Henry Lytton Cobbold

It is a little disconcerting when you throw back your bedroom curtains and the sunrise is a giant movie light pointed at you!  This happened to us in November, during filming of the 4^th Season of The Crown.  Knebworth House reprises its role as the interior of Balmoral Castle, and the bedroom just below ours was being used as Margaret Thatcher’s guest room.  The actress Gillian Anderson was every inch the former Prime Minister, perfectly recreating her mannerisms and voice.

This was not the only surprise.  I walked into the Knebworth House Library and the entire Royal Family were sitting round the fire – Princess Diana, Prince Charles, The Queen, The Queen Mother, Princess Anne, Princess Margaret and the Duke of Edinburgh – all staring at their mobile phones.  Well, actually not The Queen.  She was knitting.  She was of course Olivia Coleman.

The Crown was a very different film shoot to the previous one Knebworth House had hosted in September.  This was a comedy about Eurovision staring Will Ferrell.  In this we were meant to be the tasteless mansion of a Russian Oligarch.  Not particularly flattering casting.  I’m pleased to report, however, that the set dressers needed to work very hard to make us look suitable tasteless, bringing in reams of gold sparkly carpet and some particularly in-your-face naked statues to achieve the effect!

Knebworth House has a long and colourful history of appearing in movies and television shows, and stories such as these will be part of a talk I am giving in aid of The Knebworth Twinning Association in the Banqueting Hall on Thursday 26^th March.  I hope to see you there.  I just need to remember that I have already told you these stories!

Henry Lytton Cobbold
@HenryCobboldKH

Members of the Lytton family have stood for Parliament in every century since the 16^th – excluding this one… so far.  I’m sure there’ll be another member of my family throwing themselves into national politics before the 21^st Century is out.  It’s in our blood.  Consider William Lytton (1586-1660) – he was a staunch Parliamentarian, which led to his imprisonment during the English Civil War.  The Lytton family has been on all sides of the political debate.  In the 19^th Century Edward Bulwer Lytton (1803-1873) began his political life as a radical Whig and ended it as a Tory Cabinet minister.  In the last Century, Constance Lytton (1869-1923) never stood for Parliament, but her militant politics led four times to her imprisonment.  Her nephew, Antony Knebworth (1903-1933), became Conservative MP for Hitchin at the young age of 27, on the National Coalition ticket, which led to the splintering of the Liberal Party and the loss of its previous dominance.  His nephew, my father David Lytton Cobbold (b.1937), on the other hand – and at the other end of the century – fought hard for the Liberal Party in both General and European Elections.  Whatever their party allegiance, they all stood for the interests of our local community, and therefore I am very pleased that in this month’s General Election – at time of writing – there is at least one Knebworth resident standing to be our next MP.  As the Lytton Family motto goes – ‘hoc virtutis opus’ – ‘there is virtue in this work’.

Henry Lytton Cobbold
@HenryCobboldKH

“Knebworth was probably a Saxon settlement.  The Domesday spelling in 1085 is ‘Chenepeworde’, meaning ‘village on the hill’.  Another more romantic interpretation is ‘Cnebba’s Camp’ suggesting the Knebworth was formerly home of Cnebba, the 5^th Century Saxon prince.”  So opens the Knebworth House guide book, and this has long been the official story on the origins of our village.

The Press Release recently sent out for ‘Knebworth Watch’, the Virtual Reality App developed as part of our Watchman’s Tower project (available to download for free from the Apple Store and the Play Store), offers the user “a journey through history showing what Knebworth House and the Park may have looked like in Anglo-Saxon, Norman, Tudor and Victorian times, up to the modern day.”

‘Probably’?  ‘Maybe’?  This hill of Knebworth, at 450 feet above sea level, is the highest point on the London to Edinburgh road between London and York.  Of course there was a Saxon settlement here.  Why would you not have a fortified camp on this most strategic spot?  This was the front line in the battle against the marauding Danes, repelled by the brave Saxons only to make it as far as the village of Dane End on the other side of the valley.

Yes, I know Wikipedia says Dane End simply means ‘valley ends’.  But where’s the story in that?  What does Wikipedia know?  We descendants of Prince Cnebba, with our roots in this ancient fortified Saxon hill of Knebworth, know better.  We know never to let the truth get in the way of a good story!

Henry Lytton Cobbold
@HenryCobboldKH

The road to Norfolk has improved considerably since I used to make the journey to and beyond Thetford in the early 1980s.  Now one can be in north Norfolk in a couple of hours it is a much more plausible day trip.  So a couple of weeks ago when the sun was shining we took our son to meet his ancestors at beautiful Heydon Hall, 24 miles west of Norwich, which is where – in the late 18^th Century – the Lytton family got hitched to the Bulwer family and the name Bulwer Lytton has its origins.

