Innholdsfortegnelse for June 2016 i The Field

More than a hundred Sussex spaniels will be gathering in their home county this month to set a new record for the endangered breed. “It will be the largest gathering of Sussex spaniels ever seen in one place,” said organiser Sheila Appleby. “We want everyone with a Sussex spaniel to come along on the day and join us.” The gathering will take place at 2pm in the main arena on the second day of the Sussex Show (18-19 June). Appleby, vice president of the Sussex Spaniel Association (SSA), said 130 owners, including four from the Netherlands, have said they are planning to bring their dogs to the show. “We had 73 dogs at our first attempt in 2010. This year we’re really hoping to have more than a hundred,” she…

GROUSE-MOOR ART Forty paintings by artist Nicky Brown, depicting the management of two Yorkshire grouse moors, will feature in the exhibition A Year in the Life of a Grouse Moor on 1 July at Clifton Castle, Masham, North Yorkshire. A preview and drinks reception is being held in aid of the GWCT on 30 June at 6.30pm; for tickets (£10 in advance, £15 on day), call Sophie Dingwall on 07925 597676. FOOD FOCUS AT SHOW Food and farming is the focus of the Royal Bath & West Show (1-4 June), with more than 100 producers exhibiting in the new food and drink area. Westcountry drink producers will be championed in the second British Cider Championships and the show’s British Cheese Awards has a new award for Best British Cheesemonger. The…

KHAKI GILET SOUTH WEST TEN Rabbit fur lined and with a fox-fur-trimmed hood. Seriously sumptuous. Price £395 Tel 020 3773 6061 www.southwestten.com SPORTS JACKET BERETTA Classic summer staple in unlined wool, silk and linen. Price £345 Tel 020 7408 4411 www.beretta.com ELEANOR LOAFER ITS GOT SOUL Vibrant hues for well-heeled feet that are busy all day. Price £115 Tel 0845 1229297 www.itsgotsoul.co.uk DUTCH HARBOR WATCH FILSON Wrist furniture with sporting function and form. Price £850 Tel 020 7434 3007 www.filson.com TWILL TROUSERS ORVIS Jazzy strides to pinpoint the Editor at the Field & Country Fair. Price £89 Tel 0333 400 4177 www.orvis.co.uk JERSEY SHIRT OLDFIELD CLOTHING Traditional collar, 100% cotton a cricket and summer staple. Price £95 Tel 07903 485246 www.oldfieldclothing.co.uk COLLAR & LEAD GUNN LINE Made in Dorset from…

“The wider EU perspective will determine the future of lead in ammunition” ALARMINGLY, 23 June could have a greater impact on our country than any other day in our lives. The huge implications of the EU Referendum for sovereignty, free trade and the movement of people are all being loudly debated but farming and environmental issues have been less prominent, while questions specific to the leisure pursuits of Field readers have barely featured at all. So how should we vote? This magazine does not make voting recommendations but the Editor has asked me to share with you the ins and outs of matters that may be important to you but which are not being discussed elsewhere. There are quite a few but let me start with some generalities. Arguments have…

“Anything scoring 5,000 plus on the ‘hydrostatic head’ water-pressure test is deemed waterproof” ADMIT it, you’ve probably been there. So bone-cold and damp after a day’s shooting that you have crept closer to the fire (breeks, stockings and all), unable to face the prospect of stripping off until the bath is absolutely ready. Yet with a driven pheasant costing £50 and a grouse double that, allowing yourself to get soaked – arms leaden and fingers numb – impairing both your fun and safety, should be avoided at all costs. As we finger rails of shooting coats, how often do we consider if a coat is truly fit for purpose? The tailoring and tweed may be delectable but what tells us if it will cope with a seven-hour deluge? It pays…

AFTER the 1832 Reform Act abolished “rotten” and “pocket” boroughs, and broadened the electoral franchise to include substantial numbers of middle-class, male voters and parliamentary candidates, the Duke of Wellington surveyed the newly elected House of Commons and said: “I have never seen so many shocking bad hats in my life.” Presumably these were silk toppers, hastily bought to try to enable the new members of parliament to look the part. Janet Taylor, successively of James Lock & Co (established not later than 1676) and then of Patey Hats (established in 1799, the only British gentleman’s bespoke hat-maker left, with a shop in Bermondsey, London SE15), says that the top hat, as we would recognise the modern item, was invented by a Frenchman and the fact that the French had…

AS I write, the Brexit debate is building in ferocity. Had a pollster listened in to a jolly Oxfordshire dinner party recently he would have witnessed an emphatic “Middle England” point of view: “We care deeply and we don’t have a clue.” Unambiguous fence sitting and a huge desire to cut the flannel and get to the real arguments was the near-unanimous verdict. However, it might upset UKIP and the emphatic – as against tortured – “Leave” brigade to discover that Britain’s ancient coinage has long been a reflection of its close trading relationship with Europe. Or, put another way, we Brits have been mirroring the ancient equivalents of the Euro for millennia – certainly from Roman times. This was demonstrated by a sale of medieval “groats” by Morton &…

