Letters: Why can’t historic homes reopen when non-essential shops do?

SIR – We were relieved to see the Government’s measured roadmap this week. The resumption of normal business activity at historic houses – from tourism and hospitality to weddings – depends on public confidence that the unlocking is cautious and justified.

We urge the Government to keep the reopening of indoor heritage attractions under close review. Historic houses have demonstrated their ability to manage access and risks. Yet they will only be able to open from May 17 at the earliest, while non-essential retail can reopen from April 12. Allowing these places to open at the same time as shops would safeguard the 34,000 full-time equivalent jobs that independent historic houses support; promote wellbeing; help generate the income needed to pay for vital conservation work; and stimulate the local economy.

We have also asked for clarity on when safe, distanced wedding show-rounds will be allowed. Enabling historic houses to take bookings for future events will help them catch up on the estimated £260 million of income lost over the last year, which in turn will help safeguard jobs in the hospitality industry and the physical fabric of these very special places. The situation remains precarious for independent heritage.

Martha Lytton-Cobbold
Knebworth House
President, Historic Houses

The Earl and Countess of Carnarvon
Highclere Castle

The Earl of Harewood

Jane Marriott
Director, Harewood House Trust

Victoria Howard
Castle Howard

Andrew Lavery
CEO, Chatsworth House Trust

Lord Leicester
Holkham Hall

Lady Ashcombe
Sudeley Castle

James Birch
Doddington Hall

The Earl of Devon
Powderham Castle

Sir Richard Fitzherbert
Tissington Hall

James Hervey-Bathurst
Eastnor Castle

The Marquis of Lansdowne
Bowood House

Duncan Leslie
Chief Executive, Hever Castle

Viscount De L'Isle
Penshurst Place

Peter and Iona Frost-Pennington
Muncaster Castle

The Duchess of Rutland
Belvoir Castle

The Duke of Richmond
Goodwood House

Robert Sword
Chair of Trustees, The Burton Constable Foundation

SIR – While I agree with Peter Woods (“Help for hospitality”, Letters, February 21), a substantial decrease in alcohol duty will not be enough.

On Wednesday there is an opportunity for the Chancellor to redress a harmful imbalance that has been allowed to develop over many years, especially for wet-led pubs. A significant rise in the duty imposed on supermarket alcohol sales would be prudent – and he could use one to fund the other.

Think of it as a long-term “drink out to help out” initiative to save many of our wonderful pubs from oblivion.

Dr Andy K Wilkinson
Ely, Cambridgeshire

SIR – George Eustice (Comment, February 21) has announced £10,000 support packages for fishermen.

It is right to champion this £1.6 billion industry – but what, may we ask, has Grant Shapps, the Transport Secretary, done to help the rapidly collapsing, £213 billion travel industry? Other than tell the public not to book a holiday, precisely nothing.

George Morgan-Grenville
Founder and CEO, Red Savannah Ltd
Cheltenham, Gloucestershire

HS2 naysayers

SIR – My letter (February 17) supporting HS2 and ruing the opposition to attempts to improve infrastructure prompted a 4-0 naysayer response (Letters, February 21).

Two letters criticised the “limited” route – but HS2 is for long-distance travel, with minimal stops, and its ultimate destination is Newcastle, which is rather more than “half way up England”. A longer-term goal could be to reach Edinburgh or Glasgow.

Another letter cited the demolition of 220 houses in London NW1 for HS2, compared with “unaffected” Camberley. However, in 1967, the new M3 cut Camberley’s centre in half. It resulted in the demolition of hundreds of homes, and long-term noise and pollution. A high-speed, clean electric train would have been preferable.

These correspondents should look at Europe’s high-speed and motorway networks to see how sparse our coverage is by comparison. Negativity is endemic in Britain. There were objections to the M4, M3 and M25, the Newbury bypass – and now the Stonehenge tunnel and Winterbourne Stoke bypass. The Salisbury bypass never got built due to a species of newt; nor was the M27 extended from Chichester to Dover, which is one reason why the M25 remains a huge, polluting car park at times.

Simon Bathurst Brown
Camberley, Surrey

SIR – HS2 was a deeply flawed project from the outset and should have been kick into touch by David Cameron.

It might have made sense had it been an extension of the Eurostar. But the UK does not need the planned speeds of HS2, whereas the TGV makes sense because France is so vast.

Extra track capacity would be welcome, but this should be for freight and the restoration of lines that should never have been closed by Beeching.

Barry Sprules
Pulborough, West Sussex

How to end the Union

SIR – Lord Field of Birkenhead’s suggestion (Letters, February 21) for an English parliament and a senate where England “cannot outvote everyone else” would destroy the Union.

Had such a system been in place after the Brexit vote, the English parliament and the majority of the UK population would have supported leaving – but would have been prevented from doing so by the non-English senators.

