BY ALLISON LEE Jennyruth Workshops began in the garden shed of Barrie and his son, Jonathan, who has Down Syndrome. Barrie wanted to give his son the chance to develop skills, as opportunities were few and far between at the time. As things progressed, Barrie and his wife, Sue, decided that other adults with learning disabilities should also have the opportunity to develop their skills … Continue reading Thriving Through Craft And Care
BY DOMINIC WIGHTMAN There is a photograph circulating, and it shocks. A masked ‘man’ in a balaclava, hood up, stares at a child on a pony. The child is small, seven perhaps younger, dressed in the tan coat and velvet helmet of a hunting child. The man’s eyes are fixed on him. The expression, whichever benefit of the doubt is given, is hatred. Assume the … Continue reading The Boy is Not Your Enemy
BY NICHOLAS ENGERT The summer that seemed perpetual has long gone. It seemed as if it might never end. November has arrived. The transition from summer to mid autumn has seemed almost seamless and winter is now not far away. The summer heatwaves, one after another, are but a distant memory as the autumn redefines our landscape and way of life for the coming months. … Continue reading The Yielding of the Seasons
BY CALUM CAMPBELL Why the Lynx Reintroduction Fantasy Deserves to Stay Extinct The High Court has finally done what common sense should have done years ago: it has stopped the Lynx UK Trust’s quixotic campaign to dump wild predators into the English countryside dead in its tracks. Ms Justice Obi dismissed the Trust’s challenge over Natural England’s refusal to grant a licence for a three-year … Continue reading Leave the Lynx Out
BY THOMAS CLAYPOLE Support our British farmers—and here’s the good news: you don’t have to replace your entire weekly shop in one heroic afternoon to do it. Your first trip to a farm shop can be gloriously small: one ingredient for a meal you’ve already planned, a loaf for the weekend, or just a few vegetables that catch your eye. That modest beginning leaves room … Continue reading Support British Farmers Today
VICAR Dear Readers of Country Squire Magazine, Hallowe’en is upon us, and the countryside has settled into that strange, expectant hush that comes at the very end of October. The clocks have gone back, most of the leaves have fallen, and the evenings draw in early now. This is the night when the year turns from autumn to winter, the night when—as our ancestors believed—the … Continue reading A Halloween Prayer
BY ALLISON LEE If ever there were a hamlet that might have come straight from a children’s fairy tale, it is Rievaulx in the Rye Valley, North Yorkshire. With its narrow, winding lanes, pretty houses—some with thatched roofs—and a quietness city dwellers can only dream of, it really is the quintessential English country village. What it lacks in amenities (you won’t find a corner shop … Continue reading Rievaulx
BY PAUL T HORGAN Looking at the disturbances across the Channel, commentators are worried the same may happen here, and soon. Perhaps they are right, but perhaps not. The weather here is too bad for regular outbreaks of civil disorder. In fact it was a torrential downpour that did it for the Chartists in 1848 while the rest of Europe fell to revolutionaries. There is … Continue reading A Very British Uprising
BY BERT BURNETT The Moral High Ground Is Easy When Your Hare Count Is Zero There is one certainty that will emerge from the new falconry licensing regime for mountain hares in Scotland, and it has nothing to do with principle. No licence will be granted to fly a hawk at a hare on land owned by a conservation NGO or a rewilding estate. Not … Continue reading No Hares, No Licence
BY DOMINIC WIGHTMAN There is a moment, familiar to any man who has ordered a gin and tonic in a fashionable bar, when the soul recoils. The barman, a young fellow whose moustache suggests he has never done a day’s physical labour and whose tattoo suggests he believes himself oppressed, reaches for a bottle of something pink. He calls it gin. He calls it ‘botanical’. … Continue reading The Last Redoubt of Human Civilisation
BY JAMES BRADFORD Rural loneliness is real. Village life can make meeting someone harder, not easier, but the countryside already holds most of the answers, if we are willing to use them. Allison Lee wrote recently in these pages about the comfort animals bring, and she is right. Anyone who has done the late check in a lambing shed, or leant on a gate while … Continue reading Everyone Knows Your Name, and Nobody’s Single
BY ALLISON LEE It is often said that animal companionship offers significant benefits to humans, and having had the pleasure of owning a variety of animals—both domestic and farm—I can certainly attest to this. While cats and dogs are the most common domestic companions, many farm animals can also provide endless fun and companionship. Animal interaction brings a range of mental and emotional benefits, including … Continue reading Hooves, Snouts, and Heart
BY IAN MITCHELL In praise of unearned income The world owes to Darwin some ground-breaking insights into the history of life on earth. Mankind and its environment, he argued, was not a creation of God’s but the product of many millions of years’ evolution, starting from much simpler life forms. The theme of this book is how Darwin changed our view of history. No longer … Continue reading Darwin, Son of Capitalism
BY ALEX STORY The children looked so young. The pictures were only taken a few years ago. They lived with us then. Chaos and life danced together, naturally, in harmony. They are gone now. Silence rules. When we speak, mostly over devices, and if time allows, their voices are deeper, intimating a gradual discovery of the world as it is. When we see them, time … Continue reading Life
BY DOMINIC WIGHTMAN There is a strip of concrete in a yard that slopes so sharply that the word ‘pitch’ feels like a courtesy. It runs uphill. It has grooves in it, scars from some forgotten building project, and when the plastic ball with the seam lands on one, it spits up at your throat like it has taken personal offence. The stumps are plastic. … Continue reading The Hindu, the Muslim and the Christian
BY JOHN MUSGRAVE John Musgrave spells out the importance of this winter’s hunting season. The last two weeks of October see the opening of the Hunting Season 2026/27. This may well prove the most important for the future of Britain. Packs of foxhounds, beagles and bassets take to the Field of Honour as torchbearers of resistance against the woke-joke authoritarians stamping down on the face … Continue reading If I Were a Carpenter
BY ALEXIA JAMES Take a look at this nonsense from Cwis Packham’s mate, Dale Vince: Dale Vince wants you to believe he is a brave truth-teller standing athwart the water industry, but a line-by-line look at his claims shows a man who has mastered the art of the ideological gobshite: take a real problem, inflate the numbers, conflate categories, and shout it loudly enough that … Continue reading Dale Vince and the 25% Fiction
VICAR Dear Readers of Country Squire Magazine, we are halfway through October now, and the countryside has settled into the deep, golden hush that only autumn can bring. The mornings are sharp with frost, and the leaves are falling in earnest—not the gentle drift of early October, but a steady cascade of gold and russet and bronze. The hedgerows are stripped of their berries, the … Continue reading A Prayer for Mid-October
BY ALLISON LEE Autumn is a busy time on the smallholding. It’s time to plan ahead for the winter months and complete all essential jobs before the weather turns. Autumn is one of my favourite times of year. Because the weather is unpredictable, it can feel like the end of summer rather than the beginning of winter. With animals and a smallholding to keep, I … Continue reading Autumn on the Smallholding
BY ED ANDERSON With national elections and political drama in Spain it may be easy for rural issues to get pushed to the edges of the national debate but as luck would have it, (what we are christening) the Great Sheep Run from Trashumancia Foundation will be taking place on 25th October in the heart of Madrid. From not existing 33 years ago before naturalist … Continue reading The Great Sheep Run
