Henry Lytton Cobbold

‘Autosol’ makes metal shine but still at night ghosts squeak and grind
Perchance dear Henry ‘tis just a dream that wanders round your mind…

Last November’s edition of this magazine signed off with a poem “The K-lanking K-nights of K-nebworth” which was cryptically signed “Jon SG3 (with kind permission of Hon. Henry Cobbold)”.  I have met readers who – thrown by the mysterious moniker – assumed this happy verse was written by me.  I have told them they must be amongst the very few in the village who do not recognise the inimitable style of the delightful John Catt.

John was tickled by an old column of mine in which I describe how we solved a problem of how to polish our suits of amour at Knebworth House by using ‘Autosol’ from Halfords.  A great problem solver himself, John and I spent many a Wednesday evening together between 2004 and 2007 identifying problems as part of the Knebworth Parish Plan Team.  I don’t believe John was ever cowed by a problem (and I marvelled at the delight he took in tabulating the complex results and formulas needed to interpret our community surveys!), but above all else I was impressed by John’s philosophy of always considering for a moment if he could be wrong.  More often than not John was not wrong – but I have always thought that a great way to approach and solve a problem.

Our village lost a great problem solver when John passed away in July, and we will miss him greatly.  Those dream(s) that wander round (my) mind, dear John, will I suspect be made merry by the sound of your hearty laughter – if I do ever meet a ghostly knight who walk(s) old Knebworth’s halls, I fully expect it to be you!

Henry Lytton Cobbold
www.knebworthhouse.com

The Mausoleum in Knebworth Park was broken into in the 1950s, so my grandmother Hermione had it bricked up.  Towards the end of her life, she was keen to restore the building, so in 1999 we broke through the brick and replaced the door and the lock.  We found that one of the coffins had been crowbarred open.  Its lid sat loose.  Clearly someone had not known how fantastically unlikely it would be for ever-short-of-cash Edward Bulwer Lytton – or any member of the Lytton family – to consign anything of monetary value to eternity.

The coffin was his daughter’s – my great-great-great-aunt, Emily Bulwer Lytton (1828-1848) – who died aged 19, in tragic and never fully explained circumstances.  Around the same time as the discovery of her open coffin, we also discovered a box of letters that Emily wrote to her father from an Orthopaedic Institute in Germany, where she had been sent for three years for treatment of curvature of the spine.  The letters are “cross-written” – the letter-writer turns the paper 90 degrees and writes over what they have already written to save paper and postage – so are very difficult for an untrained eye to read.  Our Archivist Clare Fleck has spent the last 16 years transcribing the letters, and they tell a most extraordinary story of a troubled but much loved teenager – which I have just finished turning into a biography to be published at Christmas.

To celebrate the completion of the manuscript and Emily’s 188^th birthday – 27^th June – Clare and I, and a collection of people who have contributed to the book, went back into the Mausoleum with a white rose from the Knebworth House Gardens, which we put into Emily’s coffin before sealing the loose lid once and for all.  It was a moving moment – and putting it in perspective for me is the fact that if I am fortunate enough to end up in this august company one day, and my descendants come and visit me on my 188^th birthday, it will be the year 2150.  How happy will my spirits be if there are still beautiful roses blooming in the Knebworth House Gardens in the second half of the next century!

Henry Lytton Cobbold
www.knebworthhouse.com

My record time in the 60 metre hurdles at my junior school having remained unbeaten for seven years in the 1970s, frankly I am disappointed that I am not included in our summer exhibition.  To mark 2016’s exciting summer of sport, our archivist Jill Campbell has created a new display in Knebworth House celebrating the Lytton family’s sporting achievements – and very fascinating it is too.

I knew my great-uncle Antony was involved in the establishment of downhill ski racing as a sport and wrote an influential book on boxing; I knew his father, Victor, was a very fine ice skater, and it is a treat to see old 1920s films of him skating beautifully brought to light; I have not been allowed to forget that my father, David, holds the record as the eldest jouster in the country, lancing all five hoops in his final joust, aged 72… however I did not know that in 1908, my great-granduncle, Neville Lytton (1879-1951) won an Olympic bronze medal for Real Tennis.  Not only that, but the future 3^rd Earl of Lytton was Queen’s Club’s International Amateur Tennis Champion in 1911 and 1913 and runner up in 1910 and 1912.

Jill has found some wonderful images of all of the above, including this one of Neville and his 1910 challengers (that’s him on the left).  I hope you have time over the summer to come see the exhibit.  I promise there are no pictures of me in my spandex or my speedos – although, Jill, did you know I was also my junior school’s 1975 backstroke champion…

Henry Lytton Cobbold
www.knebworthhouse.com

Neville Lytton at Queen’s Club in 19010

The iconic Rolling Stones lips stage at Knebworth ’76

“The Rolling Stones play Knebworth at the weekend amid speculation that it is the last time they’ll appear live in this country…  ‘When bands have been around this long,’ guitarist Keith Richards is reported to have said, ‘they should be dead and buried.’  And says [singer, Mick] Jagger: ‘I would hate to think I would still be singing Satisfaction when I’m forty.’”  reports Maurice Chittenden of the Luton Evening Post in the summer of 1976.

