The recent death of Frank Windsor – whom the older amongst us will remember as Detective Sergeant John Watt in “Z-Cars” – summons a happy memory of working with him at Knebworth House on the 1984 film “The Shooting Party”. Frank Windsor played Glass, the gamekeeper, and his home in the film is our current Estate Office. One of the pleasures of working on this film, which was about an autumnal weekend shooting party, was that the filming itself felt like one long weekend house party with some really wonderful house guests – James Mason, Dorothy Tutin, Edward Fox, Robert Hardy, Gordon Jackson… and of course Frank Windsor.
I am not one for shooting, but I do enjoy Knebworth House being used for entertaining. It could be said that that has always been the House’s primary purpose, over its 500 year existence. So this year has been very odd in that nobody – apart from its permanent residents – has stayed overnight in the house since January. We did have a couple of months being able to receive day visitors in the House’s formal rooms. But this must have been one of the House’s quietest years in all its long history.
So, nostalgic for weekend guests of old, this month’s photo – recently surfaced on eBay – is of a house party at the end of the 19th Century when Lord Strathcona (1820-1914) was renting Knebworth House. We’ve been trying to work out what the chap in the foreground is doing. Our best guess is that he is setting up a camera to photograph the guests. If so, it looks like the ladies in the background on the terrace will need some persuading to take part. This is a problem I know well, especially at this time of year when I realise we have no recent family photos to go into Christmas Cards for American friends and relations. I might send this one instead. They haven’t seen us in so long, we may get away with passing ourselves off as these fine-hatted folk.
Henry Lytton Cobbold
@HenryCobboldKH