BY LIZ HODGKINSON After the Piddington outcry comes the Diddington debacle. No, not for migrants this time, but for something equally unwelcome to locals: a vast solar farm. Plans have recently been approved to build a solar farm which will spread across 111 acres of farmland, equivalent to 63 football pitches, just outside this tiny Cambridgeshire village. Diddington is a one-street, dead-end hamlet just off … Continue reading After Piddington Comes Diddington
VICAR Dear Readers of Country Squire Magazine, I trust that you are well. I have been thinking, this week, about the friends who have walked beside us on the road. Not the acquaintances we nod to at the shop, nor the names in our address books that we never call—but the true friends, the ones who know us as we are and love us still. … Continue reading A Prayer for Friends Old and New
BY ALLISON LEE Anyone who owns animals knows the problem of filling drinking troughs and buckets all too well. Time is usually of the essence, so we leave the hose in the container while we move on to the next job, trying not to forget to switch it off when the bucket or trough is full. Inevitably, we get distracted, forget about the hose, and … Continue reading Saving Water, One Bucket at a Time
BY SEAN WALSH The government’s response to the invasion of frustrated young men from sexually regressive and misogynistic cultures—men who are acculturated to casual violence and the cheapening of human life—is to insist that the incoming violence must be distributed “fairly” across the whole country. That is not quite true. The instinctive response is not policy-related at all, but rather to gather some words—fair, share, … Continue reading Leftism’s Abstract Principle Problem
BY BERT BURNETT Scotland’s environmental agency NatureScot has unveiled a new twenty year strategy to restore its native wildcats, with the ambition of seeing populations recover and thrive by 2045. The strategy brings together 26 organisations to coordinate conservation efforts for one of Scotland’s most threatened native species. The plans include restoring and reconnecting habitat, establishing new wildcat populations, reducing hybridisation with domestic cats and … Continue reading Not Another One!
CSM EDITORIAL The admission slips out with increasing regularity from those responsible for prohibiting rotational cool burning on England’s uplands. Yes, they concede, it may take years for rewetted land to reach a state where it is naturally protected from wildfire. The honesty is welcome, if somewhat late. What they omit is that any such transition remains entirely speculative. There is no evidence base demonstrating … Continue reading The Ban on Cool Burning is an Act of Faith, Not Science
VICAR Dear Readers of Country Squire Magazine, I have been thinking, this week, about the ones who are finding it hard to be patient. The farmers who have sown and waited and watched, and whose harvest has not come. The ones who lie awake at night, staring at the ceiling, wondering how they will pay the bills. The ones whose hands are calloused and whose hearts … Continue reading A Prayer for the Struggling Farmer
BY ALLISON LEE A walled garden has existed at Duncombe Park in Helmsley since 1758. It was built to supply fruit and vegetables for the Feversham family; however, after World War One, the garden’s role as a source of food for the family ended. After the last leaseholder left the property, it fell into dereliction until a local practice nurse, Alison Ticehurst, recognised its potential … Continue reading The Walled Garden
BY LIZZIE PEAKE When planning policy spirals, what’s left of our green spaces? Labour’s planning reforms are the most radical in a generation. The revised National Planning Policy Framework, which came into force in August 2026, introduces “automatic planning permission” around station hubs and weakens the ability of local authorities to refuse development. The new “grey belt” designation opens up swathes of green belt land … Continue reading Ascot: Green Today, Gone Tomorrow?
BY NICK PEARCE The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) has introduced a ticket-only parking restriction at its Snettisham reserve in Norfolk for the Wader Spectacular days. Visitors must now book a parking space in advance on the RSPB website and pay a fee—including paid-up members. The Wader Spectacular is a natural phenomenon where tens of thousands of waders swirl in the skies … Continue reading RSPB Greed?
BY LIZ HODGKINSON In the early 1960s, two small rural towns 160 miles apart faced similar problems. Their young people were going to university and never returning, leaving the places denuded of their brightest and best. Today, these two towns, Hay-on-Wye (main photograph) on the Welsh border, and St Neots in Cambridgeshire, my own hometown, have very different outcomes. Hay is internationally known as the … Continue reading A Kingdom for a Bookshop
BY SEAN WALSH The London nightclub Fabric (which temporarily closed in 2016 after just a handful of drug-related deaths) has agreed a four-year contract with St Paul’s Cathedral (consecrated to the worship of God in 604 AD). Why? This is how the club’s owner sees things: Over the next four years, we’ll present a broad range of artists from across the contemporary music landscape, with … Continue reading Raving in the Nave
BY ALLISON LEE When an invitation arrived in my inbox to attend the Sakura Spa Launch at Gisborough Hall, I was happy to accept. It had been many years since I last visited the Hall, and I was intrigued to see how things had changed. Gisborough Hall is a country house retreat set a short distance from the coast and tucked away in the beautiful … Continue reading Sakura
BY ED ANDERSON If you were to step off at Manuela Malasaña metro in Móstoles in July, you´d be greeted by a typical Madrid satellite town. A Basic Fit here, a baking Plaza del Sol there and a smattering of bars that thankfully won´t be changing you 5 euros a caña. Mercifully, there is not an instagrammer in sight. However, hidden away here and in … Continue reading Have Spain´s Wildfire Communities Already Been Forgotten?
BY ALEX STORY In Tarzo, a small village a few miles from Vittorio Veneto, nestled in the Prosecco hills of Northern Italy, there is a lake. Laghi di Revine is its name. Its waters, resting helplessly under the sun, are hot. The birds, at night so vocal, rest in stunned silence during the day. All is slow and still. Those who know seek shade or, better, … Continue reading The Tattoo
BY SEAN WALSH Traditions exist for the preservation of the truths, practices, and things which comfort us, so that we can pass these gifts on to people not yet alive. Modernism exists to disrupt all this via energetic historical revisionism and a continuous recreation of Year Zero. To the modernist, the inheritance rights of future generations are no more than useful fictions intended to serve … Continue reading Norcross Knows Cricket’s Soul
BY ALLISON LEE Whilst we are all well aware of the rapid damage our planet is suffering, not everyone knows how they can help minimise environmental harm and social exploitation. Yet each of us can make a significant difference simply by considering where we buy our clothing. Fast fashion brands enable rapid production and target fashion-conscious consumers seeking trendy, low-cost clothes. This inherently drives environmental … Continue reading Aspiga
BY NIALL McRAE The 1960s moderniser tried to improve Britain’s transport (unlike current policies) Six decades have passed since the last train left West Bexhill. The ornate Edwardian building has survived, now used for auctions, with a café in the former ladies’ waiting room. The spur of the London to Hastings line closed in the Sixties by the ‘Beeching cuts’, the town being served by … Continue reading In Defence of Doctor Beeching
BY NIGEL MANN Reform UK is making a determined pitch to rural Britain, positioning itself as the champion of a countryside it claims has been neglected and “scapegoated” by Westminster elites. Its platform, focused on backing farmers, cutting red tape, and scrapping “net zero” targets, directly targets a constituency that feels increasingly invisible. However, this strategy is fraught with internal contradictions, exemplified by the recent … Continue reading Reform UK’s Countryside Dilemma
BY ALEX STORY The August Bank Holiday weekend fills the good people of Notting Hill with dread. Those who can flee do; those who can’t board themselves up inside their houses. Their front gardens, if they have one, front doors and outside walls will be used by the throngs as municipal facilities. A couple of years ago, after two fatalities, eight stabbings and over sixty … Continue reading The Carnival
