60 Years of Mini Celebrated at Goodwood

Nick Swift’s no. 76 Mini racing in close quarter on the Lavant corner at Goodwood

What a difference a year can make!

Goodwood’s decision to hold the 77th Goodwood Road Racing Club (GRRC) 2019 Member’s Meeting a few weeks later than usual was rewarded with a weekend of spring weather in contrast to last year’s snow covered track.

The weather matched the warm welcome of the Goodwood team and the enthusiasm of the members of the GRRC and GRRC Fellowship.

Mini is celebrating its 60th Anniversary this year and the Minis proved to be one of the highlights of the weekend delighting the spectators throughout in the heats and the final.

The current Duke of Richmond’s grandmother, Betty, famously hurtled around the Goodwood Estate in her bright red Austin Seven Mini, hence the Betty Richmond Trophy for Minis.

The Minis fizzed around this historic Sussex race track as we revelled in their high speed racing at close quarters. The drivers tactically slipstreamed each other trading places right up until the final exit from Woodcote corner when Nick Swift, in his number 76 Mini, manged to take the lead for the final time from his friend and fellow racer, Nick Padmore, to win the trophy.

Nick Swift’s company, Swiftune, was started by his father in 1965 and remains a family firm. Swiftune’s 1293cc Appendix K race engines deliver about 130bhp with a top speed of 120mph!

Hopefully the Betty Richmond Trophy will appear again at future events.

An AC Aceca, Ferrari 250 GT Tour de France and an Aston Martin DB2/4 competing for the Tony Gaze Trophy
An AC Aceca, Ferrari 250 GT Tour de France and an Aston Martin DB2/4 competing for the Tony Gaze Trophy

It was lovely to see 1950s Sports and GT car racing returning to Goodwood for the Tony Gaze Trophy. My heart was in my mouth when Nick Finburgh in the 1956 AC Aceca, Kim Taylor-Smith in the 1958 Ferrari 250 GT Tour de France and Marek Reichman in the 1954 Aston Martin DB2/4 raced through the chicane together.

When I interviewed the British racing driver, the late John Young, back in 2017 he told me how he had raced at Goodwood in the 1950s. Our conversation moved onto driving his Gullwing Mercedes. John commented “When you drive a 300SL quickly it’s important to keep the power on in the corners or they spin – you’ve really got to drive it!” David Coulthard looked a bit twitchy in the IWC Schaffhausen 300SL Gullwing during practice but in the race he kept the power on and drove to a closely contested victory taking the Tony Gaze Trophy.

The GRRC Spring Members’ Meeting is always an exciting celebration of motor racing which is exclusively for GRRC and GRRC Fellowship members here in the heart of Sussex. To find out more about the benefits of membership, how to join, and this year’s Festival of Speed and Goodwood Revival go to www.goodwood.com/sports/motorsport.

By Rupert Toovey, a senior director of Toovey’s, the leading fine art auction house in West Sussex, based on the A24 at Washington. Originally published in the West Sussex Gazette.

A Very English Country House

The Amberley Blue sandstone of Parham House caught in the spring sunlight
The Amberley Blue sandstone of Parham House caught in the spring sunlight

Parham House and Gardens are amongst the most beautiful in all England. There is a confidence and ease in the gentle English taste expressed in its interiors, collections and gardens.

I approach Parham from Storrington following the long drive through undulating parkland with grazing deer. The house sits confidently in the Sussex landscape and is bathed in the cool, early spring sunlight.

Parham is a fine example of an Elizabethan H-plan house centred around the Great Hall with its tall mullioned windows. The house is predominately constructed from local sandstone known as Amberley Blue beneath the Horsham stone roof.

As I arrive Lady Emma Barnard greets me. There is an atmosphere of excited preparation as the annual opening on Easter Sunday approaches.

Lady Emma’s great-grandfather the Hon. Clive Pearson, a gifted mechanical engineer, bought the House and Estate in 1922 with his wife Alicia. Lady Emma reflects “They found Parham in sad repair and together they revived and restored the house with great sensitivity for the long-term.”

