City, and finally on to the Yucatán Peninsula, and a resort island called Cozumel, to unwind before returning to New York.

The trip to Caracas was reasonably successful. We secured three paintings for sale from the Pietris, all of which sold quite well the following year, and we stayed at what was then the rather luxurious Tamanaco Hotel, which was more a country club than a hotel, owned by Pan American Airways, and for both of us the height of luxury. We left from there to Rio, where we had no business to transact but where we took in the sights of this fascinating city.

With extraordinary courage – or was it foolhardiness – we hired a car and

latin america

27

drove out to the old Imperial capital Petropolis. Petropolis is situated sixtyeight kilometres north-east of Rio in beautiful alpine scenery. In the 19th century it was obviously a welcome change from the heat of Rio de Janeiro.

It boasted a series of typical 19th century colonial buildings, then unspoilt by later development, giving the city considerable charm, now I fear lost. The Brazilian royal family had a troubled and chequered history. In 1822 Brazil gained independence from Portugal and its first King, Emperor Pedro I, reigned from 1822 to 1831. He was succeeded by Pedro II, who reigned until 1889 when the monarchy was abolished in a military coup d’état. Pedro II is commemorated in Petropolis and celebrated by some as the greatest Brazilian, and at least he escaped the fate of his comrade in arms, Maximilian I of Mexico, whose execution in 1867 was so vividly recorded by Manet.

We wove our way through chaotic traffic, including a large number of vehicles emblazoned with the one word in Portuguese I could understand, inflamável. Although relatively easy to read, for anyone with a smidgeon of a classical education, Portuguese can be confusing, and to this day I have never understood why a chicken is called a frango. The word seems to bear absolutely no similarity to any other translation of chicken on any European menu, although the Danes and the Norwegians do seem to have put the cart before the horse by calling their chicken kylling.

When not dodging the inflamávels or chomping our way through the frangos the visit was made memorable by Fiona’s wish to patronise the well-known jeweller, H. Stern, in order to replace her engagement ring, given to her by my mother in a somewhat take-it-or-leave-it way. Eighteen months after the event, gratitude had given way to disappointment; the ring was simply not large enough, and the colour was too pale. Fiona wanted something bigger and brighter, and found this in Stern’s window: a large, square-cut good-coloured tourmaline with chunky diamond mounts.

By some minor miracle my recently-acquired Amex card supported the purchase of this ring, but not without an initial delay, which meant that we missed our flight out of Rio to Buenos Aires. In fact, we very nearly missed the next flight too, as Mr Stern’s people would not release the ring until the (so-to-speak) money was in the bank.

Eventually we just managed to scramble onto the aeroplane for the very long journey to Buenos Aires. It is difficult for the English to imagine the size of Brazil, or the fact that the distance from its former capital city in the southern part of this huge country (until 1960, when Brasilia took over, Rio was the capital) to the capital of the Argentine, the adjoining

26

chap te r 3

LATIN AMERICA

D

islike of yachts did not dim Fiona’s enthusiasm for travel and when, as a reward for helping Christie’s in London put together their first sale in Japan, we were offered a trip to Tokyo, the reason we did not accept was nothing to do with dislike of travelling. It was just that neither of us was particularly taken by the idea of Japan.

What did appeal to both of us, however, was a trip to South America, which in the most theoretical sense came under my sphere of influence at Christie’s. I had furthermore gained something of a foothold in what was then the rather charming city of Caracas, and I had one very good client there, Alejandro Pietri, who wanted another valuation. It was said then, and with some truth, that six families controlled Venezuela, of whom the Pietris were one. The Boultons, who had consigned a fine collection of pictures to Christie’s the year before, were another, and although I did not know it at the time, I had an extraordinary link with another of those six families, the Phelps.

Patricia Phelps, who married Gustavo Cisneros and later became a close friend of ours, was born in Caracas, as far as we can gather, within two hours of when Fiona had been born in London.