John Hutchinson
Addingham, West Yorkshire

Not-so-soft drinks

SIR – I was interested to read your article on “booze-free pubs”.

In 1871 my out-of-work great-grandfather, Benjamin Shaw, was drinking in Leech’s Temperance Hotel in Huddersfield when he saw a poster advertising the sale of a pop and porter manufactory. He bought it for £5 and was “put in the mysteries” of making the drinks. Many of his products, however, were non-alcoholic versions of alcoholic drinks: horehound beer, botanic porter, champagne cider, dandelion stout, hop ale.

There is a story that he was told by the drinkers in a temperance bar that a new batch of one of these drinks was particularly good. What they didn’t know was that it was matured in used whisky casks – and that he’d just bought some new ones.

Benjamin Shaw & Sons Ltd (Ben Shaw’s) continued as a family business into the Nineties. It did abandon its temperance roots, opening a wines and spirits department in the Fifties.

Chris Shaw
Huddersfield, West Yorkshire

Out-of-tune Radio 3

SIR – Ivan Hewett is right about the downgrading of classical music in our culture. Classic FM is turning into Radio 2; Radio 3 is turning into Classic FM.

In their desperate search to find new “customers”, too many organisations (not least the BBC) have forgotten the cardinal rule of marketing: as you try to pour new customers into your bucket, you fail to see your existing customers leaking out of the bottom.

Linda Hughes
Newton Abbot, Devon

SIR – As a long-term early-morning Radio 3 listener, I was dumbfounded when I tuned in on Saturday some weeks ago to find that the latter part of Through the Night had been replaced by Tearjerker and Downtime Symphony.

Far from being therapeutic, these programmes made me very angry, consisting of music that I would never choose to listen to. Other radio stations offer such music, and it will make Radio 3 listeners turn away.

Radio 3 needs to accept that, unless there is a huge drive to introduce the very young to classical music so they see it as the norm, classical music lovers will always be a minority.

Evelyn Gottlieb
Harrow, Middlesex

SIR – I completely disagree with Mr Hewett. Tearjerkers, presented by Jorja Smith, offers a selection of classical and contemporary music designed to be relaxing – and that is exactly how I found it.

Colin Webster
Abingdon, Oxfordshire

Famous examples

SIR – Derek Wellman (Letters, February 21) is only partly right to recommend Harry Wharton as the antidote to Billy Bunter’s example.

The Captain of the Remove is certainly intelligent and responsible – but he is also a bit dull.

Schoolboys requiring a role model should look to every member of “the Famous Five” of Greyfriars School: to Wharton, but also to Bob Cherry (cheerful and sporty), Johnny Bull (ruminative and usually right), Frank Nugent (dependable) and, not least, to Hurree Jamset Ram Singh (cosmopolitan and circumlocutory).

Of course, Bunter is willing to claim each as a “chum” – but only when he wants to cadge funds for the tuck shop, his long-expected postal order having yet again failed to arrive.

Francis Bown
London E3

Why old coins will never fall out of use

SIR – Our old coins are remarkably resilient – and not just in common parlance, as Robert Frazer (Letters, February 21) suggests.

A 1941 farthing was donated to our Rotary club’s “Santa” collection in December.

John Bate
Ashby de la Zouch, Leicestershire

SIR – Mr Frazer is indeed showing that he was born some time after the departure of £sd.

Were he three decades older, he would speak, instead, of thrupenny bits, and offer his ha’porth of help. He would be au fait with farthings, ha’p’nies, pennies and pence, tuppences, tanners, bobs, half-crowns, half-bars and quid. If he were older he’d have used thrupenny joeys, crowns, half sovereigns and sovereigns, and the notional guinea.

These were all terms used by those who had absorbed, down the ages, the great coinage, librae, solidi, denarii, from the Romans and made it their own.

Duncan Reeves
Lindfield, West Sussex

Moving beyond the Blairite view of university

SIR – Lord Young of Graffham is spot on (“We will never fix universities until we admit that too many people go to them”, Comment, February 21).

Tony Blair’s target of 50 per cent of school leavers going to university was complete madness – yet over 20 years have passed and nothing has been done to repair the system. How many more millions of young people are going to fall victim to the gross misselling of a “university education”?

John Baron
Caterham, Surrey

SIR – Robert Halfon (Comment, February 21) makes valid points about “rebooting our education system”.

However, as chair of the Education Select Committee, he should have a better understanding of why teacher recruitment is low in disadvantaged areas. Over two decades of teaching, I have seen two common denominators: low aspiration among pupils, combined with poor discipline and an unsupportive senior leadership team that serves to undermine the teacher in the classroom. It is little wonder that young teachers become disillusioned.

Paul Farrow
Lincoln