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Press and Journal
15-05-2025
- General
- Press and Journal
Fairburn Tower: Artist's Highland castle transformation on TV tonight
He was one of the talented individuals whose labours helped bring a ruined Scottish castle in the Highlands back to life. And now, the story of how Paul Mowbray was involved in the restoration of the 16th century Fairburn Tower is the subject of a new TV documentary. The programme recounts how the large-scale project was overseen by the Landmark Trust, while a disparate group of artists, craftsmen and tradespeople sprinked their magic at the site, near Muir of Ord in Ross-shire. Paul was commissioned to recreate the structure's medieval ceiling and produced something beautiful at the heart of what had been a 500-year-old shell. He was often oblivious to anything happening in the wider world, such was his absorption in resurrecting a rare survivor from the Scottish Renaissance. But this beetle-browed lover of art, architecture, history, his homeland and a challenge rose to the task magnificently and his work will feature in the More4 documentary series Historic House Rescue at Paul told me: 'I was asked if I would be interested in creating a traditional Scottish board and beam painting in a late 16th century style. 'I went to visit the tower and was very impressed with the standard of the restoration considering the state it was in before. The draft for the painted ceiling was impressive and very well researched by two of the Landmark Trust's historians. 'This was the backbone of the task and was based on the look and manner of some content from Delgatie Castle, a ceiling I always admired in the Aberdeenshire style. 'I worked with the historian and produced a 3D visual of how it would look and, together, we established relevant historical content and where it should be placed within the area of the ceiling.' Such significant renovations weren't implemented easily. Forget about a minor tinkering of the amenities; this was basically starting from scratch on a giant canvas. But thankfully, Paul's passion for his subject and the knowledge gleaned from travelling across Scotland from Fife to Glasgow and Aberdeenshire to Inverness allowed him to transcend any difficulties he encountered. He said: 'Physically, the work was demanding and it entailed painting above your head daily for two months which was pretty hard going. 'I worked long hours and stayed in local guest houses to maximise progress. 'I also used a local sports therapy masseuse to keep me in shape, and had a yoga mat on site to minimise fatigue. 'From a technical perspective, the work had to be sympathetically carried out and the style of the painting was faithfully observed. 'It was beneficial that I have studied, researched and photographed many of Scotland's finest painted ceilings and built up knowledge and insight over several decades. 'This helped build a bond with a project such as Fairburn Tower and ensured that it went beyond being a commission and became a responsibility; it's not only something you do for the present, but also for generations to come in the future.' Paul is one of those people who don't look for problems but solutions; an individual who admits he thrived as part of the collaborative effort at Fairburn. And much of his drive and determination sprung from the encouragement he was given by his family in his formative years. He said: 'My parents were very encouraging in broadening my interests. Travel, along with historic buildings and museums and studying nature, were central to most days out as a child, and many of these interests and memories inspire my art to this day. 'My parents had limited means, but they bought a steady stream of arts and crafts materials, books and encyclopedias for me and I am so grateful for that.' Paul's participation was just one piece of a larger jigsaw puzzle when it came to an initiative on the scale of Fairburn Tower. He paid tribute to skilled labourer Tristan Maryon, who provided him with whatever support he required and, as Paul said: 'He is one of these folk you don't meet very often – positive, full of energy in his job. It must be something in the water up there.' Yet, in his words and his unfettered enthusiasm for his labours, there's the zeal and zest of the genuine aesthete, allied to a pride in what he and his colleagues achieved. So what were the abiding memories of immersing himself in the Tower? Once again, his words testified to the fact this project was about a lot more than his fee. He said: 'It's hard to express the sense of leaving your artwork in a noble historic property and painting in a style of a long forgotten age, but using snippets of content that tell a little about Fairburn's story today. 