In the summer of 2016, the concert itself is forty – and Mick Jagger somewhat older – but still the Rolling Stones are not gathering moss, announcing a big concert in Palm Springs, California, in the autumn.  Also on the bill are British artists Paul McCartney, Roger Waters of Pink Floyd and The Who.  “Sounds like a great bill for Knebworth”, a friend says to me, hoping I will say that Knebworth has been lined up as the U.K. venue for a similar concert next year.  “We already did that, in 1990,” I say, blasé, “all those bands played Knebworth long ago – the Americans are just catching up.”  But, of course, I entirely agree – if such a concert were brought to the UK, Knebworth Park, with the largest licence capacity in the country, would be the place for it.

I might even go watch this time.  In the summer of 1976, I was a ghastly 14-year-old, Star Trek was on the telly, and Mick Jagger just some skinny old bloke.  Well, Mick Jagger is still skinny, still old, and still singing Satisfaction – and, forty years on, I am only one of these things!

Henry Lytton Cobbold
www.knebworthhouse.com

Opening Knebworth House to the Public in April 1932

My grandmother Hermione, newly-married and living in Milan, received this newspaper cutting from her mother in April 1932.  Her mother’s comment was “There have been about 900 tourists in the week – Keep that up, and we are saved – But alas there are only 4 Bank holidays a year.”  So it was during the Great Depression.  But how different is it 84 years later?  And how different was it 84 years before?

84 years later, in 2016, there were storms over Easter weekend, and every shilling we took at the gate went to pay the jousters, who had to cancel three of their four performances.  Alas, there are only 3 Bank holidays left!

84 years earlier, in 1848, the Lytton family had had to spend the winter with the Tennysons (cousins of Alfred) at Bayons Manor in Lincolnshire because it was too expensive to live in Knebworth House except during the summer months.

Last week, in researching 1848, Clare our archivist and I went to visit Bayons Manor – or rather, what used to be the wonderful gothic mansion Bayons Manor, and is now just a mound of brambles on a Lincolnshire hillside.  For Bayons Manor did not survive the 20^th Century.  It too opened to the public, in 1934, but the shillings were not enough and what was left of the crumbling deserted mansion was dynamited in the 1960s by the farmer who’d bought the land.

Persistence, hard work – a little luck – and the support of its local community have so far kept Knebworth House from going the way of Bayons Manor.  In another 84 years time, it will be the year 2100.  If we can keep up the aforementioned, this wonderful gothic mansion on a Hertfordshire hillside has as good as any chance of surviving into another century as more than a mound of brambles.

Henry Lytton Cobbold
www.knebworthhouse.com

“Fair daffodils we weep to see you fade away so soon…”  For some reason I can still remember the whole of this 17^th Century poem having had to learn it at school when I was 13.  But this year, they didn’t fade away too soon!  Despite popping up in January thinking it was Spring, the daffodils not only made it to our Parish Open Day, but they now look set to make it to the Easter holidays – with a bit of help from Easter’s early calendar date.  And how lovely they looked on our Parish Open Day in that glorious sunshine!  What a perfect start to our season.  Thank you to the 500 of you that joined us to celebrate our opening Sunday.

Hopefully you will return to the Gardens during the summer to see the wonderful progression of buds and blooms that nature magically conjures for us – with a little help from its good-looking assistants, our hard-working Gardens Team and chief after-hours Garden warden, Oscar the Great Dane.  You too can be a part of nature’s spectacular show this summer if you are an artist of beautiful three-dimensional objects.  We are inviting submissions for a Sculpture Trail in the Gardens this June and July.  This is an opportunity to display your work to our visitors and, if you wish, offer it for sale commission-free (all the details are on our website).  After hours, it will be sniffed by our Garden warden, who does have his own particular way of expressing his critical appraisal – but that’s not going to happen to your masterpiece!  No – your work, I’m sure, will bedazzle both man and beast in the bouquet of beauty that is Knebworth House Gardens at the height of summer!

Henry Lytton Cobbold
www.knebworthhouse.com

There is no clearer sign of getting older than time passing more quickly.  I find this particularly true of the winter months, which as a child seemed interminable.  Now our Christmas events come to an end and before we can say “Jack Robinson” – or more appropriately “Repairs and Maintenance” – we are opening again for our Summer Season.

This year we open a week earlier than usual – on the weekend of 12^th /13^th March – to coincide with English Tourism Week.  Hertfordshire’s new tourism initiative, Visit Herts – which my wife Martha chairs – has responded to this national initiative with the Hertfordshire “Big Weekend” (www.hertsbigweekend.co.uk), which encourages us to visit the wonderful attractions on our own doorstep.