MARRIAGE and motherhood rarely make life easy for the budding artist, as Clare Brownlow discovered while trying to finish her end-of-year show at Edinburgh’s Leith School of Art before the birth of her first son, Harry. “The smell of the oil paints just wasn’t great,” she remembers. Harry has since been joined by Alfred at the family home, Ormiston House, near Kelso, where Brownlow’s husband, Charlie, has businesses running sporting holidays and recycling waders. Having enjoyed painting at school, Brownlow read History of Art and Fine Art before a brief period in investment management and meeting her husband. But art still called, so she attended Leith School of Art. “It was so incredible,” she enthuses. “Mixing pigments was fascinating. I did a lot of oil paintings of seascapes and landscapes.…

ANY barley barons out there fancy a partnership? We need a beer called Brexit – a distillation of fear and ignorance, with hoppy hypocrisy and a scent of self-interest, designed to make imbibers shout loudly in a confused manner. Crucially, you can blame everything on it. “Sorry, darling. Better out than in. Too much Brexit last night.” I am surprised football managers haven’t used it as an excuse yet: in or out of Europe; inside or outside the penalty area. It depends if the referee is called Cameron or Johnson. Now we hear from Knight Frank that English farmland values fell by 3% in the first quarter of 2016, with the drop attributed to the “current uncertainty surrounding the possible exit from the EU”. Average price is now under £8,000…

THERE was a time when gun engraving was taken no more seriously then basket weaving or cottage thatching by those who separate craft from art. Today’s work, however, rivals Lorenzo Ghiberti’s bas-relief carving on the baptistery doors in Florence. To the consternation of some, gun engraving is no longer secondary or subservient to the firearms it is intended to enhance. British engraving’s epic journey has led from naïve gamebirds scratched on Manton fowlers through Purdey’s workmanlike rose and scroll to today’s high-art guns. Modernism seems to have started when James Purdey the Younger commissioned a French engraver and Commune exile named Magloire Aristide Barré to carve a firearm for the teenage King of Siam. According to official historian David Maynard, Barré is “the only engraver mentioned in the Purdey dimension…

ON the lawns below the dovecote, the royal huntsmen waited. On the signal, they released a stag and set the hounds in pursuit. Running east past the long façade of Apethorpe Palace, the stag plunged through deep forest, turning south to cross an open ride and disappearing again into the woods, emerging on the shores of a lake. Meeting his end at last, the body was brought below the windows to the sound of trumpets as libations were poured to celebrate his last noble chase. From a rooftop walkway, James I of England watched the hunt, courtiers assisting him as he struggled on gout-stricken legs. The leads had been specially constructed to allow him to watch the ceremonial chase of the carted stag when he could no longer ride: nothing…

ON Saturday 11 June more than 1,400 men and 200 horses, including 170 from the Household Cavalry Mounted Regiment, will “Troop the Colour” at The Queen’s 90th Birthday Parade. The practice of Trooping the Colour goes back to ancient times when, usually just before a battle, that detachment’s standard or colour – the flag the fighting men knew to follow and rally around – was paraded along their ranks so everyone could get a good look at it so they could recognise it once the action started. What began as a pre-battle drill had, by 1748, been transformed into an annual parade to celebrate the sovereign’s birthday. Fast forward to Edward VII, who started the tradition of taking the salute in person. And so, this June, Great Britain’s own Birthday…

HERE’S yet another curious Subaru – the Levorg. Members of the Contrived and Strictly Inaccurate Acronym Society (WURPS) will enjoy the fact that the rather odd name is derived from bits of “LEgacy”, “reVOlution” and “touRinG”. So you can enjoy hours of fun working out that it could have been called the Subaru Acting, Gautto, Leonin… It’s even odder that Subaru has used “Legacy” as a donor name, when the Levorg is a long way from the farm runabout that we grew to know and love over the decades. Yes, it looks like a Subaru estate – slightly frumpy and slab-sided, with a nose that seems to droop just a bit too much – but underneath it’s a quite different machine. There’s no sign of the flat-four diesel that did…

The Naked, Strewth A monthly exploration of the British fondness for removing clothes in a good cause Berwickshire Hunt Calendar 2016 No saddle sores for the ladies of the Berwickshire Hunt Supporters Club, who have wriggled out of those restrictive jods with the aim of filling the hunt’s coffers. Give it both barrels, girls! The Field has contributed to the cause. Calendars cost £10; contact Wendy Turnbull for details on 07738 215067. Creating meadows There’ll be bee hunts, walks and talks taking place around the country on Saturday 2 July to mark the second National Meadows Day. Encouraged by HRH Prince Charles, charity Plantlife – along with 11 other organisations, including the Wildlife Trusts and the National Trust – has spent the past three years working to create a meadow…