'Then, there were the barn owls that moved in during site work and the jackdaws that broke in and built impressive nests while the workers were on their weekend break. 'Ultimately, the story has been told using the design and emblem books of the 16th century, so the authenticity permeates throughout. 'We can appreciate all this now, but it will be interesting to know how future generations will observe the art work.' There's no such thing as a 'normal' schedule. One week, he will be completing Gothic carvings for a Georgian manor. The next, he will be involved in producing his own contemporary artwork which has been displayed in the Royal Scottish Academy. He savours the north of Scotland and isn't done with this part of the world. In fact, there could be another alluring assignment this year at Boleskine House; the Loch Ness home of occultist Aleister Crowley, and Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page. But we'll leave that particular stairway to heaven for another day. If you enjoyed this story, you may also like: Big interview: Exclusive: Meet the man bringing the past to life at Fairburn Tower in the Highlands
Business Mayor
09-05-2025
- Business Mayor
‘One bunker is now a surf school': a tour of Jersey's wartime coastal defences
I 'm woken by a tractor uprooting jersey royals in the potato field next door. In my simple hexagonal room, dawn illuminates five high slit windows marked with military coordinates and a compass etched into the ceiling. But heading downstairs, I timeslip into a 19th-century lounge where gothic-style windows frame sea views in three directions. During the second world war, Jersey's occupying forces requisitioned Nicolle Tower, a whimsical two-storey folly, and added an extra level. In what is now the bedroom, German soldiers kept lookout for an allied invasion that never came. Nicolle Tower, where German soldiers kept watch. Photograph: Debbie Ward It's thanks to restoration charity the Landmark Trust that I'm enjoying this hilltop tower. Inland from Le Hocq beach, it is now a self-catering holiday let. It's unique, yet one of a staggering 1,200 fortifications on Jersey, the Channel Islands having served as a showcase for Hitler's Atlantic Wall defences. During my 1980s childhood holidays, abandoned bunkers invited exploration and sibling jump scares. Now, on the 80th anniversary of liberation, which came on 9 May 1945 (a day after the German forces on mainland Europe surrendered), I want to discover how some of these structures have found a new lease of life. I start in an underground hospital hewn into rock. It never treated battle casualties; instead, a postwar farmer used its extensive passages to cultivate mushrooms. Now it houses Jersey War Tunnels, the museum of the island's almost five-year occupation. A tank on display at the Jersey War Tunnels museum. Photograph: Visit Jersey I learn about the scramble for evacuation, how remaining residents swapped meagre rations through newspaper personal ads, and about Organisation Todt, the huge Nazi construction operation that saw hundreds of fortifications built. Hand tool marks can still be seen in half-finished sections of the tunnels, one of which has lighting effects to simulate a rock fall. Elsewhere, amid islanders' personal stories are interactive exhibits posing the ethical dilemmas they faced, such as whether to launder a German uniform in exchange for food. That evening, I join nonprofit Jersey War Tours inside a resistance nest set into the sea wall at St Aubin's Bay. Our guide, Phil Marett, winds a hatch and sweeps the anti-tank gun over a deserted beach, demonstrating how soldiers were primed for a D-day-like scenario. Inland at Le Coin Varin, a farmer's field contains a huge block-shaped battle headquarters. Once poorly disguised as a house, its chimneys hid periscopes. Time has laced the outside with vines, but inside, acrid-smelling rooms are blackened by modern fire brigade drills. Nearby, Marett points out an oddly shaped bungalow that the homeowners built around another abandoned bunker. Waves crash below the wild headland of our final stop, Noirmont Point, where, amid the gorse, a crack of light entices us into Battery Lothringen. In a restored two-storey subterranean command bunker, I note the poignant bunk-side photo of an elderly German man who returned here as a tourist. Original graffiti at Battery Lothringen. Photograph: Debbie Ward Compared with that austere, imposing space, the cosy hexagonal lounge of Nicolle Tower feels like a trinket box. Its bookcases hold a thoughtful selection relating to Jersey's nature and history, but having stayed in other Landmarks, I seek the logbook first. Completed by