Christie’s also had an office in Buenos Aires which I had never visited and where our redoubtable representative, César Feldman, was keen to welcome us. My employers generously agreed to the change of destination and gave me quite a decent travel allowance which enabled us to go not only to Caracas but also to Rio de Janeiro, our office in Buenos Aires, and then back via Cusco, Machu Picchu, Mexico City, and finally on to the Yucatán Peninsula, and a resort island called Cozumel, to unwind before returning to New York.

The trip to Caracas was reasonably successful. We secured three paintings for sale from the Pietris, all of which sold quite well the following year, and we stayed at what was then the rather luxurious Tamanaco Hotel, which was more a country club than a hotel, owned by Pan American Airways, and for both of us the height of luxury. We left from there to Rio, where we had no business to transact but where we took in the sights of this fascinating city.

With extraordinary courage – or was it foolhardiness – we hired a car and

latin america

27

drove out to the old Imperial capital Petropolis. Petropolis is situated sixtyeight kilometres north-east of Rio in beautiful alpine scenery. In the 19th century it was obviously a welcome change from the heat of Rio de Janeiro.

It boasted a series of typical 19th century colonial buildings, then unspoilt by later development, giving the city considerable charm, now I fear lost. The Brazilian royal family had a troubled and chequered history. In 1822 Brazil gained independence from Portugal and its first King, Emperor Pedro I, reigned from 1822 to 1831. He was succeeded by Pedro II, who reigned until 1889 when the monarchy was abolished in a military coup d’état. Pedro II is commemorated in Petropolis and celebrated by some as the greatest Brazilian, and at least he escaped the fate of his comrade in arms, Maximilian I of Mexico, whose execution in 1867 was so vividly recorded by Manet.

We wove our way through chaotic traffic, including a large number of vehicles emblazoned with the one word in Portuguese I could understand, inflamável. Although relatively easy to read, for anyone with a smidgeon of a classical education, Portuguese can be confusing, and to this day I have never understood why a chicken is called a frango. The word seems to bear absolutely no similarity to any other translation of chicken on any European menu, although the Danes and the Norwegians do seem to have put the cart before the horse by calling their chicken kylling.

When not dodging the inflamávels or chomping our way through the frangos the visit was made memorable by Fiona’s wish to patronise the well-known jeweller, H. Stern, in order to replace her engagement ring, given to her by my mother in a somewhat take-it-or-leave-it way. Eighteen months after the event, gratitude had given way to disappointment; the ring was simply not large enough, and the colour was too pale. Fiona wanted something bigger and brighter, and found this in Stern’s window: a large, square-cut good-coloured tourmaline with chunky diamond mounts.

By some minor miracle my recently-acquired Amex card supported the purchase of this ring, but not without an initial delay, which meant that we missed our flight out of Rio to Buenos Aires. In fact, we very nearly missed the next flight too, as Mr Stern’s people would not release the ring until the (so-to-speak) money was in the bank.

Eventually we just managed to scramble onto the aeroplane for the very long journey to Buenos Aires. It is difficult for the English to imagine the size of Brazil, or the fact that the distance from its former capital city in the southern part of this huge country (until 1960, when Brasilia took over, Rio was the capital) to the capital of the Argentine, the adjoining

52

chap te r 5

loudoun road

53

Loudoun Road

LOUDOUN ROAD

D

espite our disappointment over Carlton Hill, Fiona wanted to continue the search in St John’s Wood, which she liked because of the proximity to her parents’ house and because there were houses in this area which she knew and which we could afford. We looked at several before we eventually settled on 126 Loudoun Road, built in about 1840, probably by an architect called Robert Yeo. It was a good-looking house and had clearly been part of a rather handsome row of early Victorian houses of Regency persuasion. The end two houses in the row, as far as one could reasonably ascertain, had been blown away by the Germans at the end of the Second World War, which meant that the eastern elevation of our house was somewhat unstable, and we had difficulty persuading the mortgage company to provide the money for its purchase. And, in those far-off days, one had to put down a fifty per cent deposit. We had once again slightly overstretched our resources, which was to become a recurring theme as we moved up and down the housing ladder. Fiona’s conviction that every move produced a profit would be as hard to audit as the books of the European Union.