THE inaugural Field & Country Fair this month has much to recommend it. After the CLA Game Fair blew the Last Post at Harewood House in 2015 there was an opportunity for those who were interested to shape their own country fair. The CLA, which was the backbone of the CLA Game Fair for more than 50 years, has no presence at any game fair this summer. Out of this situation grew the Field & Country Fair, organised by Time Inc. (UK) Ltd, publisher of The Field, Country Life, Shooting Times, Sporting Gun and Shooting Gazette. It is an opportunity to use the expertise of the magazines you love to read to create a bespoke country event to kick off your summer season. Held at Cornbury Park, Oxfordshire, on 10-12…

SCRATCH a gunmaker, especially a builder of best guns, and, more often than not, you will find a wing-shooting whiz. Just as carmakers compete on the racing circuit to promote road vehicles, gunmakers such as Edwin John Churchill competed on the live pigeon circuit to sell game guns. Robert Churchill, his nephew, whose 25in barrels vaulted the firm to fame, understood that a good show at clays could boost sales. And now Sir Edward Dashwood, current owner of EJ Churchill and never out of this magazine’s Top Shots list, offers best guns at what is perhaps Britain’s finest shooting ground. Ould Ted “could lock, stock and barrel a ‘London-best’ gun. He was also a brilliant shot. Not at game. His sport was knocking down live pigeons released from traps,” wrote…

THE UK rod is spoilt for choice, for within our shores is a vast array of water systems on which you can put your skills to the test, whether you are a one-track-minded salmon fisherman, a dedicated all-rounder searching for predators, bottom feeders and lake trout, or the classic dry-fly enthusiast pursuing speckled brownies in wild rivers. Personally, I’m rather obsessed with the combination of all three. Three years ago I decided that there was more to life than staying in London every weekend nursing a hangover – I wanted to explore the countryside and see what I could find. I started my search close to home, the aim being to find a decent base to practise my casting and, if Lady Luck were on my side, bagging a fish…

IN the tranquillity of the traditional tackle shop, aided by attentive staff, fly selection should be fun and tinged with anticipation. All too often, however, the overwhelming choice on offer can turn the experience into an ordeal. Historically, flies were tied with natural materials that could be sourced locally and the resultant patterns used at nearby fisheries. Today, our options have expanded exponentially along with our fly-fishing horizons – and not just in the UK but worldwide. Where simple silhouette and size used to be the key elements of a winning fly, new, synthetic materials have allowed ingenious craftsmen and women to create near replicas of the natural prey of the quarry species sought by anglers. When combined with some extraordinary attractor patterns, the selections on offer have become truly…

“THE only man on either side who could lose the war in an afternoon.” No commander-in-chief has ever gone into battle with a greater weight on his shoulders than Admiral Sir John Jellicoe in 1916. Churchill’s words were no exaggeration: for the Royal Navy to lose control of the North Sea, and, therefore, sea supremacy, would have meant national defeat. In the decade before the First World War, the Germans had tried to outbuild Britain in dreadnoughts, the revolutionary, all-big-gun (initially 12-inch, increasing to 15-inch), heavily armoured battleships named after the first of their class, HMS Dreadnought, launched in 1906. The Royal Navy had just managed to keep ahead in the “dreadnought race” and when war came, Jellicoe’s Grand Fleet, from its lonely fastness at Scapa Flow in the Orkneys,…

WITHOUT a doubt our tastes have become more exotic with a greater interest in global cuisine. I can say this with confidence as during a recent job on an estate in the south of Sutherland I walked into the small local supermarket to get ingredients for the requested Moroccan feast. I asked the shopkeeper if they had any jars of tahini, expecting a raised eyebrow, and got a, “Yes, of course, light or dark?” These recipes celebrate our love for flavours from afar. BROAD BEAN, CUMIN AND LEMON TOASTS WITH GRILLED HALLOUMI Serves 4 as a starter 250g broad beans (fresh or frozen) 1 garlic clove, peeled and crushed 1 tsp ground cumin plus a little extra for serving 1 tsp ground coriander 1 tbsp water 2 spring onions, finely…

THIS month, we are directing our spotlight at a pair of vintage Purdey side-by-sides. These stylish guns come from the stock of dealer Victor Chapman, who specialises in the best London names. They are priced at £19,500 (a modern pair of similar pattern would be about £200,000). They were made in 1890, 10 years after the iconic design was first patented ( see below ), have 30in, concave ribbed, chopper lump barrels (both sets choked cylinder and half), weigh 6lb 9oz and are presented in what appears to be the original oak and leather case. These best guns, classics of their type, have been chosen to illustrate what may still be bought at attainable cost on the second-hand market and to use as a vehicle for discussion on some of…