The Bulwer family still lives in the old Elizabethan hall and the interior is not open to view, but its picturesque red brick façade is fine sight from the surrounding park, which visitors are welcome to stroll in.  Access to the park is via the small village at the gates, which has no other through traffic so the tables of the Tea Rooms on a sunny day are spread out into the village lane.  It is a very beautiful and wonderfully peaceful place and, I’m sure, not so very different today from when my great-great-great-great-grandmother Elizabeth Lytton went to live there from her family home at Knebworth – well before there was dual carriageway on the A11.

Henry Lytton Cobbold
@HenryCobboldKH

In the introduction to her 1986 book ‘Knebworth Rock Festivals’, my mother Chryssie says how “from Adelaide to Santa Barbara, Stockholm to Nairobi, wherever I travel I discover Knebworth fans.  ‘Where do you come from?’  ‘Near Stevenage.’  ‘Never heard of it.’  ‘Well… Knebworth.’  ‘KNEBWORTH!’  ‘Deep Purple!  ******* wet wasn’t it?’… ‘See you next year!’

To us, the people of this Parish, the word ‘Knebworth’ means very much more than rock concerts.  But it is a fact that, since the 1970s, the name of our home has reached the far corners of the Earth because of the profile of these unique events.  Knebworth Concerts are unique because of their size – Knebworth Park is still the largest single stage venue in the country – and because of a growing legacy of legendary moments of music history, such as the last ever shows of Led Zeppelin and Freddie Mercury, and the iconic weekends of Oasis in 1996 and Robbie Williams in 2003.

The man responsible for initiating the worldwide recognition of the name ‘Knebworth’ died in August.  So this month I pay tribute to the vision, perseverance, downright stubbornness, but most of all love of music of Freddy Bannister, the father of Knebworth Concerts.  Thank you, Freddy, for every one of the legendary Knebworth concerts of the 1970s – Pink Floyd, The Rolling Stones, Genesis, Led Zeppelin, etc. – and for that prescient letter to Knebworth House of 5^th February 1974 that started it all:  “I was struck by the obvious suitability of the area for a one day popular music concert…”  To Freddy Bannister – Knebworth Park and millions of music fans worldwide salute you!

Henry Lytton Cobbold
@HenryCobboldKH

Freddy Bannister

Lights!  Camera!  Action!…  Ever since Helen Hayes pulled up to her Danish castle in the 1956 film “Anastasia”, Knebworth House has had a starring role in the movies.  Over 70 films and TV episodes later our beautiful gothic exterior and ancient interiors still inspire filmmakers.  This summer Knebworth House has been on television twice a week in two series, “Summer of Rockets” starring Keeley Hawes, and “Year of the Rabbit” starring Keeley Hawes – something to do with her initials perhaps?

It seemed like a good moment, therefore, to look back over the history of filming at Knebworth House, with a summer exhibit in our Banqueting Hall.  So I have stretched a black cotton ‘washing line’ across the old hall and hung it with the DVD (or VHS – some titles are quite obscure now!) of every single movie or TV show that Knebworth House has ever been involved in.  It makes for colourful and impressive bunting, stretching the full length of the room.  To this, my family and the Knebworth House team have added their unique recollections and stories from the various shoots.

Also lined up, in the garden outside, are sculptures from our returning Zimbabwean stone exhibit, Matombo.  This is the last year of this popular summer display, so do try and catch it before the end of the month – before 29^th August, in fact, as we close a couple of days early this August for the return of the music festival Cool Britannia.  Hopefully the weather will be as lovely as it was last year and you’ll be joining us in the line up for that too!

Henry Lytton Cobbold
@HenryCobboldKH

The two big summer films of 1989 were Tim Burton’s ‘Batman’ and Steven Spielberg’s ‘Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade’ – I remember this because both films contained the same joke around Edward Bulwer Lytton’s line “the pen is mightier than the sword”.  The line was quoted in both films as a pen was used as a weapon.  We were living in Los Angeles and had the thrill of seeing ‘Batman’ on a giant screen in the Chinese Theater on Hollywood Boulevard, particularly special because Batman’s house, Wayne Manor, was, of course, our house, Knebworth House.  The only place I can think of more fun to see ‘Batman’ would be in front of Knebworth House itself – and, guess what, to celebrate the film’s 30^th anniversary, we can all do that!  Tim Burton’s ‘Batman’ is being screened at 9.30pm on Thursday 4^th July, as one of our Luna Cinema open-air presentations.

The man who has spent more time sitting in front of Knebworth House than anybody in its history very sadly died in June.  Julian Smith (1943-2019) manned our St Mary’s Gate entrance for most of his retirement years.  One of few possible challengers is his maternal grandfather, William Jennings, who having been butler in the house, spent time as the house’s night watchman in the (now restored) Watchman’s Tower.  Both of Julian’s parents grew up on the Knebworth Estate, the Jennings in Tower Lodge and the Smiths, for a time, in what is now our Estate Offices.  Julian enjoyed recalling that what is now Martha’s office was once his grandparents’ bedroom.