The house in Loudoun Road cost £22,000 and needed a further £20,000 spent on it before it would be ready for the birth of our first child, the now legendary Kirstie Allsopp. We just managed to finish the house before her arrival. One day the LCC, GLC, English Heritage or National Trust, or whichever issuing authority it might be in the far-off future, really should mass-produce a Blue Plaque saying ‘Kirstie Allsopp lived here’. It would be less expensive, plaque by plaque, because she must have lived in more houses than anyone else in London. They could refer to a copy of this book, which will tell them exactly where the plaques should go.

With the exception of the paintings, none of the furnishings of East 85th Street merited the cost of returning them to England. Much to the chagrin of some of my colleagues at the time, we enlisted the help of Sotheby’s to dispose of the better items. In the eyes of many people at Christie’s, Sotheby’s were the devil’s representatives on earth, but I found them surprisingly easy to deal with.

The modest return from these sales helped augment the funds available to kit out Loudoun Road. More furniture was added as a result of my mistakes in taking sales at Christie’s. In those days it was expected that any auctioneering errors were dealt with by the errant auctioneer. I made quite a few! But we also had a stroke of luck in that Fiona’s Great-Aunt Jane (everybody has one) died, leaving a house full of brown furniture of which Fiona managed to snaffle the lion’s share. In those days, funnily enough, it was probably more valuable than it is today. But Great-Aunt Jane’s furniture was a great help, and after a few months we were comfortably installed and I for one was hoping that at least if not for life, 126 Loudoun Road would be our home for quite some time. I had not yet realised that I had married a nomad or gypsy, and, if you marry a gypsy, by default you become one yourself.

Wrong though I turned out to be, I still harboured delusions of a permanent home. We moved into the house in July and Kirstie duly arrived at the end of August 1971, while I was still working feverishly on the garden. She was born in the Avenue Road maternity clinic, close to her grandparents’ house. She was, by general agreement, a bonny baby, and mother and child soon bonded, in fact so soon that the day after Fiona and Kirstie were released from the clinic, Fiona started planning her first getaway baby break, but not before she had decided, with a bit of encouragement from me, to fire the monthly nurse.

52

chap te r 5

loudoun road

53

Loudoun Road

LOUDOUN ROAD

D

espite our disappointment over Carlton Hill, Fiona wanted to continue the search in St John’s Wood, which she liked because of the proximity to her parents’ house and because there were houses in this area which she knew and which we could afford. We looked at several before we eventually settled on 126 Loudoun Road, built in about 1840, probably by an architect called Robert Yeo. It was a good-looking house and had clearly been part of a rather handsome row of early Victorian houses of Regency persuasion. The end two houses in the row, as far as one could reasonably ascertain, had been blown away by the Germans at the end of the Second World War, which meant that the eastern elevation of our house was somewhat unstable, and we had difficulty persuading the mortgage company to provide the money for its purchase. And, in those far-off days, one had to put down a fifty per cent deposit. We had once again slightly overstretched our resources, which was to become a recurring theme as we moved up and down the housing ladder. Fiona’s conviction that every move produced a profit would be as hard to audit as the books of the European Union.

The house in Loudoun Road cost £22,000 and needed a further £20,000 spent on it before it would be ready for the birth of our first child, the now legendary Kirstie Allsopp. We just managed to finish the house before her arrival. One day the LCC, GLC, English Heritage or National Trust, or whichever issuing authority it might be in the far-off future, really should mass-produce a Blue Plaque saying ‘Kirstie Allsopp lived here’. It would be less expensive, plaque by plaque, because she must have lived in more houses than anyone else in London. They could refer to a copy of this book, which will tell them exactly where the plaques should go.