visitors, this is part diary, part crowd-sourced guidebook and always charming. At a sea view writing desk, I turn the pages and smile at former guests' tales of big birthdays and marriage proposals and a naked yoga session interrupted by a dog walker. Many have left recommendations for walking routes and pubs. A few have contributed affectionate watercolours of the folly. Next day, I head to Faulkner Fisheries, a fishmonger and cafe based inside a former bunker for 45 years that lies on a rocky peninsula to the north of St Ouen's Bay, the largest of Jersey's sandy beaches. Lobsters destined for the lunchtime barbecue shuffle inside seawater pools flushed via pipes converted from wartime ventilation shafts. 'In the end tank, where the crabs are, there was a gun pointed towards Guernsey,' owner Sean Faulkner tells me as he shows me around. 'The office was originally another machine gun post.' Based inside a bunker, Faulkner Fisheries keeps its lobsters where a gun post once stood. Photograph: Danny Evans Faulkner grew up on a farm opposite, playing in the bunker as a child and diving for crabs to sell from a junkyard pram. After a career in the merchant navy, his youthful exploits became his business. As I enjoy huge, garlicky scallops at a picnic table, watching the waves glint in the sunlight, the plump seafood, barbecue aroma and 5-mile (8km) surfing beach suddenly recall Australia. skip past newsletter promotion Sign up to Inside Saturday The only way to get a look behind the scenes of the Saturday magazine. Sign up to get the inside story from our top writers as well as all the must-read articles and columns, delivered to your inbox every weekend. Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. after newsletter promotion Later, on a cobbled slipway, I spot a smaller bunker housing boards and wetsuits. Jersey Surf School is painted on its original, still sturdy metal doors. Water ingress is never a problem, owner Jake Powell tells me, before reminiscing about teenage parties around a bar he constructed in another bunker. Jersey's vast tidal range reveals extensive rockpools, not least at La Corbière lighthouse, where I linger for the celebrated sunset view. Standing sentinel opposite is the Radio Tower, a German range-finding post. For years, a coastguard headquarters, it has since found a third use as holiday accommodation. The charity Jersey Heritage oversees this and other fortifications, from German-adapted martello towers to a 1940s bunker turned cold war shelter, many open to visitors. Chief executive Jon Carter acknowledges their tourist interest. 'They were all built in the most scenic places with the best views because that was the idea – they were observational and they wanted arcs of fire,' he tells me over tea. The celebrated sunset view at La Corbière lighthouse, Jersey. Photograph: Max Burnett The metres-thick reinforced concrete of these mass bunkers makes their destruction unviable. The mixture of abandonment, historical reconstruction and pragmatic reuse I've seen reflects decades of fluctuating attitudes. Any continued discomfort about the structures' presence is now less about why they were built than how, Carter explains. The back-breaking work often fell to prisoners of war and forced labourers. At the government's behest, Jersey Heritage is working with volunteer preservationists the Channel Islands Occupation Society to consider the reuse of 70 state-owned fortifications too, connecting with those 'wrestling with the same conundrums' along the Atlantic Wall. Carter anticipates a continued mixture of 'selective preservation' and 'contemporary use'. Next, I visit the island's newest fortification museum St Catherine's Bunker, which Marett dubs 'a real Bond villain lair'. Its cliff-face gun post fronts substantial German-built tunnels. For years, though, this was a fish market. Like the bunker turned toilets I discover on my childhood beach, it feels an ironic counterpoint to hubris. Ten minutes away, I lunch at Driftwood Cafe at Archirondel Beach. As I tuck into thick crab sandwiches opposite the French coast, fisherwoman and cafe owner Gabby Mason tells me she'll be at sea over the Liberation 80 weekend, her boat decked in flags. From today into next week, there will be street parties, an international music festival and historical re-enactments, including, in St Helier, British soldiers raising the union jack above Liberation Square, so named in 1995 to celebrate 50 years since the end of occupation. The Landmark Trust is also celebrating – 60 years of restorations. Before I leave Nicolle Tower, I take in those glorious views a final time and add a logbook entry, my own sliver in the multilayered history of this building and this island.
