The Field December 2017

“The ghostly sound of tawny owls calling is synonymous with freezing, moonlit nights” “O DIRTY December, for Christmas remember” (Thomas Tusser, 1524-80). Of all the months, December is my favourite. I love the bleak beauty of gaunt, leafless trees, the barren, lifeless landscape and ancient, musty smell of decay. December is the glorious colours of a cock pheasant glinting in thin winter sunshine as it rockets out of cover, the music and pageantry of hounds in full cry and the eerie sound of a multitude of geese rising from their shore roost in a lapis lazuli dawn. We should expect a hard frost with the full moon at the beginning of the month and an influx of little plump waxwings from Northern Europe and Scandinavia. A “waxwing warning” presages a…

“ ‘I love doing the shoot paintings… it is wonderful to have a day outside and meet people’” SOME of the happiest and most nostalgic moments of a day’s shooting often don’t feature a bird at all. The sky may be about to turn black with partridges, pheasants could soon be screaming over your head but before the drive has even begun you already feel a warm glow as you look up and down the line at old friends, each instantly recognisable in waiting posture. This one, with a rather large corporation, has a habit of resting his gun on his belly. Another stands eagerly with one foot forward and the butt sitting on his thigh. Down the other end of the line your mate is talking to her dog,…

Fabergé’s Sandringham animals The Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts at the University of East Anglia, Norwich, is staging The Russia Season: Royal Fabergé, (until 11 February 2018), a major exhibition to coincide with the centenary of the Russian Revolution and the fall of the Tsar. Part of it will be devoted to works commissioned by Edward VII – on the suggestion of his mistress, Alice Keppel – by Peter Carl Fabergé. The House of Fabergé, the Russian maker of objet d’art, is most famous for the Imperial Eggs it created for the Romanov court. However, it fashioned many pieces for our Royal Family, too, appealing to their more rural tastes. In 1907, craftsmen were despatched to Sandringham to sculpt models of the estate’s horses and dogs. This included racehorse Persimmon,…

EARLY START TO POINT-TO-POINTS The start to this year’s British point-to-point season was the earliest ever with a meeting on 19 November at Ottery-St-Mary. The last of the 179 meetings is the Torrington Farmers’ fixture at Umberleigh on 16 June. This season’s calendar will include six flat races, following a successful pilot last year, and two new venues: Edgecote in Northamptonshire and Knightwick in Worcestershire. TOWER FOR SUTTON HOO A 17-metre observation tower is being built at Sutton Hoo in Suffolk, the burial site of Anglo-Saxon king Rædwald, following a grant of £1.8m from the Heritage Lottery Fund. It is part of a £4m project launched by the National Trust called “Releasing the Story of Sutton Hoo”. This will include a new route around the site and an exhibition providing…

Until 23 Society of Wood Engravers Exhibition Kevis House Gallery, Petworth, West Sussex. Tel 01798 215007; www.kevishouse.com 23 Nov-16 Birds and Wildlife exhibition Rountree Tryon Galleries, Petworth, West Sussex. Rodger McPhail, Keith Shackleton and more. Tel 01798 344207; www.rountreetryon.com 2-3 Westcountry Equine Fair Westpoint Arena, Clyst St Mary, Exeter, Devon. Tel: 01392 421500; westcountryequinefair.co.uk 3 Hursley Hambledon Point-to-Point Larkhill, Wiltshire. Tel 01730 829313; www.hursleyhambledon.com 5 League of Lady Shooters shoot morning Lady’s Wood Shooting School, Horton, Chipping Sodbury, Gloucestershire (cost £95). Tel 01454 294546; email shoot@ladyswood.co.uk 7 Southams Auctions Winter Sale of Sporting Guns and Antique Arms Bedford Auction Centre, Bedford. Tel 01234 266366; www.southamsauction.co.uk 9 Ratcheugh Racing Club Point-to-Point Alnwick, Northumberland. First race at noon. Tel 07748 986394; www.alnwickraces.co.uk 9 Christmas with Durham Cathedral Choir Fundraising concert at 7.30pm…

MOST VIEWED Vintage guns For those with a Purdey on their Christmas wish list, Michael Yardley’s advice on how to obtain a classic gun on the second-hand market has been essential reading. Others have been sharing their vintage finds. “My old Cogswell & Harrison Sandhurst model boxlock with ornamental sideplates – built in 1921,” shared one. “It’s used regularly through the season and always gets admiring comments from guns with very expensive modern over-and-unders.” #THEFIELDMAGAZINE Cider with The Field Surrounded by windfalls, Fielders have turned to our online recipes to prevent a pie production line. From soup to scones, we have endless uses for the harvest and Eve Jones’s feature on cider in the September issue has had Fielders attempt their own. One was too shy to share his secret,…