With the exception of the paintings, none of the furnishings of East 85th Street merited the cost of returning them to England. Much to the chagrin of some of my colleagues at the time, we enlisted the help of Sotheby’s to dispose of the better items. In the eyes of many people at Christie’s, Sotheby’s were the devil’s representatives on earth, but I found them surprisingly easy to deal with.

The modest return from these sales helped augment the funds available to kit out Loudoun Road. More furniture was added as a result of my mistakes in taking sales at Christie’s. In those days it was expected that any auctioneering errors were dealt with by the errant auctioneer. I made quite a few! But we also had a stroke of luck in that Fiona’s Great-Aunt Jane (everybody has one) died, leaving a house full of brown furniture of which Fiona managed to snaffle the lion’s share. In those days, funnily enough, it was probably more valuable than it is today. But Great-Aunt Jane’s furniture was a great help, and after a few months we were comfortably installed and I for one was hoping that at least if not for life, 126 Loudoun Road would be our home for quite some time. I had not yet realised that I had married a nomad or gypsy, and, if you marry a gypsy, by default you become one yourself.

Wrong though I turned out to be, I still harboured delusions of a permanent home. We moved into the house in July and Kirstie duly arrived at the end of August 1971, while I was still working feverishly on the garden. She was born in the Avenue Road maternity clinic, close to her grandparents’ house. She was, by general agreement, a bonny baby, and mother and child soon bonded, in fact so soon that the day after Fiona and Kirstie were released from the clinic, Fiona started planning her first getaway baby break, but not before she had decided, with a bit of encouragement from me, to fire the monthly nurse.

58

59

58

59

190

chap te r 23

THE MILL

S

hortly after we bought Lydden, we applied for permission to increase the size of the old mill which came with the property, to enable us to live there while we were working on Lydden House itself.

One of the local firms of estate agents, Brimble Lea, in Gillingham, whose debt I would also acknowledge, recommended to me a perfectly charming builder, Martin Fulford. Martin lived in Somerset but came from an ancient Devonian family. His first cousin is the somewhat eccentric Francis Fulford, who made a brief appearance on television and caused quite a stir. The programme, entitled The F***ing Fulfords, featured his wife throwing a fairly new television set into the lake to prevent the children from watching it.

This was among the lesser eccentricities of one of surely the strangest county families in the land. They have been described in Burke’s Landed Gentry as seated at Fulford since the time of Richard I, although in fact they appear to have held it since the Saxon times and it is mentioned in the Domesday Book. But the exact records go back to the time of Richard I, and what is even more remarkable is that the house and lands have descended from father to son from that date to this. My builder Martin Fulford’s uncle inherited the estate but Martin has looked after it personally, and although, as the television programme pointed out, there are holes in the roof and buckets in the bedrooms to catch the water, Fulford Manor, which has very early origins but was principally rebuilt in the 17th and 18th centuries, with early 19th century additions, remains intact.

That, however, is a digression. Martin was introduced to me by Brimble Lea, and Fiona and I liked him straight away. He lived just over the border in Somerset, some twenty minutes from King’s Stag, and we asked him if he would like to do the job, to which he agreed. Martin could not be more unlike the characters in the television programme. He is quiet and, although clearly suffering from a form of dyslexia, he was an extremely able and reliable builder, full of ideas, and with unusually good taste. He told me that his dyslexia had prevented him from becoming an architect, which he had always wanted to be. We had much in common.

the mill

191

We needed permission to alter the mill. Architects also recommended by Brimble Lea had drawn up some plans, which we approved; a district planning officer insisted on some changes, and all this proved time-consuming, but in the end the North Dorset planning department came up with some rather good ideas and I have nothing but gratitude for their efforts. We ended up with plans with which we were very happy, and work commenced.

The Mill at Lydden was almost certainly the oldest part of the property.

There was a plaque on the front dating it to 1814, but that was almost certainly recording some restoration, as it appeared to have much older foundations in the form in which we found it. There was a late 19th century turbine sunk in the base of the house but it was easy to see that an old, circular watermill had been removed at some point earlier. The turbine was built in Canada; the sluices which controlled the water supply were also of 19th century origin, and had been made in Dorchester.