The Guardian
08-05-2025
- The Guardian
‘One bunker is now a surf school': a tour of Jersey's wartime coastal defences
I 'm woken by a tractor uprooting jersey royals in the potato field next door. In my simple hexagonal room, dawn illuminates five high slit windows marked with military coordinates and a compass etched into the ceiling. But heading downstairs, I timeslip into a 19th-century lounge where gothic-style windows frame sea views in three directions. During the second world war, Jersey's occupying forces requisitioned Nicolle Tower, a whimsical two-storey folly, and added an extra level. In what is now the bedroom, German soldiers kept lookout for an allied invasion that never came. Nicolle Tower, where German soldiers kept watch. Photograph: Debbie Ward It's thanks to restoration charity the Landmark Trust that I'm enjoying this hilltop tower. Inland from Le Hocq beach, it is now a self-catering holiday let. It's unique, yet one of a staggering 1,200 fortifications on Jersey, the Channel Islands having served as a showcase for Hitler's Atlantic Wall defences. During my 1980s childhood holidays, abandoned bunkers invited exploration and sibling jump scares. Now, on the 80th anniversary of liberation, which came on 9 May 1945 (a day after the German forces on mainland Europe surrendered), I want to discover how some of these structures have found a new lease of life. I start in an underground hospital hewn into rock. It never treated battle casualties; instead, a postwar farmer used its extensive passages to cultivate mushrooms. Now it houses Jersey War Tunnels, the museum of the island's almost five-year occupation. A tank on display at the Jersey War Tunnels museum. Photograph: Visit Jersey I learn about the scramble for evacuation, how remaining residents swapped meagre rations through newspaper personal ads, and about Organisation Todt, the huge Nazi construction operation that saw hundreds of fortifications built. Hand tool marks can still be seen in half-finished sections of the tunnels, one of which has lighting effects to simulate a rock fall. Elsewhere, amid islanders' personal stories are interactive exhibits posing the ethical dilemmas they faced, such as whether to launder a German uniform in exchange for food. That evening, I join nonprofit Jersey War Tours inside a resistance nest set into the sea wall at St Aubin's Bay. Our guide, Phil Marett, winds a hatch and sweeps the anti-tank gun over a deserted beach, demonstrating how soldiers were primed for a D-day-like scenario. Inland at Le Coin Varin, a farmer's field contains a huge block-shaped battle headquarters. Once poorly disguised as a house, its chimneys hid periscopes. Time has laced the outside with vines, but inside, acrid-smelling rooms are blackened by modern fire brigade drills. Nearby, Marett points out an oddly shaped bungalow that the homeowners built around another abandoned bunker. Waves crash below the wild headland of our final stop, Noirmont Point, where, amid the gorse, a crack of light entices us into Battery Lothringen. In a restored two-storey subterranean command bunker, I note the poignant bunk-side photo of an elderly German man who returned here as a tourist. Original graffiti at Battery Lothringen. Photograph: Debbie Ward Compared with that austere, imposing space, the cosy hexagonal lounge of Nicolle Tower feels like a trinket box. Its bookcases hold a thoughtful selection relating to Jersey's nature and history, but having stayed in other Landmarks, I seek the logbook first. Completed by visitors, this is part diary, part crowd-sourced guidebook and always charming. At a sea view writing desk, I turn the pages and smile at former guests' tales of big birthdays and marriage proposals and a naked yoga session interrupted by a dog walker. Many have left recommendations for walking routes and pubs. A few have contributed affectionate watercolours of the folly. Next day, I head to Faulkner Fisheries, a fishmonger and cafe based inside a former bunker for 45 years that lies on a rocky peninsula to the north of St Ouen's Bay, the largest of Jersey's sandy beaches. Lobsters destined for the lunchtime barbecue shuffle inside seawater pools flushed via pipes converted from wartime ventilation shafts. 