Getting the bug
they won an award from the Bumble Bee Conservation Trust for being bee-friendly and starred in the trust’s 2013 calendar. Rosa uses her Natural History Museum butterfly, moth and bumble bee charts to identify the insects. Now, however, the family needs a bit more space for themselves and their large dog, Frith, so they are selling through Keats Haslemere (01428 661622, keats.biz), who have priced it at £369,950. The insect world, so crucial to our ecosystem, lives in an invisible parallel universe which is too easily forgotten. But at The Old Malt House, Sutton Mandeville near Salisbury, the insects take centre stage. The owner, Michael Darby, is an entomologist and an honorary scientific associate of the Natural History Museum. Most days he can be found with his scanners and microscopes in his home laboratory in an old stable building. He is a worldwide expert on a minuscule beetle family called the Ptiliidae. “These beetles feed on fungal spores, detritus, rotting vegetable matter and seaweed, and there are 56 different species in Britain. In fact I have found large numbers of them in the back garden,” he says. “There is a lot we can learn from them.” The Old Malt House is in an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, surrounded by chalk downland which Michael has closely studied. “I have worked on a method for grading chalk downland by assessing beetle species,” he says. “We already do this with woodland in a way that allows us to date it.” This is why, when Michael takes a walk, his eyes look downwards rather than up. He and his wife, Elisabeth, have turned the 17th-century house of Chilmark stone into an academic haven with a library and book-lined sitting room with an open fire, as well as the laboratory and five bedrooms. They are now selling through Strutt & Parker (01722 328741, struttandparker.com) at £995,000 because they fancy living in a piece of modernist architecture. There is something very special about the chalk downland of the South Downs. The fragile grassland, often grazed by sheep, is dotted with scrub and dew ponds which are rich in plant and insect life. You can find as many as 40 different kinds of plants in one small patch of ground, including lovely rarities such as round-headed rampion, spider orchids, lady’s tresses, and butterflies such as the Adonis blue and chalkhill blue. The wildflower meadow is becoming something of a must-have in big country houses. Prince Charles started the trend when he planted his wildflower meadows at Highgrove in Gloucestershire. The Amateur Entomologists’ Society estimates that private gardens cover more than one million acres and are a greatly underappreciated resource for wildlife. There is a wildflower meadow at Walnuts Farm, near Heathfield in East Sussex, a house with a timeforgotten atmosphere which was admired in the book Perfect English Farmhouse by Ros Byam Shaw. It has four bedrooms, a former coach house with a studio, exposed beams, wood-burning stoves, five acres with a wildflower meadow and a kitchen garden which looks as it might have looked in the 17th century and is full of invertebrates and pollinators. No wonder it has been used extensively for photo shoots. Knight Frank (01892 515035, knightfrank.co.uk) is asking £925,000.