Henry Lytton Cobbold

Today the Victorian Eastern Steps in front of Knebworth House were being restored, whilst the main house looked on jealously!  We have been able to tackle the Eastern Steps thanks to a grant from The Country Houses Foundation and some match funding from The Knebworth House Education and Preservation Trust.  The grant had to be for a specific project, so the house itself was not eligible, but it is heartening to see progress in such a visible and prominent position.

 If you have ten minutes, and the internet to hand, you may enjoy a piece of film I found this weekend from the mid-1980s.  I have up loaded it on YouTube as “Knebworth House – preserving its fabric and legacy – 1985”  – you should be able to find it by searching “Knebworth House Preservation” on the YouTube home page.  It shows how much progress has been made since the birth of The Knebworth House Education and Preservation Trust charity at that time, but also how many of the issues remain unchanged 28 years later.  It features my grandparents, Kim and Hermione, and those who knew them will enjoy seeing them.  It also features some 1980s hair on yours truly that Conservation Officers, I imagine, would not suggest is restored to its original design!

Henry Lytton Cobbold
www.knebworthhouse.com

I write on the first day of our 2013 Summer Season, having just had a delicious tea in our Garden Terrace Room.  Daffodils are on the tables and a tempting selection of fresh cakes and scones sit on polished tree trunk slices provided by Dennis and Dave, the Park’s resident wood carvers.  This year we welcome new chef, Charlotte Obia, to Knebworth Barns and – having recently also been treated to one of Charlotte’s dinners – I am excited to spread the word.  It is a shame she was not here for last year’s recording of ITV’s “Food Glorious Food”.  I hope local recipes do well on the show.  The Knebworth House edition, I am told, will be broadcast on Wednesday 3^rd April.  Sadly my family wouldn’t let me enter my personal specialty, Smash Pie – that’s instant mashed potato on baked beans.  It hasn’t made the menu at the Garden Terrace Room either.  Well, I keep telling myself, standards are high – not everyone can be a master chef!            

Henry Lytton Cobbold
www.knebworthhouse.com

March 17^th is the day of St Patrick
So I begin by way of a “Limerick”
– That’s a place west of Dublin
When Lyttons have blood links
That make us both mad and romantic

March 17^th is not only St Patrick’s Day, it is also our Parish Open Day, when we celebrate the start of our Summer Season – so if you don’t know the story of my Irish great-great-great-grandmother, Rosina Bulwer Lytton (who came from Ballywire, near Limerick, in County Tipperary) it’s a great day to come hear it! 

That Sunday, we are pleased to open Knebworth House, Gardens and Park for free to all residents of Knebworth Parish.  The Park opens at 11am – please enter via the white gate by St Mary’s, and please bring something that indicates you live in Knebworth (i.e. a copy of the Parish Magazine).  I trust the Gardens and Park will be emerald green!            

Henry Lytton Cobbold
www.knebworthhouse.com

If Knebworth Park Concerts began in 1974, then this year, 2013, must be their 40^th year.  A shame, then, that Sonisphere will not be returning in 2013.  Knebworth Park has no rock concerts scheduled for this summer – there is talk of other types of music events – but no classic Knebworth concert to mark the 40^th year.  I hope, at least, we can mark the 40^th anniversary in 2014.  There are already a couple of enquiries for 2014 and a television company is contemplating a retrospective. 

It’s been a remarkable 40 years –  the last Led Zeppelin concert with its original line up in 1979, the last Beach Boys concert with its original line up in 1980, the last Queen concert with its original line up in 1986, the Nordoff Robbins charity concert in 1990 that was broadcast worldwide and advertised “Knebworth” on a giant billboard on Sunset Boulevard, the defining weekend of Britpop with Oasis in 1996, and the largest British music event ever with Robbie Williams in 2003, which produced a record-selling DVD across the world with the word “Knebworth” written all over it.   Prince Cnebba – the Saxon after whom it is presumed we are named – would I hope be proud that his name has travelled so far!

Henry Lytton Cobbold
www.knebworthhouse.com

It will be a melancholy moment this month when we say a fond final farewell to Mr and Mrs Clarence, the splendid griffins that have guarded the gates of Knebworth House for over a hundred years.  All those years of facing down the bitter north wind, scaring off evil spirits and protecting the inhabitants of Knebworth House by day and by night, without ever once leaving their sentry posts!  The blizzards and the blazing sun have taken their toll over the years – the couple have lost their noses, most of their wings – Mrs Clarence once had a lovely long mane of Virginia Creeper that turned a startling red in the autumn, but old age has put paid to that!  The plan is that they will spend their retirement in a quiet spot somewhere in the gardens – so they will be on hand should their replacements require any advice on evil spirit repelling…

Their replacements have been genetically modified to look exactly like them – only younger.  They could be offspring of Mr and Mrs Clarence, but for the fact that mother and father have been separated by an iron gate all these years, and there is little chance of successfully mating on top of a pillar.   So a cherry-picker was hired, an artist sent up, and D.N.A. collected.  The youngsters will arrive via Cranbourne Stone in Dorset, and have been made possible by a grant from The Country Houses Foundation.  All very good news for the New Year, but there is, of course, a flip-side.  The terms of the grant now require that The Knebworth House Education and Preservation Trust find some further funds to finish restoring this last section of outer balustrade – which, in this economic climate, is about as tricky as propagating up a pillar!              

