Botanical Notes III

Further adventures in trying to master wild flower identification. I often see this small purple flower growing at ground level, but have never given it much thought. Down on my hands and knees this evening with the 7x digital zoom on my mobile, the flowerhead is a complete revelation: looking almost like an exotic orchid. The Seek App tells me this is the Common Self-Heal. It is edible and used in Chinese medicine. Never-the-less, I doubt it could provide a substantial meal - look at the Clover leaf in the background for scale! :-)

Common Self-Heal (Prunella vulgaris)

Even I can identify this deep pink beauty as the Dog or Wild Rose. Amazingly Seek could not get any further than the rose "family". A tiny victory for me. :-)

Dog Rose (Rosa canina)

On my botanical peregrinations, I could not resist the following vista of the Daisy and Buttercup meadow below the castle. This evening was not sunny like yesterday, with the low cloud smudging the tops of the nearby hills, but it was pleasantly warm in a T-shirt even with the touch of mist on the skin.

Meadow Buttercups (Ranunculus acris)  and Daisies (Bellis perennis)

High Summer Mowing!

It's High Summer at Balintore Castle!

This year we have neither had the usual biblical plague of rabbits, nor the annual invasion of sheep. I usually rely on said fauna and livestock to tend my lawns for free. So this year, I asked my friend Andrew if he could give the terrace a once-over with a flatbed mower.

Yesterday, as I looked out of the high castle windows at the work in progress, I realised what a glorious summer day it was and how lucky Andrew was to be outside. I was doing simultaneously stressful and dreary admin at my desk.

The field below the castle is awash with buttercups, thanks to the organic farming practices of the local estate. If you zoom into the images, you will see how beautifully intense the yellow is.

high summer mowing - looking west

high summer mowing - looking east

Botanical Notes I

I am a great lover of nature but do not know enough species names. The philosophical question is whether there are always more names to learn so one feels perpetually inadequate, or whether at some stage a degree of mastery can be achieved? I suspect the latter will forever be out of my reach.

Anyhow at this time of year, the wild flowers are out and surely this sub-category of nature must be more tractable? Joyous colours and forms must also surely make identification easier as well as pleasurable?

This afternoon's walk up the Dairy burn in the rain and thunder was at least a start.

I spotted both pink and blue Forget-Me-Not flowers on the same stem! All the other Forget-Me-Nots on my walk, were the standard blue.

Forget-Me-Not (Myosotis scorpioides)

These pink orchids are very different from the purple Marsh Orchids growing in the castle's formal garden:

Common Spotted-orchid (Dactylorhiza fuchsia)

I would call this Scotland's Baby's Breath, but I was finally able to identify the plant as the Marsh Bedstraw:

Common Marsh Bedstraw (Galium palustre)

I was looking at "small buttercups" this afternoon, and speculated that they perhaps were not Buttercups after all. The Seek App told me there were Tormentil.

Tormentil (Potentilla erecta)

And of course, Tormentil have 4 petals and Buttercups have 5. Duh! How had I never noticed this before? I thought I had seen the name Tormentil before in connection with Scotland but I couldn't place it. Was it the name of a ski run or was it the name of a whisky? Anyhow, some frantic googling revealed that there is a Tomintoul (different spelling) whisky and a town of the same name in the Cairngorms.

It goes without saying that you should alert me to any plant mis-identifications in the above!

Messieur Asquith Requests

Two historically significant letters were found in the castle in the 1960's in the hallway just to the north of the Great Hall. To save the items from a building that was disintegrating, the letters were removed. On the first of June this year, the letters were returned to the castle after a rather lengthy detour in the US.

I am so grateful that the letters were kept safe for so long, and I am pleased to be able to share them on my blog.

The first letter was written on the 30th March 1915 by the Prime Minister of the day, Herbert Henry Asquith, to the 1st Baron Lyell of Kinnordy asking him to become the Lord High Commissioner to the Church of Scotland.

I have transcribed for your reading pleasure:

Confidential.

                   10,  Downing Street,

                     Whitehall. S.W.

                 30th March,1915.

Sir,

    I have the honour of proposing,

with His Majesty's approval, that you

should be appointed Lord High Commission-

er to the Church of Scotland.

           I am 

                 Yours faithfully

                H.H.Asquith

The Lord Lyell.

The second letter is Lyell's reply, which is an emphatic but polite "no". He cites his wife's illness as the reason, but reading between the lines he didn't want to be bothered. As a Liberal member of parliament, he was raised to the peerage in 1914 and how many more roles can a chap take on?

Again, I have transcribed for your convenience, but the handwriting is surprisingly legible. What is graphologically interesting is that Leonard uses a ligature to connect the last three words "propose for me". This suggests that he finished the letter very quickly, and was impatient to be done with the matter.

            48,EATON PLACE,

                        S.W.


Dear Mr Asquith,

      I am much honoured 

by your proposal that I

should be High Commissioner

to the Church of Scotland ;

and much regret that I

find it will be quite

impossible for me to

fill the position satisfactorily

   Lady Lyell is unfortunately

very ill and has been so

for the last three months
There is very little

probability of her being

fit to take part in any

social functions this

summer.

