Staunton Harold – May 2019 Bulletin

My mind is changed;   from being ambivalent as to the case for the HS2 railway I have come to believe that it should be abandoned.   Not that my opinion carries any weight, though it is due to pass through more than a mile of our land. It is hard for a layman to have...

Staunton Harold – April 2019 Bulletin

A man of eighty, planting! To sow at such an age might be no harm, Argued three youngsters from a neighbouring farm, But to plant trees!  Th’old man was plainly wanting. ‘For what, in Heavens name,’ said one of them ‘Can possibly reward your pains, Unless you live to...

Staunton Harold – February 2019 Bulletin

The pine tree by the churchyard wall has leaned as long as I can remember.  Opening the shutters after a stormy night we always checked to see that it was still there.  Its nearest neighbour was a Wellingtonia, planted as a memorial tree when the hall was a hospice...

Staunton Harold – January 2019 Bulletin

Shortly after I was first married, my wife and i invited her old school friend Marcia to stay for a weekend, with her husband and small son.    The lad was at the crawling stage, and his toys were spread all over the floor.   When he’d gone to bed we began tidying up,...

Staunton Notebook – December 2018

We bought the last of the farms and woodland on the Coleorton Estate from Sir George Beamont in 1966.   It had been his family seat for five hundred years, though they’d sold the hall and moved away forty years earlier.   The land adjoined our Staunton Harold...

Staunton Notebook – October 2018

We four country bumpkins from Staunton would make very unhappy jailbirds;  after five hours in the National Exhibition Centre at Birmingham there was palpable relief as we emerged into the open air once more. We went there last week to explore the ‘Grand Designs’...