The Mill had last been used commercially in 1947, but it was still running, if not really in working order, when we bought the property. It became obvious that to effect the changes we wished to make to the Mill House we would have to take the old mill workings out, which was sad. I looked into the possibility of their being used to generate electricity, but I was advised against this, partly on account of the expense, and particularly because the flow of water in the River Lydden had lessened and become much more sporadic since the mill had last properly been used.

The only sadness about Lydden, as I know is the case with so many other small rivers, is that more and more water is extracted and less and less rain falls every year. And usually when the rain arrives, it comes in storms, and runs off the fields that once were water meadows and some of which are now arable land, pounded nearly into concrete by heavier and heavier farm machinery, by an agricultural system that seems equipped more to farm the subsidies than farm the land. But be that as it may, I hope it changes. The state of the river at present precludes it being used efficiently, and certainly from generating any form of energy. So taking the machinery out was sad, but inevitable.

The old mill building consisted of just one room, with a good, high ceiling and an occasional bed on a half-landing. What we needed to create, in order to house us all, was a decent living room and four bedrooms, and this we succeeded in doing. So after just over a year of living in the main house, we moved into the Mill House, which by now was extremely comfortable. It has good views, both up the river and over the large millpond. We knew that the necessary work

190

chap te r 23

THE MILL

S

hortly after we bought Lydden, we applied for permission to increase the size of the old mill which came with the property, to enable us to live there while we were working on Lydden House itself.

One of the local firms of estate agents, Brimble Lea, in Gillingham, whose debt I would also acknowledge, recommended to me a perfectly charming builder, Martin Fulford. Martin lived in Somerset but came from an ancient Devonian family. His first cousin is the somewhat eccentric Francis Fulford, who made a brief appearance on television and caused quite a stir. The programme, entitled The F***ing Fulfords, featured his wife throwing a fairly new television set into the lake to prevent the children from watching it.

This was among the lesser eccentricities of one of surely the strangest county families in the land. They have been described in Burke’s Landed Gentry as seated at Fulford since the time of Richard I, although in fact they appear to have held it since the Saxon times and it is mentioned in the Domesday Book. But the exact records go back to the time of Richard I, and what is even more remarkable is that the house and lands have descended from father to son from that date to this. My builder Martin Fulford’s uncle inherited the estate but Martin has looked after it personally, and although, as the television programme pointed out, there are holes in the roof and buckets in the bedrooms to catch the water, Fulford Manor, which has very early origins but was principally rebuilt in the 17th and 18th centuries, with early 19th century additions, remains intact.

That, however, is a digression. Martin was introduced to me by Brimble Lea, and Fiona and I liked him straight away. He lived just over the border in Somerset, some twenty minutes from King’s Stag, and we asked him if he would like to do the job, to which he agreed. Martin could not be more unlike the characters in the television programme. He is quiet and, although clearly suffering from a form of dyslexia, he was an extremely able and reliable builder, full of ideas, and with unusually good taste. He told me that his dyslexia had prevented him from becoming an architect, which he had always wanted to be. We had much in common.

the mill

191

We needed permission to alter the mill. Architects also recommended by Brimble Lea had drawn up some plans, which we approved; a district planning officer insisted on some changes, and all this proved time-consuming, but in the end the North Dorset planning department came up with some rather good ideas and I have nothing but gratitude for their efforts. We ended up with plans with which we were very happy, and work commenced.

The Mill at Lydden was almost certainly the oldest part of the property.

There was a plaque on the front dating it to 1814, but that was almost certainly recording some restoration, as it appeared to have much older foundations in the form in which we found it. There was a late 19th century turbine sunk in the base of the house but it was easy to see that an old, circular watermill had been removed at some point earlier. The turbine was built in Canada; the sluices which controlled the water supply were also of 19th century origin, and had been made in Dorchester.