'In the end tank, where the crabs are, there was a gun pointed towards Guernsey,' owner Sean Faulkner tells me as he shows me around. 'The office was originally another machine gun post.' Based inside a bunker, Faulkner Fisheries keeps its lobsters where a gun post once stood. Photograph: Danny Evans Faulkner grew up on a farm opposite, playing in the bunker as a child and diving for crabs to sell from a junkyard pram. After a career in the merchant navy, his youthful exploits became his business. As I enjoy huge, garlicky scallops at a picnic table, watching the waves glint in the sunlight, the plump seafood, barbecue aroma and 5-mile (8km) surfing beach suddenly recall Australia. skip past newsletter promotion Sign up to Inside Saturday The only way to get a look behind the scenes of the Saturday magazine. Sign up to get the inside story from our top writers as well as all the must-read articles and columns, delivered to your inbox every weekend. Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. after newsletter promotion Later, on a cobbled slipway, I spot a smaller bunker housing boards and wetsuits. Jersey Surf School is painted on its original, still sturdy metal doors. Water ingress is never a problem, owner Jake Powell tells me, before reminiscing about teenage parties around a bar he constructed in another bunker. Jersey's vast tidal range reveals extensive rockpools, not least at La Corbière lighthouse, where I linger for the celebrated sunset view. Standing sentinel opposite is the Radio Tower, a German range-finding post. For years, a coastguard headquarters, it has since found a third use as holiday accommodation. The charity Jersey Heritage oversees this and other fortifications, from German-adapted martello towers to a 1940s bunker turned cold war shelter, many open to visitors. Chief executive Jon Carter acknowledges their tourist interest. 'They were all built in the most scenic places with the best views because that was the idea – they were observational and they wanted arcs of fire,' he tells me over tea. The celebrated sunset view at La Corbière lighthouse, Jersey. Photograph: Max Burnett The metres-thick reinforced concrete of these mass bunkers makes their destruction unviable. The mixture of abandonment, historical reconstruction and pragmatic reuse I've seen reflects decades of fluctuating attitudes. Any continued discomfort about the structures' presence is now less about why they were built than how, Carter explains. The back-breaking work often fell to prisoners of war and forced labourers. At the government's behest, Jersey Heritage is working with volunteer preservationists the Channel Islands Occupation Society to consider the reuse of 70 state-owned fortifications too, connecting with those 'wrestling with the same conundrums' along the Atlantic Wall. Carter anticipates a continued mixture of 'selective preservation' and 'contemporary use'. Next, I visit the island's newest fortification museum St Catherine's Bunker, which Marett dubs 'a real Bond villain lair'. Its cliff-face gun post fronts substantial German-built tunnels. For years, though, this was a fish market. Like the bunker turned toilets I discover on my childhood beach, it feels an ironic counterpoint to hubris. Ten minutes away, I lunch at Driftwood Cafe at Archirondel Beach. As I tuck into thick crab sandwiches opposite the French coast, fisherwoman and cafe owner Gabby Mason tells me she'll be at sea over the Liberation 80 weekend, her boat decked in flags. From today into next week, there will be street parties, an international music festival and historical re-enactments, including, in St Helier, British soldiers raising the union jack above Liberation Square, so named in 1995 to celebrate 50 years since the end of occupation. The Landmark Trust is also celebrating – 60 years of restorations. Before I leave Nicolle Tower, I take in those glorious views a final time and add a logbook entry, my own sliver in the multilayered history of this building and this island. This trip was facilitated by the Landmark Trust and Visit Jersey . Nicolle Tower sleeps two and is available from £180 for four nights .
