Going to the Heveningham Hall Concours d’Elegance, deep in the Suffolk countryside of East Anglia, is like stepping back in time. This is no doubt what it would have been like in Georgian times when the Lord of the Manor and local vicar handed out the prizes at the country fair. For, not only is there a Motorsport Concours d’Elegance held in the beautiful gardens at the rear of the majestic house, in the meadows in front of this remarkable Grade 1 listed Georgian mansion built in 1780 by Sir Robert Taylor for Sir Gerald Vanneck. There is also everything that one would expect from traditional country fair. Horses and ponies with little girls atop, à la the cartoonist Norman Thelwell; a dog show and sheep dog trials: food stalls; early tractors; a bungee jump; the Wall of Death; medieval jousting; boating; early aeroplanes including fly pasts from a Spitfire, wearing the photo reconnaissance blue livery of its time serving in Europe from 1944, celebrating the centenary of the Royal Air Force; a quarter mile hill-climb entitled Horsepower Hill where plenty of rubber was laid in the road; and, I am sure somewhere, if I had had the time to find it, candyfloss and the toffee apples reminiscent of my childhood!
If you have ever read any of the short stories set in the English countryside by P.G. Wodehouse, you will quickly get the picture. The Blandings Castle of the put-upon Lord Emsworth says it all.
But my time was spent with the other jaw-dropped admirers marvelling at the incredible breadth and depth of the quality of cars brought together on the perfectly manicured terraced green sward (designed by renowned landscape architect Kim Wilkie) at the rear of the home of Ferrari collectors Jon and Lois Hunt.