The Mill had last been used commercially in 1947, but it was still running, if not really in working order, when we bought the property. It became obvious that to effect the changes we wished to make to the Mill House we would have to take the old mill workings out, which was sad. I looked into the possibility of their being used to generate electricity, but I was advised against this, partly on account of the expense, and particularly because the flow of water in the River Lydden had lessened and become much more sporadic since the mill had last properly been used.

The only sadness about Lydden, as I know is the case with so many other small rivers, is that more and more water is extracted and less and less rain falls every year. And usually when the rain arrives, it comes in storms, and runs off the fields that once were water meadows and some of which are now arable land, pounded nearly into concrete by heavier and heavier farm machinery, by an agricultural system that seems equipped more to farm the subsidies than farm the land. But be that as it may, I hope it changes. The state of the river at present precludes it being used efficiently, and certainly from generating any form of energy. So taking the machinery out was sad, but inevitable.

The old mill building consisted of just one room, with a good, high ceiling and an occasional bed on a half-landing. What we needed to create, in order to house us all, was a decent living room and four bedrooms, and this we succeeded in doing. So after just over a year of living in the main house, we moved into the Mill House, which by now was extremely comfortable. It has good views, both up the river and over the large millpond. We knew that the necessary work

226

SRI LANKA AND WALLINGFORD AVENUE

227

chap te r 2 8

SRI LANKA AND WALLINGFORD AVENUE

F

iona’s closest friend and relation, Laura Sednaoui (who, from her second marriage, to a colourful Egyptian, had acquired this unusual surname, which incorporates every vowel in the Roman alphabet), had proposed that we accompany her on a painting expedition to Sri Lanka.

This sounded interesting, so we signed up and set off in March. Fiona and I decided we would go and explore the centre of the island before joining the rest of the party on the south coast near Galle. We flew out on the excellent Emirates airline, whose only disadvantage is that it always stops off in Dubai.

I don’t know whether Dubai is the largest airport in the world, or whether it just has the largest shopping centre. Fiona and I were, I am sure, not unique but probably unusual in that we spent the required four hours in this huge mall without buying anything at all – there was absolutely nothing either of us wanted – before flying on to land in Colombo.

On our arrival we were scooped up by a charming Sri Lankan driver and whisked out of the capital northward to the centre of the island. Our first destination was the amazing rock fortress of Sigiriya, which has a long history dating back to the 5th century and ending in the 17th century, when it fell into disrepair, having been abandoned by the monks who had lived there for the previous 200 years. The fortress is situated at the top of a 700-foot rock which rises to a level of just over a thousand feet above sea level, and can only be reached on foot up a winding and very steep climb.

Halfway up is a natural gallery in the rock which incorporates a series of quite remarkable 5th century murals, in what has been described as the largest picture gallery in the world, and in some ways the least accessible. The murals’ exact purpose is somewhat unclear, except that they follow the general rule that whereas the Judaeo-Christian and Islamic ethic strenuously discourages sex, the eastern religions equally strenuously encourage it. It is thought that originally there were some 500 of these ladies – enough to be going on with.

The ascent to the gallery and then on to the summit would be difficult under any circumstances. The near vertical climb is rendered possible by a series of rather rickety steel staircases attached to the rock face, and it must

Detail of mural at Sigiriya

also be borne in mind that the southern tip of Sri Lanka is less than 500 miles from the equator. By mid-morning it is very hot. The most disagreeable part of the ascent was the absolute necessity of wearing protective clothing, a sort of body armour, to shield one from the hornets which make their home in the rock, and whose sting can produce extreme forms of anaphylactic shock. (This protective clothing was later found to be wholly ineffective, and climbing the rock at certain times of the year is now prohibited due to the number of tourists needing hospital treatment – 500 in one month alone.)

Fiona and I were rather pleased with ourselves as we made the ascent in less than half the prescribed time of two hours.

After Sigiriya we continued to the Gal Vihara (Rock Monastery) of Polonnaruwa, where the standing statue measures nearly twenty-three feet, and the reclining one of the parinirvana of the Buddha over forty-six feet.