Telegraph
16-04-2025
- Telegraph
‘Buildings can have wonderful new uses': Celebrating 60 years of The Landmark Trust
The visitors' book at 13, Princelet Street, East London, is a thing of wonder. For a start it is bound in smart green cloth and weighs about five pounds. As for the actual visitors, we turned the pages with mounting envy and alarm: who were these people? There was a stunning full-page watercolour of the house; a flat-fronted, dark-brick, four-storey dwelling in a grid of Spitalfields streets largely completed by 1720. There was a hand-made pop-up house in stiff paper. There were vignettes and poems and childish scribbles and faintly competitive visit tallies ('Our second!/fifth!/tenth!'). The Landmark Trust celebrates 60 years as a heritage charity next month and over the years its portfolio of distinctive holiday lets has delighted an equally distinctive type of customer. Landmarkers, as they are known, are engaged, appreciative, lovers of history and architecture, and largely indifferent to the absence of TV and Wi-Fi in properties. Some have been coming since the charity was founded in 1965 by banker Sir John Smith and his wife, Christian, who was involved until her death in 2018. Their idea was simple: to rescue fading properties too insignificant to be scooped up by the National Trust or English Heritage, from Britain's most elegant pigsty in North Yorkshire to a stone pineapple in Falkirk. Then turn them into holiday lets, comfortably but not opulently furnished, and stock them with relevant books and maps. Then use the income to rescue and restore more buildings at risk, and so on. The fact that over half a century later those aims and values have changed relatively little make the Landmark Trust, rather like Stonehenge, a mirror to the zeitgeist. 'The world is almost unrecognisable from 10 years ago,' said the charity's director, Dr Anna Keay, who joined in the run-up to the last big anniversary. 'When we turned 50, we'd just started online bookings (today, 85 per cent of bookings are online), newspapers were still the primary source of information and we were all using high-street shops.' I've been to loads of Landmarks. We used to book one each year for a break with my mother, usually in Dorset, and friends have booked them for celebrations. But this was my first in London, where there are four. It was weirdly peaceful. Sirens sounded like distant tropical birds. No noise floated over from Brick Lane, packed with people before Eid. The next-door neighbour, resident for 30 years, told us about his art exhibition. We went to a tiny cinema, a huge museum, an art gallery, a flower market, a pub, grocery shops, churches and a great Vietnamese restaurant, all on foot. We read books about the East End and a forensic property history, written by an architectural historian, telling the story of the house from its late 18th-century zenith, when it was probably owned by Huguenot silk merchants, to its nadir in the 1970s, when development threatened. Its saviour, Peter Lerwill, spent money and love on bringing it back to life and, on his death, he left it to the Landmark Trust. Its survival seems incredible, but as Dr Keay pointed out, upheaval is nothing new. In turbulent periods, one example being the Industrial Revolution, buildings used for a specific purpose became suddenly redundant, and the landscape changed forever. 'What the Landmark Trust has demonstrated over 60 years,' she added. 'Is that buildings can have new uses, and these can be wonderful and uplifting, and all that care and trouble taken on them can find a new life. We just stick at doing what we do and that has a simplicity to it that holds up well.' Not that the last decade has been a doddle. Airbnb, for example, has added 30 per cent more inventory into the broad arena in which the Trust operates. English Heritage started its 'Heritage Lets' programme in 2006, the National Trust has let holiday cottages since the 1940s and many private historic properties, from estate cottages to former lighthouse keepers' cottages, are available for rental. It's highly competitive. During Covid, properties were offered as accommodation to emergency NHS staff, and when lockdowns ended the Trust was in one way sitting pretty, with most of its properties rural, stand-alone and on the British mainland (there are a few abroad). At one point, occupancy was almost 100 per cent. On the other hand, they had the same staffing issues as anyone else, at a time when cleaning, for instance, was critical. And when 'abroad' opened up again, occupancy slid back to a more normal 80-85 per cent. On the plus side they are adding to their 111,000+ followers on Instagram and other social media platforms, which has increased awareness not just with over-55s but with elusive 18-to-24-year-olds. A 15 per cent booking discount within 28 days of rental is particularly aimed at the latter; a new, more flexible, pre-children demographic. An apprenticeship scheme at the furniture-making workshops in Honeybourne has run successfully for 10 years and a focus on the environment has seen 30 Landmarks fitted with sustainable heating systems. All new properties will be supplied with ground source heat pumps or equivalent, helped by the solid walls, hefty curtains and chunky