Henry Lytton Cobbold

If you are a regular guest at our “Christmas Carol” evenings – and many have told me that it marks the beginning of their Christmas festivities – please remember that last year all three days were sold out by the middle of November.  This year ticket sales are equally buoyant, and it looks likely that the evenings (Friday 17^th, Saturday 18^th & Sunday 19^th December) will again sell out by the middle of this month… so to avoid disappointment call Charlotte on 810931.

Henry Lytton Cobbold
www.knebworthhouse.com

In my father’s Desert Island Discs interview, which I mentioned last month, he talks of the ghosts that are resident in Knebworth House.  There has been a house here since the Dark Ages – at least since Cnebba had his Saxon camp on the top of this hill – so it stands to reason that, if there are ghosts in any house, there are going to be ghosts here.  Sleeping in the darkness of these creaking passageways every night, I have done my best to avoid them – rationalising any noise as pigeons scratching in the stucco or the clinking of the flagpole.  However if you are more inclined than I to meet one, you may want to join the young families taking the Pumpkin Trail on 27th-29th October – thrills include “Meet the bats”, “Help make the witch’s brew” and “The Terror Tunnel”… I think I’ll be heading to bed with a mug of cocoa – and some cloves of garlic round my neck!

Henry Lytton Cobbold
www.knebworthhouse.com

You know what they say about waiting for a bus… well, in August, along came two family appearances on the BBC within one week.  Early risers might have caught me discussing Knebworth House and Sonisphere on BBC Breakfast, then a few days later my father was featured on BBC Radio Four’s Desert Island Discs.  My performance, I can say with relief, is safely consigned to the BBC Archive, but you can still listen to my father’s programme, I believe, via the Desert Island Discs homepage (http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qnmr), and, if your computer has speakers, I do recommend it – it is a touching and revealing portrait.

Henry Lytton Cobbold
www.knebworthhouse.com

At a charity lunch in London recently I sat opposite a man who said the only time he had visited Knebworth was in 1986… for the Queen Concert.  We discussed what a great show it had been, and how tragic it was, if fitting, that it turned out to be Freddie Mercury’s last ever live performance.  I asked if he had a good view.  He confessed that he had the very best view – on stage, just to the side of the keyboards!  Not only that, but he had ridden with Freddie on the helicopter to Knebworth – and how magnificent the view had been on arriving at Knebworth and seeing the crowd of 125,000 people, and Knebworth House in the background.  I said I knew exactly what he was talking about as we have a large blow-up image of Freddie’s helicopter arriving, on the wall at Knebworth House – it is indeed a magnificent sight!

This image will be part of an exhibition of Queen memorabilia that will be displayed in the Banqueting Hall throughout August.  The exhibit has been assembled from the collections of Queen fans from all around the country and beyond, with one or two pieces from our Archive.  If you have happy memories of that 1986 evening – or wish you’d been there – I do hope you’ll get a chance to catch the exhibition, which is included in the regular House admission.  Not the same as seeing Freddie live – but that privilege has gone forever.  Still, the show goes on…

Henry Lytton Cobbold
www.knebworthhouse.com

After its successful debut last year, the Sonisphere Festival returns to Knebworth Park at the end of July.  Again it will be a much smaller event than the traditional Knebworth concert – a third of the size – and this year the headline acts are Iron Maiden (Sunday) and the German band Rammstein (Saturday).  The campsite is open Thursday through Monday, for staggered arrival and departure so the effect on local traffic should be minimal.

The difference this year is that there will be some outdoor music on the Friday to encourage early camping arrival.  Open air music over the weekend will finish at 11 pm, with entertainment within tents (cinema, DJs, music, shops, catering) continuing in a central area for campers until 2 am.  If neighbours do experience any disturbance over the weekend, we thank you in advance for your patience – this is important business for the Park and a happy continuation of our tradition of live music that has bought so much pleasure to so many people since 1974.

The Friday evening headline act is Alice Cooper.  I remember when I left school in 1980 I had to go out and buy his record “School’s Out” to celebrate – my son, however, who leaves school this summer, has the man himself turning up to play the song for him!

Henry Lytton Cobbold
www.knebworthhouse.com

Those who know the Gardens at Knebworth House know that we don’t let a dead trunk or a fallen bough sit.  We call local chainsaw artist Dennis Heath and watch in wonder as he transforms it into a Neverland crocodile chasing Time, or a Silesian kobold playing hide and seek with Snow White (she lived with seven of them).  Dennis’s latest additions to the Gardens are a beautiful Hertfordshire hart, made from a limb of California redwood, that now greets visitors at the Garden Terrace entrance, resplendent with his own Red Deer antlers from the Park; and nearby, protruding from the roots of a beautiful old cedar, a jousting knight complete with full lance and a Cobbold lion etched on his chest.  You’re not mistaken, the knight does bear a resemblance to the oldest living jouster.  But the oldest living jouster says it can’t be him, because David of Knebworth is right handed!

