May 2023, on Ashmansworth Woodlands
TALES FROM THE HILLS
(Ashmansworth and Crux Easton)
In 1979, plans were submitted by the banking family, Baring Brothers, to fell two thousand trees on their Ashmansworth estate. Naturally, there was concern at this. We have little remaining woodland as it is, and these woods were ancient working woodlands. They consisted of 'standards' (that is, retained trees, mostly oak and ash), and coppice below. These woods had provided villagers with hurdles, timber, and firewood. As a bonus, cutting the coppice every seven years also provided a rich habitat for nature. The woods appear on our earliest maps. Not surprisingly, objections were lodged.
Our opponents were not faceless businessmen.
The managing director of Barings was Leonard Ingrams, a musician and opera lover, and an expert on ancient papyri. His elder brother, Richard, was editor of Private Eye, then in its heyday. Both brothers were part of the wider Barings family. Nevertheless, Richard, unselfishly, went in to bat against Barings, and published an article in Private Eye about the Ashmansworth woods, entitled 'Baring the Teeth', in August 1980.
Leonard was not entirely to blame: it was then government policy to clear woodlands, and there were government grants to do it with. In the end, back in the 1980s, we only lost a small wood south-east of the village, called Land Copse.
In a way, this is also a tale of three operas: The Grange, Garsington, and Glyndebourne.
It was the Northington Grange estate, near Basingstoke, which actually owned the Ashmansworth woods. It had been bought by Alexander Baring in 1817. The Grange is the finest neo-classical house in England, and in the 1990s it became, rather fittingly, the birthplace of the Grange Opera.
A second opera house was founded by Leonard Ingrams at his home, Garsington Manor, in Oxfordshire. After leaving Barings, he'd worked for many years advising Middle Eastern oil states on their investments, but it was mainly his skill at extracting sponsorship from the City which enabled him to support his Garsington Opera.
And finally, in a touch of tragic irony, Leonard died instantly of a heart attack in 2005 while driving home from Glyndebourne with his wife. He was 63.
Agricola, May 2023