Henry Lytton Cobbold

I’ve lived in Knebworth a long time, but I have never seen the Watchman’s Tower of Knebworth House look as good as it looks this morning.  For as long as I have known it, it has always looked unloved and crumbling.  Of course it’s never been the former, but it has always been the latter.  It’s simply that there’s always been more important worries regarding the masonry of Knebworth House.  And in truth there still are.  But sometimes it’s worth focusing on an individual project and making some visible progress.  It’s good for the spirit.

So, on behalf of the The Knebworth House Education and Preservation Trust charity, a big thank you to all who have added their support to make the Watchman’s Tower renovation possible, especially Historic England, the Country Houses Foundation and the Heritage Lottery Fund.  The scaffolding came down yesterday, and the results are to marvel at.

The Watchman’s Tower at Knebworth House ~ Before and After  

Only the exterior is viewable for the moment – we have to wait until the oak from Knebworth Woods dries before the internal staircase can be recreated later in the year – but I do encourage you to come and admire the work.  And what better day to do that than our Parish Open Day on Sunday 24^th March.  Admission to the Park, Gardens and House will be free to everyone with a copy of the Parish News magazine (or proof that they live in the Parish).  Enter the Park via Old Knebworth, and the gate at St Mary’s – the only entrance for Parish Open Day – and there it will be, in all its splendidness, on your left… the Watchman’s Tower.

Henry Lytton Cobbold
@HenryCobboldKH

Our fascination with the Tudors and the Stuarts continues with a new film at the cinema about Mary Queen of Scots’ relationship with Queen Elizabeth I.  The film suggests that the two cousins met – rather bizarrely in a laundry, presumably for visual effect – despite there being no evidence of a meeting.  At Knebworth House an inscription above a bedroom fireplace suggests that Queen Elizabeth stayed here with the Lytton family in the year of the Spanish Armada, 1588 – but this inscription too, I’m afraid, we must accept is for visual effect and carries similar dramatic licence.

Inscription in the Queen Elizabeth Room, Knebworth House  

A remarkable work of research by the Cambridge academic Marion E. Colthorpe has tracked Queen Elizabeth I’s day-to-day travels – or ‘progresses’ as they were known – throughout her long reign.  These reveal that she did come to stay at Knebworth House, not in 1588, but on Tuesday 21^st of August 1571.  She stayed for three days apparently, almost bankrupting the family with the preparations necessary.  The research also reveals that she came to dinner twice at Knebworth House before this, in 1566 and 1568.

Recently we thought that Mary Queen of Scots’ son King James I (of England, James VI of Scotland) chose to spend Christmas at Knebworth House in 1606.  We’d misread a quote from a letter saying that the King had been “at an inn in Ware, with his hawks” a couple of days before – but in fact it was the letter-writer that came on to Knebworth House, not the king.  Oh well.  Maybe we’ll use some dramatic licence there too.  Our Dining Parlour does have a couple of King James’s sofas – maybe we’ll say he stopped by for a sleep over at some point!

Henry Lytton Cobbold
@HenryCobboldKH

I was pleased to be able to make a statement in support of the Parish Council and Save Our Station Pub at the Public Inquiry.  I was able to explain why The Station Inn is New Knebworth’s only pub, despite Knebworth now being the largest village in Hertfordshire.  For those not familiar with the history, this is because prior to my great-great-grandfather, Robert Lytton, negotiating the opening of a Railway Station in 1884, there was no village here.  What we now know as Knebworth was farmland at the west end of Datchworth Parish.

With the railway station came a new settlement called ‘Knebworth Station’.  The Station Inn – one of only a handful of residences – was built and leased to the Fordham Company with a restrictive covenant on us, the landowner, that no other ‘alehouse or beerhouse’ should be built or permitted to be built or any ‘house or premises to be used for the sale of intoxicating liquors’ within ‘a radius of one mile’, for 99 years (i.e. until 1982).  The community was so small that Fordhams didn’t want its lease devalued by us building competition.

Knebworth Station ~ the original name of what we now know as Knebworth Village

This covenant stayed in place despite the little hamlet of Knebworth Station becoming, in 1909, a much larger village.  My great-grandfather, Victor Lytton, inspired by the Garden City movement and the recent creation of Letchworth Garden City, initiated a scheme with his brother-in-law, the architect Edwin Lutyens, to create a new settlement around ‘Knebworth Station’ called ‘Knebworth Garden Village’.  The original plan for Knebworth Garden Village was larger even than today’s village.  Although the full scheme was not completed, the population of Knebworth increased from a few hundred to about 2,500 by the Second World War, and very little that was built before the Second World War deviated from this Knebworth Garden Village scheme.

I explained to the Inquiry that my family now, as The Station Inn’s previous owners, in turn, hold a restrictive covenant over the pub.  This is because the Fordham Company exchanged their lease for a freehold in 1931.  Any property that we sold during the time of Knebworth Garden Village was covenanted to protect the Garden Village vision – preserving green spaces within the community, preserving the generous width between the built frontage on either side of our roads and avenues… and preventing, where possible, infill – which, of course, makes a Garden Village no longer a Garden Village.