Henry Lytton Cobbold
www.knebworthhouse.com

Professor Scott Rice of San Jose University in California is the founder of the annual Bulwer Lytton Fiction Contest, which since 1982 has challenged entrants to “compose the opening sentence to the worst of all possible novels”.  Despite that, he is a friend.  “All publicity is good publicity” the saying goes.  But there are times when we are not sure.  In the last month Knebworth House has been moved from English Heritage’s “Buildings At Risk” register to English Heritage’s “Priority Buildings At Risk” register.  English Heritage has good reason – 50% of the house remains unrestored and in a perilous condition – however, as a headline, this can, for instance, worry brides who have booked the house for their weddings next year.  Even Scott Rice writes from California saying he has read that “Knebworth House may be closing down”. 

Brides need not worry – thanks to the Knebworth House Education and Preservation Trust, the other 50% of the house is beautifully restored, and will be the perfect venue for their happy day.  And as for “closing down”, that has never been an option on my jotting pad!  I have thus reassured Scott, and taken the opportunity, at the same time, to send him Page 3 of last Friday’s The Sun newspaper, in which Hollie, 22, from Manchester quotes “the English poet Edward Bulwer Lytton”.  All publicity is good publicity!

The Bulwer Lytton saying that Hollie from Manchester quotes is a good one for the Christmas issue, so I will sign off with it.  All at Knebworth House send very best seasonal wishes, and my great-great-great-grandfather’s observation – to be considered as you are tucking into Christmas puddings, Quality Street chocolates and mince pies – “In life, as in art, the beautiful moves in curves”!

Henry Lytton Cobbold
www.knebworthhouse.com

Usually I would wait until December to mention our “A Christmas Carol” evenings, but this year I am going to remind you in November.  The reason for this is that I suspect all six performances will sell out well in advance this year.  The difference is that these six performances – on December 8^th, 9^th, 15^th & 16^th – are your last chance ever to see the brilliant Colin Greenslade perform this perennial favourite in the Banqueting Hall of Knebworth House.  

Colin’s fireside readings of Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” have been the start of the Knebworth House Christmas since 1998 – that’s a remarkable 15 years of sold out performances.  Many regulars say the same, that Colin begins their Christmas.  So come celebrate with us the end of an era – with a glass of mulled wine, a mince pie, and Christmas carols performed from the minstrels’ gallery by local choirs – and say a final Knebworth farewell to Colin.  And, ever afterwards, may it be said of him that “he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge”!

Henry Lytton Cobbold
www.knebworthhouse.com

Due to his unhappy marriage, Edward Bulwer Lytton’s two children spent much of their early lives with and Irish “godmother”, a saintly spinster named Mary Letitia Greene.  Mary died in Dublin in 1859 and the Lytton family’s only subsequent contact with the Greene family was in the 1880s when Mary’s great-niece visited Knebworth to give Robert, Edward’s son, Mary’s fascinating written account of his and his sister’s childhood.  This is a treasured document in our archive and for over ten years I have been on the trail of Mary Letitia Greene, looking for more information about this woman who played such an important part in the lives of my great-great-grandfather and his sister.  

A few weeks ago I struck gold.  Tracing Mary’s family tree on the internet, I discovered a descendant of her great-niece living half-an-hour away in Northwood, Middlesex.  Contact was made, and for the first time in over 120 years, I have been able to formally welcome the Greene family back to Knebworth House.  Better still, I have been able to identify the woman in the lovely portrait miniature they had in their possession, not knowing who the woman was… as none other than Mary Letitia Greene.  Amazing!

Henry Lytton Cobbold
www.knebworthhouse.com

Every historic house that relies on visitors for its survival would like a “Brideshead Revisited” or a “Downton Abbey” to raise its profile.  Knebworth House has hosted Miss Marple, Poirot, Inspector Lynley, DCI John Barnaby, Detective Superintendent Christopher Foyle and others over the years, but we’ve yet to become the masthead for a television show.  Last year, however, we did welcome “Brideshead Revisited” director Charles Sturridge and star Phoebe Nicholls (husband and wife since those heady 1980s days at Castle Howard) to Knebworth House to film Daphne Du Maurier’s “The Scapegoat” for ITV.   The house features prominently in the production as the home of “Lady Spence”, played by Eileen Atkins.  The film premieres on ITV on Sunday September 9^th.  Look out for it – as I’ve been told by a friend who saw a preview at the Du Maurier Festival in Cornwall in May that, as Cliff Michelmore would say, “it was really rather good”.

Henry Cobbold
www.knebworthhouse.com

“It was a dark and stormy night…” declared the Red Hot Chili Peppers as they took to the stage in Knebworth Park on 23^rd June, and with rain clouds filling the sky this was nothing to surprise the 50,000 strong audience, who were not going to let a little English rain spoil their evening.  I wonder how many in the audience, however, picked up the reference?  The clue was in the next line – “This show is dedicated to Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton!” 

And it has been dark and stormy ever since.  But now it is August, it needs to stop being dark and stormy, because we have a packed month of outdoor events!   A wood carvings exhibit in the Gardens, theatricals in the Gardens, a Country Show, a Classic Car Show… and then in September, for the second time this year, due to popular demand, another Ghost and Bat Walk.  Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton himself may be at that one – dedicating the evening to you!     

Henry Cobbold
www.knebworthhouse.com