The Lookout Our New Visitor Facility on the Holkham National Nature Reserve First Words

Holkham Gazette Issue 28 Autumn 2018 The Lookout Our new visitor facility on the Holkham National Nature Reserve First words Caring for the Holkham collection Maria de Peverelli is executive chairman of Stonehage Fleming Art Management, serving a client base that includes The Lookout, the new facility on Lady individuals, family offices, foundations, Anne’s Drive on the Holkham trusts and estates. She has recently taken up National Nature Reserve, is well the role of consultant on the collection at worth a visit. The interesting, very Holkham where she will oversee the informative and interactive conservation and preservation, and educational boards and media screens supervise the loan, of items from Holkham’s reward those who take time to study world-famous collection to other art them, offering new insights as to how galleries and museums around the world. the reserve’s precious and precarious Maria is also a Trustee of the Yorkshire landscape is managed and what Sculpture Park and of the Estorick visitors can do to help. Its exciting Collection and serves as a member of the design seems destined for board of Advisers of the Fondazione Palazzo commendation by architects from Strozzi, Florence. She established OmniArt in 2005 and prior to that, Maria was around the country and the ‘green’ gallery director of the Villa Favorita in Lugano (Thyssen-Bornemisza message is very thoughtfully and collection). She has organised exhibitions for the Museum of Applied Arts in effectively conveyed. All that and Frankfurt and taught museum management at the University of Genoa. lavatories too – go and see! Sara Phillips, Editor Contents First words ......................................................... 2 Seeking Christmas Bell’s relatives Fiennes result for Holkham .............................. 3 Holkham parochial church council (PCC) is Dramatic plans for the woodlands ............ 4 & 5 seeking to restore a forgotten war grave in Finding a way forward ............................... 6 & 7 the churchyard at Holkham and would like Turning over a new LEAF ................................ 8 ‘Mooving’ to a new home in Wells .................. 8 to make contact with any members of the Cooking up a storm .......................................... 9 family. It is the grave of Private Christmas Make Christmas special at Holkham Robert Bell, 6th Battalion Norfolk this year .............................................. 10 & 11 Holkham’s Halloween whodunnit .................. 11 Regiment, who died on Tuesday 3rd July The Lookout is informing visitors ................. 12 1917, aged 20. Connectivity is king at Holkham Studios ...... 13 His grave is located in the south east part Where have all the Red Deer gone? ............... 14 Let there be less light ...................................... 15 of the churchyard, between those of two From Holkham to Burghley and back .............15 members of his family. The headstone is Last words – Coke family reunion .................. 16 leaning to one side and very faintly it states ‘Wounded in action in France May 27th, www.holkham.co.uk 1917’. He was wounded on the final day of © The Holkham Gazette 2018 the five week long Second Battle of Arras. Published by Coke Estates Limited Presumably he was evacuated and sadly Holkham Estate Office died five weeks later. His name is on the Wells-next-the-Sea Holkham village war memorial. Norfolk NR23 1AB If anyone has any information on Telephone: 01328 710227 Christmas Bell’s family please contact Nick Next issue published Spring 2019 Forde by email: [email protected] 2 • Holkham Gazette A HIS H TORY O olkhamF IN 50 O BJECTS The lions at Holkham Fiennes result for Majestic bronze lions greet visitors to the hall. Lucy Purvis explains why Holkham Before 1865, guests Jake Fiennes has been working on the visiting Holkham Hall Raveningham estate, south-east of Norwich, approached via the south for the last 24 years. But he has recently been gates, travelling in their enticed to Holkham and has taken up the carriages up the long position of general manager of conservation drive before sweeping where he will, in his words, “deliver nature around the obelisk and conservation on a landscape level.” being greeted by the Holkham is justifiably proud of its track beauty and grandeur of record in conservation, not just in creating the hall and formal successful habitats for all the species on the gardens. Holkham National Nature Reserve but in However, when the its approach to farming, gamekeeping, railway arrived in 1865 forestry, landscape management and in its the new passenger wider sustainability policies in energy, station was situated part- recycling and visitor impact. way down Lady Anne’s Jake’s role will be to seek out and Drive, so many visitors, including the Prince of Wales champion all opportunities to raise (who had recently acquired the Sandringham estate