On this beautiful winter’s day we went for a stroll in Gunnersbury Park. The park and its mansions have won the lottery in the shape of a sizeable grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund. The golf course will be relocated from its present (ridiculous) position right in the middle of Lord Rothschild’s garden (at least, it would have been if he had lived to visit his house here), and many improvements will be made to the beautiful but dilapidated buildings, the museum, and the park. The house’s position was chosen to get the maximum possible sunshine and the best imaginable view: when built, it sat at the top of the hill on the north bank of the Thames, the green meadows stretching below it all the way down to the river to the south.

Against the glorious cloudless sky in the clear dry air, I noticed a handsome natural graft forming a large eye on a high branch of the now leafless Beech tree near the mansion.