doors of a pre-central heating world. The kicker? EV (electric vehicle) charging points are becoming a necessity and that means… whisper it softly ... Wi-Fi. Will they keep it separate somehow? Put it in a lead cupboard? Down a locked well? One thing is certain: Landmarkers will have an opinion and will state it trenchantly. As part of their 60th celebrations, the Trust have added, just for 2025, an extra 10 free stays to the 'Fifty for Free' offer they started ten years ago, when charities can apply for free stays in properties during the November low season. It has been taken up by elderly carers, victims of domestic violence and young widows, among others. As for the future, they are choosy about which properties to take on, perhaps two a year, and next up are a 1720s politician's mansion south of Edinburgh and a flat in the former Mayor's Parlour, part of a huge Lottery-funded restoration of Dover Town Hall. Their attention is now turning to high streets and former industrial buildings. Meanwhile, back in Princelet Street, facing that spectacular book, we got visitors' block. I dumped my painting of a garden urn. Someone dutifully wrote the sort of thing you write in normal visitors' books. Then, with a wistful backward glance at our panelled interiors and our elegant garden surrounded by our neighbours' houses crested with clapboard-and-pantile weavers' garrets, we stepped back into reality. Ten quirky Landmarks for rent All with 2025 availability at the time of writing 1. Music Room, Lancashire A glorious Baroque fantasy of a garden pavilion, built around 1730 for a prosperous lawyer in the centre of Lancaster. Its royal icing walls are covered in plaster images of Apollo and the Muses (including Amorous Poetry), there's a baby grand piano to play, and it's right in the middle of all the fun. Sleeps two, four nights from £332. 2. The Semaphore Tower, Surrey Relatively newly opened, Britain's only remaining semaphore tower, built after the Napoleonic Wars to house the pre-telegraph signalling system used to send messages between the Admiralty in London and Portsmouth. The system is demonstrated on open days. The tower is surrounded by 800 acres of heathland, great for walking, cycling and birdwatching from the roof. Sleep four, four nights from £524. 3. Sant' Antonio, near Rome A former Franciscan monastery built around 850 AD that includes part of a Roman villa, possibly home to the poet Horace. It has a monastic simplicity, with thick walls and little decoration inside or out, and sits in terraced gardens overlooking Tivoli's waterfall and up at the tiny church above. Sleeps 12, four nights from £1176. 4. Methwold Old Vicarage, Norfolk Showy architecture seems slightly shocking in a vicarage, but who cares when you've got a dazzling late fifteenth-century gable end, timber framing and decorated upper rooms, all opposite a Grade-I listed church. Perfect for the dry chalk plateau of The Brecks, Ely Cathedral and Grimes Graves. Sleeps five, four nights from £536. 5. Lock Cottage, Worcestershire There's nothing like a no-nonsense building and this lock-keeper's cottage sits by the 30-mile-long Worcester & Birmingham Canal, which was completed in 1815 to 'lift' boats up to Birmingham via 58 locks. There is lots to do, including strolling along to the magnificent 30-lock Tardebigge Flight. Sleeps four, four nights from £344. 6. The Library, Devon Well of course you need a library and orangery (summer only) in your back garden, and these fine, redbrick, eighteenth-century pavilions with gabled roofs, pilasters and long windows make a perfect billet for four, two in each, separated by 100 yards of garden. The ruins of a later Victorian house and arboretum are nearby. 7. Iron Bridge House, Shropshire The top two floors of this sturdy house, built for a local grocer over his shop, look straight across the River Severn to the world's first complete iron bridge, symbol of the Industrial Revolution. Ironbridge Gorge is stuffed with museums and sights - so buy a pass and see them at your leisure. Sleeps four, four nights from £432. 8. Glenmallock Lodge, Dumfries & Galloway The Countess of Galloway built this cottage as a schoolroom in the early nineteenth century, and girls were taught the three Rs and how to ply their needles here for over 40 years. Now it sits at the end of a track in the middle of the glen, a mile from the Solway Firth and near the Wigton Peninsula. Sleeps two, four nights from £296. 9. West Blockhouse, Pembrokeshire Here's a view. This mid-Victorian fort housed around 40 men until after the Second World War, with a battery of heavy guns guarding the entrance to Milford Haven harbour. The walls are limestone, rooms are lined with pine and it sits high above the Atlantic with a spiral staircase up to a roof terrace. Sleeps eight, four nights from £628. 10. Culloden Tower, Yorkshire The local MP built himself this pepperpot tower in 1746 as a crow of triumph after the defeat of the Jacobites at the Battle of Culloden. It has two octagonal rooms, a light-filled sitting room and is brilliantly placed on the edge of the Dales, within easy reach of Richmond and its Georgian theatre. Sleeps four, four nights from £728. 13 Princelet Street (London E1) sleeps six in three rooms from £1,412 for four nights;
