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Echoes of hunting glories and battles past Echoes of hunting glories and battles past
(2 months later)
From Kingsettle Hill, King Alfred's Tower dominates many miles of Somerset, Wiltshire and Dorset. Sir Richard Colt Hoare, whose family had built the folly, wrote in 1812 of how Alfred, "having issued from his retreat in the isle of Athelney", is said to have rallied his Saxons there to face the Danes. From down below in the Brue valley, on land that Sir Richard inherited together with the nearby Stourhead estate, we looked up at the ridge of Kingsettle, silhouetted against the sky by its dark line of firs, and were shown a fragment of a stone plaque that had once borne Sir Richard's Latin inscription of 1815, identifying the place as Brewham Lodge, in the Forest of Selwood, once set apart and prized for hunting by King John.From Kingsettle Hill, King Alfred's Tower dominates many miles of Somerset, Wiltshire and Dorset. Sir Richard Colt Hoare, whose family had built the folly, wrote in 1812 of how Alfred, "having issued from his retreat in the isle of Athelney", is said to have rallied his Saxons there to face the Danes. From down below in the Brue valley, on land that Sir Richard inherited together with the nearby Stourhead estate, we looked up at the ridge of Kingsettle, silhouetted against the sky by its dark line of firs, and were shown a fragment of a stone plaque that had once borne Sir Richard's Latin inscription of 1815, identifying the place as Brewham Lodge, in the Forest of Selwood, once set apart and prized for hunting by King John.
We had gone through silent fields and woods to a handsome house, built not of local stone but of brick, with a date of 1848 above the porch. Cattle graz a field full of buttercups. The house and its acres are successors of what was, from 1100 until 1631, a royal domain and hunting ground. A survey of 1550 told of 800 acres well set with "old oaks of ancient bigness", and "a pretty lodge, tiled and moated about".We had gone through silent fields and woods to a handsome house, built not of local stone but of brick, with a date of 1848 above the porch. Cattle graz a field full of buttercups. The house and its acres are successors of what was, from 1100 until 1631, a royal domain and hunting ground. A survey of 1550 told of 800 acres well set with "old oaks of ancient bigness", and "a pretty lodge, tiled and moated about".
We now looked out at a lawn surrounded by floral borders and enclosed by stables and barns, and were shown a fading photograph of the same space in 1956, then a bare yard where men in long raincoats and flat caps were bent attentively round an auctioneer selling agricultural equipment and one patient white horse. Sir Richard had lovingly restored the old house but it was demolished soon after his death, and the photograph revealed that the farmhouse built on its site had not always been immune from economic realities. But now it is splendidly resurrected with an elegant style and lofty spaciousness that Sir Richard, a man of vision and taste, would surely delight in.We now looked out at a lawn surrounded by floral borders and enclosed by stables and barns, and were shown a fading photograph of the same space in 1956, then a bare yard where men in long raincoats and flat caps were bent attentively round an auctioneer selling agricultural equipment and one patient white horse. Sir Richard had lovingly restored the old house but it was demolished soon after his death, and the photograph revealed that the farmhouse built on its site had not always been immune from economic realities. But now it is splendidly resurrected with an elegant style and lofty spaciousness that Sir Richard, a man of vision and taste, would surely delight in.
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