These restrictive covenants pre-date the Planning Authority, but I very much hope that we are able to keep the garden of New Knebworth’s only pub.  I hope that the area around the pub retains its width, life, lights and people – so that those using the Railway Station at all times of day and night can feel safe, and feel that they are arriving at the centre of our community, and not at the edge of a dormitory suburb.

The Station Inn is the original heart of New Knebworth.  A community needs its vital organs – to live and to breathe and to prosper – and I believe that The Station Inn pub is one of my community’s vital organs.

Henry Lytton Cobbold
@HenryCobboldKH

Representatives from authors’ and musicians’ homes and museums from around the United Kingdom visited Knebworth House in November for the 15^th annual LitHouses Conference.  Sir Walter Scott and James Boswell were represented from Scotland, Dylan Thomas from Wales, John Ruskin from the Lake District, the Brontës from Yorkshire… all the way to Benjamin Britten from the far east coast of East Anglia, Jane Austen from Hampshire and Thomas Hardy from Dorset.  A truly nationwide gathering.

The LitHouses Group at Knebworth House ~ November 2018 ~ www.lithouses.org

The topic was literary homes as an education resource and we had speakers from the Universities of Hertfordshire and Cambridge.  A portrait of Edward Bulwer Lytton watched over proceedings and – as a great patron of writers and writer’s causes who, with his friend Charles Dickens (also represented), created The Guild of Literature and Art (now part of the Artists’ Benevolent Fund) – I know my great-great-great-grandfather would have approved, and been delighted that his home was hosting such an august group representing the country’s greatest authors and composers.  I suspect he was present.

As his good friend wrote – exactly 175 years ago – “A Merry Christmas to us all; God bless us every one!”

Henry Lytton Cobbold
@HenryCobboldKH

The Knebworth House Education and Preservation Trust (KHEPT) has never in the past succeeded in getting a grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund.  Not for want of trying.  The charity has put together expensive applications three times since the 1990s and has been turned down every time.  Until now, that is.  And like buses, two successful applications have arrived at the same time!

The first was initiated by Stevenage Museum, working with Youth Connexions Hertfordshire, North Herts Museum, the Garden City Collection and KHEPT.  This is a grant for the project ‘Stevenage and North Herts Suffrage Stories: 100 years of votes for women’, which looks at key players in the national movement who have links with our area, like our own Constance Lytton.   Alongside new research, exhibits and a programme of events, a new book will be produced and launched at Knebworth House in the Spring.

The second Heritage Lottery Fund grant is a contribution to the restoration and educational interpretation of Knebworth House’s Watchman’s Tower, which has been derelict since the Second World War.  The pigeons that have been squatting in this roofless tower are being moved on, the walls and exterior stucco repaired, and the floors and a staircase reinstated.  This will allow visitors a spectacular view from the hilltop, overlooking not only the exterior of Knebworth House, but also St Mary’s Church and the surrounding countryside to the north and east.  We will be re-imagining how this view looked at various points in history.

Interior of Knebworth House Watchman’s Tower – until 2018

All here are excited about both these projects, and very grateful to the Heritage Lottery Fund for its support.

Henry Lytton Cobbold
@HenryCobboldKH

“Famous word that, innit, ‘Knebworth’?… You know, Led Zeppelin, ‘n’ all that…”
“Oasis…”
“Everyone… ‘Knebworth’!”
“Happy Mondays” “Happy Mondays!”
Shaun Ryder and Bez of the Happy Mondays – Knebworth Park 01.09.18

It was a happy Monday after the weekend of Cool Britannia last month.  An exciting return of live rock music to Knebworth Park after a three year hiatus.  The new festival was roundly praised as a fine new event for the summer calendar, and a great ending to the long hot summer of 2018.

The theme of the festival was the music of the 1990s, and it harked back to the record-breaking weekend in Knebworth Park in 1996 when the band Oasis, at the height of their fame and influence, played to a quarter of a million people.  The bands Ocean Colour Scene and Cast, who played with Oasis that weekend, were back, along with the Happy Mondays, the Lightning Seeds and other 90s favourites.

Cool Britannia 2018

I was worried before the event that anything that calls itself ‘cool’, is inherently not cool.  But what I witnessed was a great summer party of happy families enjoying themselves in the sunshine, and a healthy nostalgia for a time when what split the nation was a simple as whether you preferred Oasis or Blur.  Here’s to guitar bands, and the return of live rock music to Knebworth Park!

Henry Lytton Cobbold
@HenryCobboldKH

There was excitement in our Archives recently when a newspaper cutting from July 1910 surfaced revealing that “Mrs. (Emmeline) Pankhurst addressed a woman suffrage meeting in the grounds of Knebworth House. Lord Lytton and Lady Constance Lytton also spoke.”  We are delighted to have a record that Mrs Pankhurst visited Knebworth.  She will have spoken in what we know as ‘The Lytton Hall’, on our drive off Old Knebworth Lane, which is now home to a company making holograms.  If only they could make holograms of the ghosts of the fascinating characters who’ve been in that hall!