The Pearsons furnished the house with wonderful collections of fine portraits, furniture and textiles, often searching out pieces formerly from the house or relating to its history. With its limed oak panelling and large windows, there is an airy, light feeling to the Great Hall, Long Gallery and many other rooms.

They also installed electricity, plumbing and heating. Lady Emma remarks “Thanks to them it’s still a really comfortable home – in fact the boilers my great-grandfather put in in the 1920s have only just failed.”

Lady Emma Barnard and the South Front at Parham
Lady Emma Barnard and the South Front at Parham

Lady Emma is uncomplaining as she explains how it has been a chilly winter at Parham whilst the boilers and heating were replaced and restored.

There is a processional quality to the family’s life and stewardship at Parham which embraces and celebrates the past whilst looking confidently to the future.

I remark that a house and garden like Parham carry with them a weight of history and tradition which demands a particularly keen sense of duty and service from its custodians. Lady Emma replies “It is a way of life but we love this place, being here and sharing it with others.”

As I say goodbye we walk through the house and into the grounds to find the handsome South Front complimented by beds of red tulips.

Whether you are visiting for the first time or returning there is always something to discover and delight at Parham.

I am looking forward to visiting Parham after taking part in the Easter Sunday celebrations at St Mary’s, Storrington with a service of Holy Communion followed by an Easter egg hunt. The service starts at 10am and all are welcome.

Parham House opens this Easter Sunday 21st April 2018 at 2pm and the Gardens at 12pm, closing at 5pm. For more information go to www.parhaminsussex.co.uk or telephone 01903 742021.

Parham House & Garden is the perfect Easter treat. I hope to see you there!

By Rupert Toovey, a senior director of Toovey’s, the leading fine art auction house in West Sussex, based on the A24 at Washington. Originally published in the West Sussex Gazette.

Building and Supporting Communities through the Arts

From left to right: Andrew Bernardi, Maria Marchant, Jonathan Few and George Robinson
From left to right: Andrew Bernardi, Maria Marchant, Jonathan Few and George Robinson

The 2019 Shipley Arts Festival opened with a concert at the Grade II listed mansion at Leonardslee Gardens.

The concert, hosted by headline sponsors of the 2019 Horsham District Year of Culture, Leonardslee House & Gardens, was accompanied by an auction and a game of heads and tails which raised £2300 for the important Sussex charities Chestnut Tree Hospice and the Sussex Arts Academy.

Guests arrived to enjoy a tour of the recently reopened Grade I listed gardens and drinks before returning to the magnificent hall where the musicians, framed by the sweeping staircase, performed a program of international music which included the Argentine composer Astor Piazzola’s series of four tango compositions ‘Four Seasons of Buenos Aires’.

It was a treat to see the Stradivarius Trio with Andrew Bernardi, Maria Marchant and Jonathan Few returning to Sussex joined by a young talent, the classical guitarist George Robinson.

I arrived to find the audience gathered in the company of Shipley Arts Festival patron, the Lord- Lieutenant of West Sussex, Susan Pyper and her husband Jonathan. The music was at once exciting and sublime.

As the first session of music concluded the auction began. The audience were in generous form and the bidding rose and my gavel fell to applause.

Both of the charities benefiting from this fund-raising, care for and create opportunities for our young people.

Chestnut Tree House is the children’s hospice for the whole of Sussex, Brighton, Hove and South East Hampshire. It has in its care some 300 children and young adults from 0-19 years of age with progressive life-shortening conditions.

Chestnut Tree House Fund Raising Development Manager, Juliette MacPherson explained how important events like this are to the Hospice, not only for vital fund raising but also in building relationships and awareness of their work in our communities. It often means that families who need their help become aware of their vital services whilst others choose to make Chestnut Tree House their charity of the year.

The Sussex Arts Academy is a charity which provides access to the very best in arts and cultural education to children and young people in schools and colleges across West Sussex. They also support disadvantaged young people who would otherwise not be able to engage with these opportunities.