    In these circumstances 

I hope you will understand

that I cannot accept the

honour that you so kindly

propose for me.

There are some grounds for confusion whether the correspondent is Leonard Lyell (1st Baron Lyell) or his son Charles Henry Lyell, especially as Charles Lyell was Asquith's private secretary between 1908 and 1915. The letter is simply addressed to Rt Hon. Lord Lyell. Both Leonard and Charles were members of parliament so both were "honourable". You need to be a member of the privy council to be "right honourable" but my research on membership of this august body fails me here. However, Charles never inherited the Baron title as he predeceased his father (1918 c.f. 1926), and Barons are addressed as Lord.

So to summarise, Asquith was offering the Commissionership to the father of his private secretary in the best British tradition of nepotism.

Herbert Henry Asquith

Leonard Lyell

I rather like the look of Leonard, he looks a sensitive but responsible and thorough type. I have not done a great deal of research, but he was careful to archive his uncle's correspondence. Leonard Lyell's uncle was Sir Charles Lyell, the founder of modern geology and an early supporter and friend of Charles Darwin.

It is a shoe-in that Charles Henry Lyell (born 18th May 1875) was named after his great-uncle Sir Charles Lyell (died 22nd February 1875), as there is just three months between the death of the latter and birth of the former.

Leonard's son Charles Henry Lyell died of Spanish flu working in the US as a military attaché, just before the end of WWI. Asquith was forced to resign in 1916 presumably as a result of the disaster of WWI.

I already know H. H. Asquith very well, as he is buried in the churchyard in the small Thames-side village of Sutton Courtenay where I own a house. It's a small world! Asquith lived in "The Wharf" where the emergency cabinet meeting that declared war took place. I never tire of stating that WWI started in my village. :-)

Here is an image of Leonard Lyell's Belgravia address where the letter arrived: 48 Eaton Place. This is valued at £3.5 million.

48 Eaton Place, Belgravia

Fans of the old TV series "Upstairs Downstairs", a hugely successful precursor of "Downton Abbey", may recognise the address. The drama was set at 165 Eaton Place, but actually filmed at 65 Eaton Place - with a painted on "1" to give the owner some anonymity. Featuring in a drama, is a sure sign that the street was and is extremely des-res.

It is unclear whether No. 48 extends to the right of the front door or to the left. However, as No. 44 and No. 46 are mirror images of each other, then No. 48, by a process of deduction, extends to the left.

H. H. Asquith's son was Anthony Asquith, the famous film director. Asquith's great grand-daughter is Helena Bonham Carter, who bought back one of the family homes in the village.

And coincidentally, a letter from Charles Darwin was found tucked into the bottom left hand corner of a painting by Landseer on the north wall of the Great Hall at Balintore Castle. What I wouldn't give to get hold of this letter. The Landseer would be quite nice too. :-)

First Great Hall Wall Painted

Sometimes it is good to just post a photograph from today, rather than get one's knickers in a twist about how to best write and present a blog entry.

Anyhow, here is a photograph taken this evening after Gavin and Joe had finished working on the Great Hall for the day.

You can see the painting of the far wall has just been finished - thanks Gavin! Ironically, Gavin hates painting and I love painting, so perhaps I should be up on the scaffolding instead. :-)

You can also see that Joe has progressed with the repair of the ceiling plasterwork - thanks Joe! Apparently everything is out of alignment up on high, so Joe is concerned that the upcoming mitering might go askance. However, everything looks fine to me so far from ground level - fingers crossed.

Thanks to the wide angle lens on my new phone, the whole Great Hall can more or less fit into a single short for the first time. I hadn't realised how much easier my life would become. :-)

the Great Hall: photo taken this evening (6th June 2024)

The Ballad of Bob and Beau

Bob the Terminator Pheasant, documented in an earlier blog post here, was a remarkable bird: holding me hostage at the castle; tormenting me relentlessly and terrifyingly on one of my daily walks; and forming a close bond with Maria the housekeeper. Bob would accompany Maria down the castle drive every day on her drive home. Maria says that Bob would leave other red cars alone, so his devotion to her must have been personal. When Maria sent me the video below, even I was astonished!

I am using the word "was" in relation to Bob, as Maria thinks he is dead. She no longer sees him. It is possible that Bob was forced off his patch at Balintore Castle by Beau, the dandy pheasant with a blue sheen to the feathers on his chest shown here.

We were initially uncertain if the baby chicks round the castle were Beau's or Bob's, but I spotted the chicks running between Beau and the mother as shown in the following photo:

Most of the chicks in the photo are hidden in the undergrowth.

My friend Catherine commented, once the parentage had been established: "How much better to have kids that are beautiful rather than aggressive!". :-)

Pheasants are not great parents They will not incubate a full clutch of eggs. Once "enough" have hatched they will just abandon the remaining eggs. Gamekeepers will then put the remaining eggs under broody hens to increase the yield. I only learned this fact on Saturday, when the son of a former gamekeeper at Balintore visited from the US.