Henry Lytton Cobbold
www.knebworthhouse.com

Hopefully rough winds are not shaking the darling buds of May when you read this – hopefully the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf, while the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough in England – now!…  I am very much looking forward to the last night of the Village Festival when Colin Greenslade will be reading “Best Loved Poems” in the Banqueting Hall of Knebworth House.  “How Do I Love Thee…”  “She Walks in Beauty…”  “I Wandered Lonely…”  “I Wish I’d Looked After Me Teeth…”  Yes, everyone’s favourite poems will be represented, including Colin’s trademark comic poems which are so popular at Christmastime.   Joan Hunter Dunn will be there –  furnish’d and burnish’d by Aldershot sun – Burning Tygers, Idle Kings, and the lady with the lovely face, God in his mercy lend her grace…  Is there honey still for tea? – No, but there will be sparkling wine on arrival, and canapés in the interval!  See you there!

Henry Lytton Cobbold
www.knebworthhouse.com

News that we’ve installed two new Runways in Knebworth Park may raise some alarm – but I can reassure those prone to assume the worst that the only noise emanating from these Runways will be the excitement of children (and possibly one or two of the more agile parents) visiting our Adventure Playground.  New for this season, the two 40-metre Aerial Runways run side-by-side, so the young-at-heart can race each other whilst swinging, suspended in mid-air.

Prefer your thrills closer to the ground?  Then maybe we can entice you with our new “Inclusive Orbit” – no, nothing to do with chewing gum or space travel – an “Inclusive Orbit” is a new kind of Roundabout that lets you sit or stand or, we’re most pleased about this, ride in your wheelchair.  So there is no excuse for every member of the family not to give this one a try.  So… see you at the Adventure Playground this school holidays!

Henry Lytton Cobbold
www.knebworthhouse.com

I was pleased to read Simon Jenkins’ article in The Times recently “Welcome to Britain’s stately home from homes”, which celebrates the “lived in” Historic House.  The new chairman of the National Trust writes, “I have joked that I will leave in my will enough money to cover the cost of a Labrador and a child’s pushchair to put in front of every National Trust house to make it looked ‘lived-in’”.  This is a refreshing change of policy for the National Trust, which has tended to prefer its heritage preserved in aspic.  Knebworth House, of course, has always had that “lived-in” look (in this generation you’ll run into a Great Dane rather than a Labrador), and we’ve preferred to celebrate this, believing that it is 520-years-and-counting of Lytton family stories that are our most valuable heirlooms, and that our role in the community continues as a working one.

The Times article also announces that all National Trust properties and car parks will offer free entry on the weekend of March 20…  They are catching up here too – as, I’m pleased to confirm, Knebworth House, Gardens and Park will be free to residents of Knebworth Parish on Sunday 21^st March as part of our popular Parish Open Day.  Entrance is via the white gate by St Mary’s only, and please bring something that indicates you live in Knebworth (i.e. a copy of this magazine).  Park your pushchair outside the house, and I’ll be in the Banqueting Hall to welcome you… but possibly not with our over-sized and over-excitable Great Dane!

Henry Lytton Cobbold
www.knebworthhouse.com

Greetings from Balmoral…  well, Knebworth House actually, but Knebworth House decked in tartan and hunting trophies and full of men in kilts.  For currently we are home to King George VI and expecting a visit from Winston Churchill.  Winston Churchill, of course, has visited Knebworth House before (his painting of the Banqueting Hall hangs there), but then he didn’t look suspiciously like Timothy Spall.  And over there is the King’s consort, Elizabeth, who when she was a teenage Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon used to pop over to Knebworth House from St Paul’s Walden for her dancing lessons (in what is now our Indian Exhibition) … but then she didn’t look quite as much like Helena Bonham Carter.  The King, however, now he does look familiar.  He was here last summer, looking perplexed on the doorstep.  But then he wasn’t the man in the skirt – then we were St Trinian’s School and that was Rupert Everett, the Head Mistress.  This time we’re Balmoral and we’ve let Colin Firth into the house, to play the stuttering King George in a film to be released in the autumn currently titled “The King’s Speech”.   Who knows, maybe one day they’ll make a film with actors playing Colin Firth and Helena Bonham Carter visiting Knebworth House… but they will probably shoot it on location at some other house!

Henry Lytton Cobbold
www.knebworthhouse.com