Henry Lytton Cobbold

In his Country Life article on Knebworth Garden Village (February 28, 2024), Clive Aslet marvels that apart from Central Square at Hampstead Garden Suburb, Knebworth Garden Village was architect Edwin Lutyens’s only town planning venture before New Delhi in India.  Quite a stepping stone!  Consequently it was an enthusiastic group of members of The Lutyens Trust that I guided around Knebworth on June 19^th to admire Lutyens’s work.

It was a beautifully sunny day and the Knebworth Garden Village Conservation Areas of Deards End Lane & Stockens Green were looking their best; the party stopped off in Oakfields Road to see the airy effect of its ‘recessed build line’, bringing ‘the country into the town’; and of course we toured the St. Martins neighbourhood, including his magnificent church.  We also had time to visit his beautiful memorial designs in St. Mary’s, to lunch at his splendid Golf Club, and enjoy the special treat of visiting three of the lovely houses he designed, Hillcroft, Wych Elms and Homewood (pictured).  Thank you so much to the owners who welcomed us so warmly.

It was his magnificent church St. Martins that provided the climax of the great day, with a lovely tea laid on by the Church and Al from Coasters, followed by stunning performances of his daughter Elisabeth Lutyens’s String Trio (1939) Opus 5 by the Knebworth Chamber Players, led by the brilliant Gaby Lester, and Variations for Flute Opus 38 by superb flautist Anna Noakes.

Knebworth Garden Village stepped up for a wonderful Lutyens Day!

Henry Lytton Cobbold
@HenryCobboldKH
@HenryCobbold

Last time Iron Maiden played Knebworth Park, 14 years ago, the lead singer Bruce Dickinson arrived flying his Fokker Dr.1 Triplane (as used by the infamous German flying ace Manfred von Ricthofen, aka The Red Baron) in a recreation aerial dogfight over the Knebworth Woods.  This July 11^th the band returns to Knebworth Park with Dickinson achieving a much greater feat – retaining all the power of his three-octave voice after beating back throat cancer.  It will be an emotional day for the 50,000 Iron Maiden fans that are expected.

Thank you for your patience for any local inconvenience caused by the concert – there is always some disruption and inconvenience on the roads – but we strongly believe it is worth it for the pleasure and joy Knebworth Park concerts bring to so many people, and for the business they bring to our area on their very occasional summer weekends.

If you are not an Iron Maiden fan and plan to give Knebworth Park a wide berth on 11^th July, do consider visiting at some other point during the summer holidays.  We are joining the Government’s new Great British Summer Savings scheme which means until 1st September, VAT on admission tickets will be temporarily reduced, helping families enjoy more affordable days out.  As part of the scheme, a Single Gardens & Park ticket will be £13.60 instead of £15.50, or a family ticket £50.75, reduced from £58.  If you plan to arrive in a Triplane, call in advance.

Henry Lytton Cobbold
@HenryCobboldKH
@HenryCobbold

What a great motto Stevenage has, “The heart of a town lies in its people”.  It is what comes to mind when I consider how blessed we have been with all the stalwart, dedicated, hard-working – and crucially, good-humoured – staff we’ve been so fortunate to work with at Knebworth House and Country Park.  There have been so many great characters who’ve joined us for the ride since I came to live in Knebworth House two generations ago in 1970.  Joining us that year was Derek Spencer, born and bred in Hitchin, a very fine carpenter and maintenance man who, at his interview, worried there would be enough work for him here.

“Enough work for me?!  I’ve never had a quiet day since.  Within minutes of arriving I was moving the gamekeeper and then rebuilding the old forge down in the village.  Then I had to move on to the riding stables, and I just wondered what on earth I had done.  You see Lord Cobbold wanted to make the estate viable and he really was in a hurry to do so.  He wanted to get people in, to show the public what a wonderful place Knebworth is.  Knebworth really has changed since I arrived: now it never closes, it’s always on the go.” [quote from Tales from the Country Estates, John Bailey 1999]

In 2020 we marked 50 years of Derek’s work at Knebworth House, but even that milestone was not going to stop him.  For another six years, well into his late 80s, Derek has continued to come to work one-day-a-week to share his wisdom and encyclopaedic knowledge of the estate and to mentor new members of the Maintenance Team.  All good things must come to an end, and Derek finally retired this Spring, but in every room in the House and every corner of the Park & Estate there is the evidence of over half a century of his beautiful work.  All hail you, Derek.  How on earth, now, are we going to know where anything is?!

Henry Lytton Cobbold
@HenryCobboldKH
@HenryCobbold

One the great pleasures of the Knebworth House Archive is visiting academics and authors informing us of stories and facts we did not know about the history of Knebworth House and the Lytton family.  A good example of this is the recent visit of author Hiroto Tanaka, who is researching the Lytton Commission, a United Nations visit to Manchuria in the 1930s to check on Japanese aggression, chaired by my great-grandfather Victor Lytton.