And it was in the museum which adjoins the site of these extraordinary statues that Fiona first said to me, ‘There’s something wrong with my left eye – it is as if someone has smeared grease over my sunglasses. I cannot see clearly out of it.’ I had noticed, as we drove in through the modern part of the town, an eye hospital, which I noted was a rather extraordinary thing. ‘Let’s go and see if somebody can see you,’ I said. It was by this time quite late – about 6pm, we had had a long day – but a friendly doctor did see us, and said to

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SRI LANKA AND WALLINGFORD AVENUE

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chap te r 2 8

SRI LANKA AND WALLINGFORD AVENUE

F

iona’s closest friend and relation, Laura Sednaoui (who, from her second marriage, to a colourful Egyptian, had acquired this unusual surname, which incorporates every vowel in the Roman alphabet), had proposed that we accompany her on a painting expedition to Sri Lanka.

This sounded interesting, so we signed up and set off in March. Fiona and I decided we would go and explore the centre of the island before joining the rest of the party on the south coast near Galle. We flew out on the excellent Emirates airline, whose only disadvantage is that it always stops off in Dubai.

I don’t know whether Dubai is the largest airport in the world, or whether it just has the largest shopping centre. Fiona and I were, I am sure, not unique but probably unusual in that we spent the required four hours in this huge mall without buying anything at all – there was absolutely nothing either of us wanted – before flying on to land in Colombo.

On our arrival we were scooped up by a charming Sri Lankan driver and whisked out of the capital northward to the centre of the island. Our first destination was the amazing rock fortress of Sigiriya, which has a long history dating back to the 5th century and ending in the 17th century, when it fell into disrepair, having been abandoned by the monks who had lived there for the previous 200 years. The fortress is situated at the top of a 700-foot rock which rises to a level of just over a thousand feet above sea level, and can only be reached on foot up a winding and very steep climb.

Halfway up is a natural gallery in the rock which incorporates a series of quite remarkable 5th century murals, in what has been described as the largest picture gallery in the world, and in some ways the least accessible. The murals’ exact purpose is somewhat unclear, except that they follow the general rule that whereas the Judaeo-Christian and Islamic ethic strenuously discourages sex, the eastern religions equally strenuously encourage it. It is thought that originally there were some 500 of these ladies – enough to be going on with.

The ascent to the gallery and then on to the summit would be difficult under any circumstances. The near vertical climb is rendered possible by a series of rather rickety steel staircases attached to the rock face, and it must

Detail of mural at Sigiriya

also be borne in mind that the southern tip of Sri Lanka is less than 500 miles from the equator. By mid-morning it is very hot. The most disagreeable part of the ascent was the absolute necessity of wearing protective clothing, a sort of body armour, to shield one from the hornets which make their home in the rock, and whose sting can produce extreme forms of anaphylactic shock. (This protective clothing was later found to be wholly ineffective, and climbing the rock at certain times of the year is now prohibited due to the number of tourists needing hospital treatment – 500 in one month alone.)

Fiona and I were rather pleased with ourselves as we made the ascent in less than half the prescribed time of two hours.

After Sigiriya we continued to the Gal Vihara (Rock Monastery) of Polonnaruwa, where the standing statue measures nearly twenty-three feet, and the reclining one of the parinirvana of the Buddha over forty-six feet.

And it was in the museum which adjoins the site of these extraordinary statues that Fiona first said to me, ‘There’s something wrong with my left eye – it is as if someone has smeared grease over my sunglasses. I cannot see clearly out of it.’ I had noticed, as we drove in through the modern part of the town, an eye hospital, which I noted was a rather extraordinary thing. ‘Let’s go and see if somebody can see you,’ I said. It was by this time quite late – about 6pm, we had had a long day – but a friendly doctor did see us, and said to

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Trevor Percy-Lancaster, Fiona Allsopp, later Lady Hindlip, c.1978