You can see suffragettes in Knebworth Park this September – in the place Mrs Pankhurst would speak now if a venue was needed – the Knebworth Park Barns.  On Sunday 16^th there will be two performances (2pm & 7pm) by the Hertfordshire-based theatre company Pins & Feathers of a new drama with music marking the 100^th anniversary of women’s suffrage.  “The March” features the extraordinary Great Pilgrimage of 1913, in which thousands of women from all over the country marched to London to demonstrate peaceful mass support for the vote.  Marchers came down the Great North Road and passed along the brand new High Street of the village of Knebworth.

I will be taking part in a panel discussion after the 7pm performance, to talk about the role of my great-great-aunt Constance.  Do come if you can – details on our website – and if you haven’t yet seen our Archivists’ excellent new exhibit on Constance and her sacrifice for suffragette cause, it remains on display in Knebworth House on weekends through the end of September.

Henry Lytton Cobbold
@HenryCobboldKH

I can’t possibly be old enough to listen to Radio 4.  But then my children tell me they listen to podcasts – which are basically Radio 4.  So clearly I am out of step.  Podcasts are a good way of doing two things at the same time.  Again, not being female, something that’s a challenge to me.  But educating or entertaining yourself while you are doing something else – travelling, household chores, etc. – is making the most of this wonderful life.  I must do more of it.

If you are ahead of me on this and a seasoned podcast listener – or, like me, old enough to be listening to Radio 4 – you might be interested in historian Dan Snow’s podcast on Knebworth House.  It is 44 minutes of Dan and me touring the house and its stories.  You can find it on his History Hit online channel or by browsing for it – I searched “Knebworth House” + ‘acast’.  [ https://play.acast.com/s/dansnowshistoryhit/knebworthhouse]   The latter route requires you to listen to some adverts, including Dan talking about trousers for 3 minutes.  I quite enjoyed that bit.  Apparently you don’t get that on Radio 4.

Henry Lytton Cobbold
@HenryCobboldKH

Dogs of Knebworth House

When we brought our two dogs, Zac and Willow (top row, 2^nd & 3^rd from the right), to live at Knebworth House from the Great Dane Rescue Centre in Lincolnshire they were both 3 years old and rescued from difficult homes.  I remember the excitement and the awe when they first saw their new back yard.  Then we took them into the Knebworth House Gardens – double the excitement, double the awe!  Then we took them into Knebworth Park – triple the excitement, triple the awe!  Things were about to get a whole lot better in their lives – and, sure enough, Willow is no longer the skinny thing she appears in this photo.

Knebworth House and Park has always been a happy place for dogs.  Generations of Lytton family dogs rest in the Pet Cemetery in the Gardens. This collage shows some of them.  It is a good month to celebrate them, as DogFest returns to the Park on Saturday 7^th and Sunday 8^th July.  Hosted by “SuperVet” Noel Fitzpatrick, DogFest is a fun-filled, action packed day in Knebworth Park for all dogs and dog lovers.  Expect Dog Diving, Hay Bale Racing, Flyball, Agility Obstacle Courses, and general fun, games & shopping for your dog.  Get first-hand advice from the experts on all aspects of your dog’s life, and then join the Great Dog Walk – a charity walk around Knebworth Park – and share in the excitement and awe that Knebworth Park has offered to dogs and their owners for many generations!

Henry Lytton Cobbold
@HenryCobboldKH

On Thursday 28^th June we are visited by the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, a theatre group modelled on and named after Shakespeare’s original troupe of travelling players.  They will be performing ‘The Tempest’ on the garden lawn in front of Knebworth House, and – in this particularly lovely and special setting – we are assured “such stuff as dreams are made on”!

In 1963, my grandfather Cameron Cobbold became Lord Chamberlain and – as had been the case since Tudor times – it became his job to censor plays.  The Lord Chamberlain’s ‘blue pencil’ was used to strike out words felt to be offensive.  The ‘blue pencil’ was the object of much of the anger of the emerging generation of ‘angry young playwrights’ of the 1950s and 1960s.  There was even a Peter Cook and Dudley Moore satirical sketch called ‘Lord Cobbold’, in which the Lord Chamberlain asks why he would want to see all that sex and violence at the theatre, when he can get all that at home.  My grandfather, not surprisingly, was uncomfortable with this aspect of his role.  Censorship in this form had, at last, become untenable.  And so, I am proud to say, under his tenure it was brought to a stop as part of the 1968 Theatres Act.

Cameron Cobbold – Lord Chamberlain 1963-1971

So now the Lord Chamberlain’s Men can say what they will in Lord Cobbold’s garden…  But “be not afeard; the isle is full of noises, sounds, and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not”.  ‘The Tempest’ is not an angry young play, it is one of the English language’s most beautifully poetic – and there are few more splendid places to see it performed than in the gardens of Knebworth House on a June evening!

Henry Lytton Cobbold
@HenryCobboldKH