Mr Tanaka praised the Commission for the real time and space it gave for negotiations on the Japanese side.  He felt there were “genuine efforts to find a dignified way forward, one that did not require either party to lose face”.  It is good to hear this praise of my great-grandfather, but what I was not expecting was to hear that he has since become a popular meme in Japan!

This at-the-time famous image of members of the Lytton Commission examining the China Railway track at the site of the explosion which the Japanese used as justification for occupying Manchuria is so familiar in Japanese history books, that people have been recreating it.  That’s my great-grandfather, second from the left… and here are some of the recreations of him and his United Nations team that are apparently flooding the internet in Japan!

Henry Lytton Cobbold
@HenryCobboldKH
@HenryCobbold

For most of last month, just as we seemed, as a nation, to move a little further away from the United States, we were actually an hour closer.  American clocks went forward on 8^th March and ours not until on 29^th March.  This meant that the Oscars in Hollywood on 15^th March started an hour earlier than usual in the UK, at 11pm.  For the first time since I was very much younger I was tempted to stay up and watch them into the early hours of Monday morning.  They say it was a good year for films, but I’m not convinced.  Lots of violence and horror and grief was thrown into perspective for me when Barbara Streisand paid tribute Robert Redford by singing a chorus of “The Way We Were”, from their 1973 film – the kind of Romantic film that is nowhere to be seen in the 2020s.  I hope someday soon we can pull ourselves out of this Romance recession.

However just as violence and horror and grief were being handed awards in Hollywood, here in Hertfordshire, awards were being handed out for happier, more wholesome reasons.  The Hertfordshire Association of Museums gave their 2026 Award for Object of the Year to my Grandfather’s teddy bear.  This much-loved childhood companion of Cameron ‘Kim’ Cobbold (1904-1987) was brilliantly rescued by Alan & Jackie Primett when my Grandmother was downsizing towards the end of her life, and now resides on display as a gem amongst generations of much-loved Lytton family toys in the Hampden Room of Knebworth House.

But no time for speeches, as hot on its heels was another Award for one of our own.  Clare Fleck, Knebworth House’s Archivist for 30 years – before she retired to one day’s volunteering a week – was honoured with the Hertfordshire Association of Museums’ 2026 Heritage Hero Award.  Long a hero of ours, for her transformative work in the Knebworth House Archive, it was a great pleasure to see the so-deserving Clare celebrated in this way.

So, Clare, for sorting all the scattered pictures, and Bear, for all the smiles you left behind, we stand in ovation and celebration of you in 2026 for The Way You Are!

Henry Lytton Cobbold
@HenryCobboldKH
@HenryCobbold

Although my great-great-great-grandfather, the 19^th Century author Edward Bulwer Lytton is not much read nowadays, his influence is still to be found in popular culture.  A great example of this is the spectacular immersive exhibition that has been at the Excel Centre in London this winter (until 15^th March).  The exhibition is named after his 1834 novel, “The Last Days of Pompeii”, and pays tribute to him in its displays.  Travelling back on the Tube towards Finsbury Park, I was chuffed when my train stopped in a station where the exhibition’s giant poster – with the big headline “The Last Days of Pompeii” – was directly opposite me on the station wall in 2026.

Extraordinary then, that when my train stopped at the next Tube station, the poster directly opposite me was a giant colour photograph of Edward Bulwer Lytton’s home.  The house he transformed into a High Gothic fantasy castle is the background to the poster for the new fantasy movie “100 Nights of Hero”, which filmed here last year…  Then things started getting spooky.  At the very next station – again, right in front of me, out the Tube window – was another image of Edward Bulwer Lytton’s home!  This time in a giant poster for the Iron Maiden concert in Knebworth Park on July 11^th.  Edward Bulwer Lytton may be a dead, forgotten author, but he’s all over London this season!

So do the fashionable thing, and come see Edward Bulwer Lytton’s home for yourself this Parish Open Day, Sunday 22nd March.  Your invite is a copy of this magazine – bring it to the gate at St Mary’s.  Celebrate with us as we kick off Knebworth House’s 2026 Open Season, still making our mark after all these centuries!

Henry Lytton Cobbold
@HenryCobboldKH
@HenryCobbold

If you didn’t catch it, I recommend a web search for the excellent episode of BBC Radio 4’s ‘History’s Toughest Heroes’ on my great-great-aunt the suffragette Constance Lytton.  That broadcast not a surprise, because I’m in it – but what was a lovely surprise was the BBC 2’s ‘Celebrity Mastermind’ over Christmas that featured Constance as the specialist subject of broadcaster Ashley James.  These were the questions Clive Myrie posed:

• “What alias did Lytton use to ensure that she’d received the same treatment as less privileged working-class suffragettes after her arrest in Liverpool in January 1910?”
• “What was the title of the book written by Lytton and first published in March 1914 that describes her experiences after being jailed for her part in suffragette protests?”
• “In protest at her arrest and detention in Holloway Prison after a demonstration in February 1909, Lytton carved which letter of the alphabet into her chest?”
• “Which of her fellow suffragettes, traumatized by her experiences of being force-fed in 1913, did little Lytton later support by paying her private asylum fees?”
• “’The Pageant of Great Women’, staged in Bristol in support of the suffragette movement in November 1910, Lytton portrayed which renowned nurse and social reformer?”
• “At what house in Hertfordshire, designed by Edwin Lutyens and built in 1901, did Lytton live for much of her later life?”
• “Lytton helped working class girls to participate in what traditional activity with the help of members of the Esperance Club?”
• “In 1896, Lytton helped her aunt, Mrs. Earle, write a bestselling book with the title ‘Pot-Pourri from a –‘ what?

