Towards the woods we skirt the valley garden, with the stew pond and mossy domed roof of the dovecote. A swamp cypress appears to be on fire, sparse scarlet leaves cling to acers, witch hazel is in flower and kousa dogwood sports strawberry-like fruits. Further on, this year’s long-lasting brilliance of orange beech, yellow chestnut and burnished oak contrasts with the undergrowth of holly, woodrush, male and hard ferns, and the lurid green of pastures glimpsed on the opposite bank of the Tamar. Few old trees in this steep woodland date from before 1891, when the great blizzard uprooted thousands of mature specimens. Some of the timber was used by James Goss, a shipbuilder of Calstock, and my great-grandfather at Morden Mill commissioned an account desk made from fallen chestnut.
The clearing of conifers above ruined mines in the Danescombe tributary allows saplings to emerge through tangled brambles and gorse. Trees also cloak the precipitous sunny side, where now-neglected plots were once cultivated for fruit and flowers. Bare grey branches of ash wave about above yellowing thickets of willow and hazel; swags of old man’s beard benefit from lime brought in the past to sweeten acid soils; collapsed packing sheds and rusty galvanise are overwhelmed by bushy ivy. Come spring, snowdrops and hardy daffodils will sprout among the hart’s tongue ferns.
Views open up past the bridge over the derelict incline railway, back towards Cotehele above the wooded river cliff. In addition to the Christmas garland strung through the Great Hall (until 6 January), this year a collage covers the walls, which are usually hung with armour and antique weapons. Designed by the artist Dominique Coiffait to commemorate the end of the first world war, it consists of 20,000 paper flowers cut from his linoprints by volunteers, and is embedded with images of, and postcards from, locals who went to fight in the trenches. One of the photos shows young Stanley Breen holding a rifle and seated on his horse. He survived to become tenant on the home farm where, with his wife, Sheila, he milked cows, reared pigs, geese and turkeys, and stored straw and hay in the big barn, which was later converted into the National Trust’s restaurant.
