I’ve sat on this like a broody hen for nearly a year but now the news is out.  We’re on the front cover and across 12 inside pages of June’s Period Living magazine. We couldn’t be more chuffed.

Stylist/writer Alice Roberton and photographer Tamsyn Morgans spent one very long but (for us at least) very enjoyable day here shooting the house and garden. Period Living‘s tagline is ‘celebrating classic homes and timeless style’ and much of its focus, I’d say, is on architectural heritage and vintage style.

We were, therefore, thrilled to be invited onto its pages. Regular readers will be familiar with my fondness for collecting everything from copper jelly moulds to cookbooks and what an unrepentent magpie I am.

Image: Alice Roberton

Image: Alice Roberton

Image: Alice Roberton

Alice and Tamsyn understood how interwoven my cookery school is with the house, kitchen garden and orchard and I think that comes across. We regularly plunder the garden for ingredients and guests can book stays in the house. If you’ve spent the last couple of years in solitary confinement with no access to the internet and have thus escaped me banging on about it you can find out more at the cookery school website.

I prepared quite a lot of food for the shoot. We never got to eat the Victoria sandwich because our little white hen, Snowball, got a taste for buttercream, crash-landed on top of the cake and sent it spinning into the flower bed. We resurrected the sponge for the shoot (claw marks buried under an avalanche of icing sugar, more strawberries) but obviously it was off the menu for lunch. And no, I didn’t feed it to the disgraced chicken.

Snowball, just before her extreme photo-bombing exploit

We did however enjoy tiny raspberry tartlets, a smoked salmon and potato salad, asparagus mimosa, broad beans with whipped goat’s cheese (I must write those up for the blog) and a tricolore salad. Any of which would be rather good for any Coronation celebrations you may be planning over the long weekend.

Our weekend will be low-key but I was tickled by a Coronation competition in the the neighbouring village of Mendlesham. I saw His Majesty frowning at me over a hedge and I had to go back and take a look. Ah. Maybe it was the quiche he was scowling at?

It turned out to be a Coronation scarecrow contest – a description some entrants interpreted rather loosely. My favourite is the royal corgi, complete with a bowl of gilded bones, but hats off too to the the post box yarn bombers and everyone, tongue in cheek or not, who got into the spirit of the thing.

I found the effigy of the parish priest putting up bunting somewhat unnerving. Echoes, as one villager said about a different scarecrow, of the Wicker Man. Erm. I’m sure Fr Philip is fine. Maybe I’ll check on Sunday.