Every time I pass through St Mary’s Gate I think of Julian sitting there in his boater on a summer’s afternoon.  I am sure I will always see him sitting there.  Others, I’m sure, will see him sitting in the corner of his evening haunt, the Lytton Arms – or sitting at a piano, beaming, and playing beautifully, at one of countless Knebworth parties.  He will be hugely missed by everyone in Old Knebworth.

Henry Lytton Cobbold
@HenryCobboldKH

A fund to help Hitchin’s Emil Dale’s School for Musical Theatre has been set up in Julian Smith’s memory at www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/victoria-glasson.

I have just returned from Jekyll Island in Georgia, just above its border with Florida.  My mission was to visit the Jekyll Island Museum and Archive.  The Archive contains the collection of the Jennings Family, wealthy partners in Standard Oil alongside the Rockefeller family.  The Jennings family rented Knebworth House in the 1920s and the photographs they took – on glass negatives – are unusual in that they were hand coloured.  So, although they are not natural colour photographs, they are the earliest colour photos that exist of Knebworth House and Gardens.  They are beautiful, and I hope we can put copies of them on display at the House in the future.

I learnt on the island that the Jennings family contacted the Jekyll family while they were in England and were given a portrait of the man after whom the island was named.  In 1733 Sir Joseph Jekyll had contributed £600 toward the founding of the colony of Georgia.  The Jennings also discovered that the island’s name had been missing an ‘l’ for a couple of hundred years.  This was put right by the Georgia Legislature when they got home.

It is very possible that the introduction to the Jekyll family came through my great-grandfather’s brother-in-law Edwin Lutyens, whose close associate was the garden designer Gertrude Jekyll.  Gertrude Jekyll designed our lovely herb garden at Knebworth House.  Of course we pointed out that, not only had they got the spelling wrong, but they were now pronouncing the name of their island incorrectly.  The Jekyll family pronounce their name not Jek-yll, but Jee-kyll.  Somehow I suspect the Georgia Legislature will not be springing to pass legislation to correct this!

Henry Lytton Cobbold
@HenryCobboldKH

It’s extraordinary what pops out of the woodwork… or in this case, the plasterwork.  A radiator leak in Park Gate House (the last house on the right before Nup End), meant a ceiling had to be re-plastered.  During the work, this photo of a woman fell from under the floorboards of the room above.  All that is written on it is “Paton & Humphrey, Photographers, Kilmarnock and Campbellton”.

‘Cambellton’ – here’s a mystery that’s right up the street of Knebworth House Archivist Jill Campbell (of the Scottish Campbells)!  Researching the photographers, she discovered that they flourished at 123 King Street, Kilmarnock, between 1864 and 1867.  So was there a Scottish connection to the tenant at Park Gate House soon after this date?

Yes, there was.  A Matthew Gray and his wife were living there in the 1881 census, both born in Scotland.  Mr Gray was the Land Agent for my great-great-grandfather Robert Lytton (1831-1891).  He was dismissed from his post in 1891, although allowed to retain the tenancy of Broadwater Farm.  We don’t know the circumstances of the falling out, but mention is made in one of Robert’s letters that “the course he thought fit to take was not satisfactory to me”.  We know he had made himself unpopular with the hunting community, as the leader of a group of farmers who barred the local Hunt from crossing their farmland.  But more likely to have been an issue with the Lytton family was a “small dispute on the ice (presumably on the lake in Knebworth Park) between the skaters and curlers” in which Mr Gray supported the curlers.  The Lyttons have always been great skaters.

If you have a mystery that relates to Knebworth’s past, do contact Jill in the Knebworth House Archives to see if she can shed light on it – jcampbell@knebworthhouse.com.

Henry Lytton Cobbold
@HenryCobboldKH

One of the more fun things we do at this time of the year is to restock our Knebworth House Gift Shop for the summer season.  We take delivery of boxes of dinosaur toys, dinosaur keyrings, dinosaur t-shirts… and, this year, dinosaur bubble blowers, which unfortunately got loose in their box and arrived having all taken a bath.  They’ve been sitting out to dry in our conference room, contributing to meetings, for a couple of weeks.  Then, with archery and jousting to look forward to on 21^st/22^nd April we need to make sure we have all the accoutrement for the aspiring young knight – made in plastic now, rather than at the blacksmith, but I think we can all agree that’s a good thing.  Then there’s Knebworth House chocolate.  Lots of that, of course.  Quite happy if that doesn’t sell and we have to finish it off before its sell by date at the end of the season.

Most fun for me, however, is hunting around for relevant books.  I think it’s important, after you’ve had a tour of Knebworth House and been told how influential the Bulwer Lytton family were in the literary world to see examples of their novels and biographies for sale in the Gift Shop, even if they’re quite difficult to find nowadays.  And I am pleased that, this year, we have also been able to restock Hugh Madgin’s excellent 2011 book “Knebworth Through Time”, which is 96 pages of fascinating views of our village, as it was, and as it is now.  This is not easy to find nowadays either – but, along with your dinosaur bubble blower, you can find it in the Knebworth House Gift Shop!

Henry Lytton Cobbold
@HenryCobboldKH