The wonderful attraction on your own doorstep invites you –- as a resident of Knebworth Parish – to visit for free on Sunday 13^th March, our Parish Open Day for 2016.  We open at 11am, and all we ask is that you enter via the white gate by St. Mary’s and bring something that says you live in the Parish – a copy of this splendid magazine will do.  We hope a garden full of glorious daffodils awaits you.  Even they, like me, have thought the winter short – this year they seem particularly impatient, no doubt like your children and grandchildren, to get out into the Spring air!

Henry Lytton Cobbold
www.knebworthhouse.com

It was a thrill to see Knebworth House on television on Christmas Day.  6.6 million people watched the final episode of “Downton Abbey”, which – as it has been all this season and last – was introduced with a shot across the valley of Knebworth House.  The image promoted Amazon’s sponsorship of the programme and its sequence of commercials – all shot at Knebworth House – which played throughout the show.

2015 was a good year for filming at the House, and in 2016 you we will see us pop up on television again in “Dr Thorne”, an Anthony Trollope adaptation by the Downton Abbey writer Julian Fellowes, and “The Crown”, a miniseries about the Queen written by Peter Morgan, who wrote the play “The Audience”, in which Helen Mirren played the Queen.  In “The Crown” we play the interior of Balmoral Castle, as we did in the 2010 film “The King’s Speech” – flattering, if surprising, typecasting!

Filming is welcome unbudgeted business for us, especially in a year when we have no concert in the Park.  We don’t budget for either film or music, as we cannot trust that we will secure the business, which is random and market-driven – and indeed this year again, at time of writing, it looks as though there will be no concert.  This is a shame, because historically the sixth year of the decade has been a good one for Knebworth Park – the Rolling Stones in 1976, Queen in 1986, Oasis in 1996, and The Who (albeit at a private event) in 2006.  With no music to go dance to, I guess we’ll just have to stay in and watch television!

Henry Lytton Cobbold
www.knebworthhouse.com

2016 will be the 10^th Anniversary of the new Knebworth Village Festival – if it happens.  I say “new” because there have been Knebworth Village events as long as there has been a Knebworth Village.  I say “if it happens”, because the lack of volunteers this year means that it may not.

The Knebworth Village Festival we currently enjoy was revived in 2006, as a result of meetings of the Knebworth Parish Plan Team, which took place between 2004 and 2007.  The Team was asked to report on “Community Spirit” – and the Community Survey undertaken, not surprisingly, showed 92% agreeing that a sense of community is important, and 84% feeling that community events are an essential part of village life.  Team member Robin Wordsworth then cajoled Brian Worthington, who had been involved in successful village events in the early 1990s, to spearhead a revival of the Knebworth Village Festival.

Brian, brilliantly, with a small team of volunteers, built up the Festival over the subsequent nine summers – and his hard work contributed to a well-deserved MBE at the end of 2014.  In 2015 the indefatigable Ruth Burr took over, and this June saw one of the sunniest, happiest Village Fun Days ever.  For 2016, one or two of the old team – including our priceless treasurer, John Warner-Smith – having volunteered for 10 festivals, are stepping down, and volunteer numbers have become unsustainably low.  If you are one of that 84% mentioned above, how about contacting Ruth (knebworthvillagefestival@hotmail.com) with a New Year’s resolution to make the 10^th Anniversary of the Knebworth Village Festival the very best yet!

Henry Lytton Cobbold
www.knebworthhouse.com

As many will be heading to Christmas Parties at Knebworth Barns this month, I thought it would be an appropriate month to follow the recent advice of a kind reader and relate the history of the two original Barns, for those too young to remember or who have moved to Knebworth since the early 1970s.  “Move tithe barns to make a restaurant” was the second on a long list of tasks my mother and father scribbled out in 1970 to be completed before the opening of Knebworth Park the following spring, after “Build the new drive off the motorway” and “Build a kitchen and loo block”.  Their priority was a catering facility that looked in keeping with the park, and two 400-year-old barns that were part of Manor Farm and Lodge Farm were chosen to be given a new life.

Lodge Barn was dismantled and rebuilt on the new site.  Manor Barn, however, was jacked up on sixteen huge wheels and pulled by a steam traction engine two-thirds of a mile across the park.  It was the largest building every to be moved intact in England.  It was meant to take five days – it took five weeks.  My mother recalls, “Charlie, the driver of the traction engine pulling the barn, regularly got bored and disappeared to ‘his office’ – his name for The Lytton Arms.  When all was ready he had to be extracted from the pub and guided back to the engine.  On the first pull, the engine went backwards instead of the barn going forwards.  But it got there in the end, and not a single tile fell off the roof!”

In 1973 you could get a four-course lunch or dinner there, “including coffee”, for £2.50 – it is a little more today, but still a unique and historic environment, and scene of many happy weddings, parties and community events.  Thanks Charlie!  It was worth the puff!

Henry Lytton Cobbold
www.knebworthhouse.com