125 glorious years
A cottage for £800
In response to reader requests for advice on building a weekend retreat, a competition was initiated to design a ‘cottage’ on a Home Counties village site, with outbuildings and garden, including tennis lawn and vegetable patch, to cost no more than £800. The judges, Sir Edwin Lutyens, Arthur Bolton and Lawrence Weaver, awarded first prize of 40gns to architect Mr C. F. W. Dening. (September 28 and December 7, 1912)
‘Every year, month and day, I realise how fortunate I am to have grown up and spent most of my life in the countryside’
The Princess Royal, Guest Editor, July 29, 2020
Hole in two
Dr A. Mackenzie, a distinguished golfing architect, won first prize (£20) in a COUNTRY LIFE competition to design a two-shot hole (between 360 yards and 460 yards). His winning entry, which had five possible routes, was described as ‘most ingeniously devised’ and is still being played as part of the Masters course in Augusta, US. The golfing editor, Bernard Darwin, reported disapprovingly that ‘one frankly humorous person, having read that there was no restriction in regard to hazards, sent in a design comprising a carry over a gas-works and a row of workmen’s dwellings, for which he demanded a special consolation prize that has not been awarded him’. (August 1, 1914)
