Foreign News: Stately Is as Stately Does

“The stately homes of England, how beautiful they stand,” wrote a igth-Cen-tury poetess. But 20th-century wars and taxes make for shifty subsoil. Last week from England came news of two of the stateliest homes rocking badly on their economic foundations.

Up for sale and advertised in the New York Times was Glenfiddich, the famed, fabulous, 31,000-acre Banffshire estate of the Duke of Richmond and Gordon, whose family once owned more than a quarter-million British acres. Inducements offered prospective bidders by Auctioneers Jackson Stops & Staff: moors that have yielded “over 5,000 brace of grouse and 100 stags; twelve miles of salmon fishing; 57 farms, house stances and cottages producing rent of £4,205.”

About to be devoured by coal-hungry Government steam-shovels were the last vestiges of lawn and garden surrounding Wentworth Woodhouse, the huge, 200-year-old, Yorkshire family seat of the Earls Fitzwilliam.

Since 1943 the Eighth Earl has watched patiently his famed beeches, stud farm, fish ponds, woodlands, paddocks, and avenues turned to black gaping wounds as the Government dug out coal. Peace, he hoped vaguely, might come in time to save his lawns and gardens.

But last week, as the bulldozers kept on snorting, the Earl had had enough. Off he went to London to protest in person to Clement Attlee. Solidly behind him was the Council for the Preservation of Rural England. In Wentworth village pubs the local tenantry shook their heads. Even the Yorkshire coal miners, led by union president Joseph Hall, voiced their objections. Said the Manchester Guardian approvingly: “The people of the north were deprived of space, light and beauty by the ravages of the industrial revolution … it is evident that the miners attach a real value to the preservation of the beauties that have survived.”

But there were many less stately homes in England that badly needed heat, many an ugly factory that needed fuel. Amid the hubbub, Fuel Minister Emanuel Shin-well went right on digging. Said he: “I must have coal.”