Holkham’s conservation practices and and was a regular guest at Holkham), started to arrive policies to the next level. from the north. And you do recognise the name – he is a Although the entrance vestibule had been added in member of the multi-talented Fiennes family! the 1850s, there was no getting away from the fact that the north side of the hall had a rather austere exterior. The arrival of the roaring lion and majestic lioness Anthony retires after 20 years were intended to add a sense of dignity and drama to After serving for more than twenty years as a church warden visitors on their approach to the hall. at St Withburga’s church, Anthony Atkinson has retired from Frustratingly, there is no surviving correspondence in his duties. Lord and Lady Leicester presented Anthony with a the Holkham archives relating to the commissioning picture of the church and they, and everyone else at Holkham, of the lions or why lions were chosen in the first place, wish him well in his retirement. but it can be assumed that the 2nd Earl of Leicester was looking for a suitably impressive feature. He had previously commissioned Sir Joseph Edgar Boehm (1834-90) to sculpt a marble monument, to be placed in Holkham church in memory of his first wife, Juliana, Countess of Holkham (1825-70) and Boehm was commissioned again, this time for a pair of bronzes for the north front. In 1872 Boehm exhibited the Holkham lions, alongside a marble statue of Queen Victoria, at the London International Exhibition in South Kensington. Later that year the lions, like many visitors, arrived by train and were erected on their sloping rocky outcrops. The lions have enjoyed their role of welcoming visitors to the estate ever since. Autumn 2018 • 3 Dramatic plans for the woodlands this autumn Lord Leicester introduces dramatic forestry plans for the estate... This autumn heralds some dramatic, Saxon word for dune) on the Holkham forestry operations on the estate. Head National Nature Reserve also present forester Harry Wakefield elaborates on us with a few problems. In parts it is a the plans on the next page, but in brief monoculture of pine, all of the same this is what we intend to do. age. The trees are not letting light get The southern end of the south to the forest bed, restricting natural avenue is nearly three hundred years regeneration. About 20 years ago our old and has lost more trees to storm forestry team, under the direction of damage and disease in the last quarter the then warden of the NNR, Ron of a century than are left standing. Harrold, thinned an area of about half Following consultation with the an acre. Light poured in and within a statutory authorities such as North few years the area was an untidy mass Norfolk District Council and Historic of unkempt brambles, to the extent we England and with leading academics all wondered whether we had made a like Tom Williamson, Professor of terrible mistake. But nature is a Landscape Archaeology at University marvellous thing and the brambles of East Anglia, we will embark upon protected the seedlings from being the bold move to clear-fell, year by eaten by deer. Now that area is awash year, sections of the avenue and with wonderful and varied new young replant it with new young trees. This trees. We have every hope and will represent quite radical and expectation that the same thing will immediate change. Interpretation happen again. boards will be erected to explain the The work will be carried out using story of the original creation of this large forestry harvesters and forwarders. 18th century avenue as part of one of These will have low ground pressure the largest designed landscapes of this tyres so as not to damage the dunes period and style, and of our actions though, ironically, any small today. disturbance by turning wheels or The pinewoods on the meale (Anglo dragged logs also promotes growth. Meale woods on the NNR to become more ecologically diverse Meale woods is a prominent feature of the landscape and forms part of the Holkham NNR. The woodland was planted on sand dunes by the 2nd Earl of Leicester in the latter part of the nineteenth century to prevent sand blowing onto the newly reclaimed freshwater marshes. The woodland consists mainly of pine and they have been largely unmanaged. Three kinds of pine are present: Corsican, Scots and Maritime Pines. In the few places where the canopy lets in light there are patches of bramble, privet, honeysuckle and Holm Oaks. On its landward side, the ribbon of pines is edged by mixed deciduous scrub which provides nest sites and feeding areas for breeding warblers such as Lesser Whitethroat, Blackcap and Willow Warbler. The woodland edge has a varied structure and is very attractive to passage migrants and a wide range of invertebrates. Approval has been granted by both the Forestry Commission and Natural England for us to undertake a thinning operation in the western part of the wood.

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