I have long been a passionate advocate of building and supporting communities through arts and heritage and I am therefore delighted that together with Kreston Reeves, Nyetimber, Rossanna, Wakefields and NFU Mutual, Toovey’s are once again supporting the 2019 Shipley Arts Festival series of concerts.

For more information on all the forthcoming Shipley Arts Festival concerts go to www.shipleyartsfestival.co.uk Tickets are on sale at The Capitol, Horsham box office, telephone 01403 750220 or go to www.thecapitolhorsham.com. Demand is always strong for these concerts so don’t delay!

By Rupert Toovey, a senior director of Toovey’s, the leading fine art auction house in West Sussex, based on the A24 at Washington. Originally published in the West Sussex Gazette.

Landscapes, Ancient and Modern

Gordon Rushmer’s watercolour of Coombes Church
Gordon Rushmer’s watercolour of Coombes Church

Horsham Museum & Art Gallery’s latest exhibition, Accents on The Landscape – Ancient Churches of West Sussex, comprises a canon of watercolours by the celebrated British watercolourist Gordon Rushmer.

I catch up with Gordon as I open the exhibition and ask him about the inspiration behind his latest body of work. He replies “I am nostalgic for the past – my childhood in the South Country of fifty or sixty years ago.” Gordon’s comments resonate with Hilaire Belloc’s famous poem The South Country and the writer’s yearning for Sussex, her people and landscape.

Gordon’s paintings provide a valuable contemporary record of these churches continuing in the British watercolour tradition, but there is something more to these rich watercolours. He depicts these ancient, sacred places in perfect harmony with the Sussex landscape. Like this gifted artist the churches appear rooted in the landscape. Gordon says “When I paint it’s a spontaneous response to what I perceive – the meanings often reveal themselves later. My paintings often start with an idea which can take a year to come together.”

I begin to understand that the stillness evident in many of his paintings comes out of a process of reflection. Once Gordon has discerned what it is he wants to convey he works from his photographs and sketches made in the field. The pictures record the memory of a particular moment which transcends time and the purely visual.

Gordon Rushmer’s detail of an 11th century fresco at Coombes
Gordon Rushmer’s detail of an 11th century fresco at Coombes

Gordon’s journey around the ancient churches of Sussex has been one of returning, of bridging the ancient to the modern. It has been a journey of the interior emotionally and spiritually, as well as in the physical world.

These qualities can be seen in Gordon’s study of Coombes Church which you approach through a farm yard nestling in the lee of the Downs. It is often surrounded by grazing sheep. Inside there are a number of fragmentary 11th century frescoes which Gordon has illustrated.

Gordon Rushmer is an acclaimed war artist. He reflects “I have witnessed both the best and the worst in life. My time in Afghanistan and abroad [with British forces] has informed my perspectives. The stillness of these churches is amplified for me – that contrast between the war and the peace.”

I comment on how his work always seems hope filled and Gordon smiles and agrees.

Artist Gordon Rushmer
Artist Gordon Rushmer

This exhibition has only been possible thanks to the patronage and vision of Horsham Museum & Art Gallery’s Curator Jeremy Knight. The limited edition book by Gordon Rushmer which accompanies the exhibition is beautifully illustrated and will provide an important legacy to the Horsham District Council’s 2019 Year of Culture.

I am delighted that Toovey’s are supporting ‘Accents on The Landscape – Ancient Churches of West Sussex’. It runs at the Horsham District Council Horsham Museum & Art Gallery, The Causeway, Horsham, until 1st June 2019. Entrance to the Museum and exhibition is free. It provides a rare opportunity not only to see, but also to acquire the work of an artist who is represented in the collections of Tate and The Imperial War Museum. For more information go to www.horshammuseum.org or telephone 01403 254959.

By Rupert Toovey, a senior director of Toovey’s, the leading fine art auction house in West Sussex, based on the A24 at Washington. Originally published in the West Sussex Gazette.