To say that you live in south Northamptonshire doesn’t usually inspire much envy. Not many people dream of living between Northampton and Milton Keynes. But from where I’m sitting at my kitchen table I have a peaceful view over the wide and shallow valley of the river Tove, dominated on the horizon by the handsome tower of the church of St Mary the Virgin in the village of Grafton Regis, where Henry VIII used to stay when he went deer-hunting with Anne Boleyn. The former deer park in which the royal couple did their hunting remained the property of the crown until King Charles I gave 400 acres of it to Sir Francis Crane, a courtier, entrepreneur and founder of the Mortlake tapestry works in London, in settlement (it is sometimes claimed) of an enormous bill for two suits woven from cloth of gold.
A small piece of the land that Crane was given at Stoke Park now belongs to a family trust of which I am the beneficiary.
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