‘Ours is a story of tradition and transition, and shooting will continue to play its part in that. I loved shooting here as a teenager and that will continue, albeit in a wild setting where no birds are reared and put down’
IT IS almost impossible to visit the rural interior of Dorset without thinking about Thomas Hardy. Of all his characters, it is perhaps the sheep-marker Diggory ‘Raddler’ Venn in The Return of the Native, as he walks forlornly across Egdon Heath to meet the tranters and carters who were his occasional company, that best sums up this sometimes dark interior, where street lights rarely intrude and the woods carry a spectral mysticism.
Not far from Egdon Heath is the 1,900-acre Mapperton estate, near Beaminster, the family seat of the Earl and Countess of Sandwich. It is now being run from the big house by eldest son Luke Montagu, Viscount Hinchingbrooke, and his vivacious American wife Julie, known for her enjoyable television series When I met them in the kitchen of Mapperton House, a Jacobean beauty where was filmed, Luke had a mop in his hand and Julie was about to give a yoga lesson. Welcome to the modern world of an ancient estate.
