BEN HALLIDAY

CATALOGUE

RECORDING

SUMMARY

BORN: Liverpool, 1922

LIVED: Countisbury

RECORDING MADE: 2001

RECORDING LENGTH: 4 hours 6 minutes

Ben Halliday's great great uncle built Glenthorne in the first part of the nineteenth century, inspired by the Romantic Movement and the cult of the picturesque. Then he bought Countisbury parish, and the title of Lord of the Manor to go with it. To Ben, who spent childhood holidays there, it was a place of enchantment and adventure.

An academic and reformer, he taught in the state system after the war. On his father's death he inherited Glenthorne and, with his wife Ursula, devoted himself to restoring it and managing the estate. He became a magistrate and a member of the National Park Committee, there at a time when ploughing the moorland was a contentious issue. He it was who pioneered the first management agreement. He later received an OBE.

Always conscious of the responsibility of managing an entailed estate, he did his best by Glenthorne, eventually selling the house and moving into Ashton Farm. It was a decision not easy to take.

Ben Halliday died in December 2013.

Photograph by Mark J. Rattenbury