Staunton Notebook – June 2021

It is more than three hundred years since the first earl began to make Staunton Hall into a stately home In that time the Ferrers family and others must have hosted hundreds of grand celebrations here, including a fair sprinkling of masked balls. Surely never, until...

Staunton Notebook – May 2021

Last Christmas Jacqueline had a present of a book by Monty Don, the gardening guru. Leafing through it I came across a paragraph on hedgehogs. Monty says that the reason they are in decline is ‘loss of habitat,’ a phrase I’ve heard elsewhere. I find this strange;...

Staunton Notebook – April 2021

How does a prisoner feel as his release date approaches? Excited, and maybe a little apprehensive at the change from certainty to uncertainty. I find myself slightly affected that way by the coming release from ‘lockdown.’ There are changes afoot, and we have yet to...

Staunton Notebook – March 2021

“Ye must aye be sticking in a tree, ’twill be growing whilst thee be sleeping” This the laird to his son in one of Sir Walter Scott’s novels. I may have mis-remembered it, and the laird was slightly in error; trees don’t grow at night. Well, I have...

Staunton Notebook – February 2021

I have a new pen pal, Emiliya Christie, and it came about like this. I was feeding the peacocks on the Yew Walk about a month ago when a family stopped to watch. We chatted, and they said they came often when they were in England. So, next question – where do...

Staunton Notebook – January 2021

I think it’s called the ‘precautionary principle’, the dictum that, if anything could conceivably result in loss or injury, steps are taken to avoid it. Taken to its ‘logical’ conclusion, I’m not sure that we should get out of bed in the morning. Here at Staunton we...