I am relieved to say that I did as well as Ashley, only not knowing the answer to question 4.  How have you done?  As Knebworth residents, I hope you got question 6.  The answers are:  1) Jane Wharton.  2) ‘Prisons and Prisoners’.  3) V.  4) Rachel Peace.  5) Florence Nightingale.  6) Homewood.  7) Morris dancing.  8) Surrey Garden.

Henry Lytton Cobbold
@HenryCobboldKH
@HenryCobbold

Knebworth House is too small.  Not for living in.  No sympathy expected there.  But too small for the extraordinary collection of historical artefacts that have been collected by 19 generations of the Lytton family.  As a living museum, that collection continues to grow, and two of our most popular exhibits now are our Film and Music exhibitions covering movies-made and concerts-held over just the last 50 years.  Thus, for the majority of our pre-20th Century collection we are particularly grateful to HALS, Hertfordshire Archives and Local Studies, in Hertford for acting as current custodians.

A few weeks ago Martha and I, and Edward and Helena, attended the launch of the digitisation of the Lytton family archive at HALS, and were reminded of some of its fascinating treasures.  For example, this Letter of Patent from King William III and Queen Mary II “to our beloved subjects, the inhabitants of the town of Stevenage in the County of Hertford, that they and their successors may have and hold one market every week on Friday, and one fair each year for three days, namely on the Tuesday before the Feast of St Michael the Archangel and the two days next following, in the said town of Stevenage… without any impediment, molestation, disturbance or contradiction of us, our heirs or successors, or of any officer or minister of us whatsoever.”

As I write this Stevenage is a maelstrom more than a market of Christmas shopping, so clearly we are still living free of the King & Queen’s molestation and contradiction in this respect.  I just need to be conscious that I, personally, don’t need any more artefacts. Knebworth House doesn’t have room for them.  Unless they are of historical interest of course.

Henry Lytton Cobbold
@HenryCobboldKH
@HenryCobbold

It was 20 years ago today… well, this month, that I started writing a monthly piece for the Parish News.  That’s 240 contributions, and this the 241st.  The past paragraphs are all on line on the Knebworth House website, and I trust will keep future historians busy one day collecting snapshots across the generations.  It has been a privilege all these years to have in print what’s been going on at Knebworth House and Country Park and in the life of the 19th generation of the Lytton family to live here.

The idea for a regular contribution from Knebworth House came from Major Robin Wordsworth who was leading the ‘community’ chapter of the 2007 Knebworth Parish Plan, on which I and a group of spirited volunteers under the leadership of Linda Brookes began work in 2004.  The years of work on that Parish Plan were done under the auspices of the Parish Council, at that time under the chairmanship of John Bantick.

Being away at the end of the summer I was late to the sad news that we lost John in August.  As a community we are indebted to him for the many years that he devoted to the Parish Council, and Knebworth House for the many years he spent on the Knebworth House Education and Preservation Trust.  John was known beyond our parish as a singer and musician.  Amongst many splendid music projects he was chorus master of the Welwyn Garden City Music Society.  As a friend, my fondest memory of John will always be his beautiful rendition of my great-great-grandfather’s song “‘Twas Eve And May”.  I treasure my recording of John playing piano and singing this song as a particularly evocative snapshot of Knebworth generations meeting across the centuries.

Happy Christmas one and all,

Henry Lytton Cobbold
@HenryCobboldKH

I was first bowled over by the beautiful voice of Oliver Darley when I saw the original West End production of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “The Woman in White”, in which he played the role of the villain Sir Percival Glyde.  Some voices have that extraordinary ability to hit sweet spots that make them the aural equivalent of honey.  Oliver has such a voice, and I am so excited that he is bringing “Simply Sinatra” – stories and songs of the greatest star of the Great American Songbook, Frank Sinatra – to the Banqueting Hall of Knebworth House this Christmas for two performances, 4pm & 7.30pm on Sunday 21st December.

What a perfect start to Christmas week!  The Knebworth House Christmas Tree will be glittering in the corner, the hearth fire will be lit, mulled wine will be served… I can think of no better way to slip into the spirit of the holiday season.  My friends, I’ll say it clear, come fly with me, come play amongst the stars – there’s bells to be rung, a wonderful fling to be flung – as Oliver Darley and pianist Chad Lelong lead us all the way, this Christmas, through every Sinatra classic.  Start spreading the news!

Henry Lytton Cobbold
@HenryCobboldKH