srukia

No work had been done on the house since 1969,so the first task, when they look possession in 2013, was to replace the roof.

The powered easier than expected because a previous ovener, deeming the house too large, had removed the top storey and laid a flat roof.

 he greatest innovation in the history of humankind was neither the stone tool nor the steel sword, but the invention of symbolic expression by the First Artists.

It is as if we are walking into the throat of an enormous animal.

The tongue of a metal path arcs up and them drops downward into the blackness below.

The ceiling closes in, and in some places the heavy cave walls crowd close, enough to touch my shoulders.

Then the flanks of the limestone open up, and we enter the belly of an expansive chamber.

This is where the cave lions are.

And the woolly rhinos, mammoths,and bison, a memagerie of ancient creatures, stampeding.

Battling, stalking in total silence.

Outside the cave, where the real world is, they are all gone now.

But this is not the real world.

Here they remain alive on the shadowed and creviced walls.

Around 36000 years ago, someone living in a time incompre hensibly different from ours walked from the original mouth of this cave to the camber where we stand and, by flickering firelight, began to draw on its bare wall: profiles of cave lions, herds of rhino and mammoths, a magnificent bision off to the right, and a chimeric creature- part woman- conjured from an enormous come of ovrthanging rock.

Stable block mile- long drice, parkland by capability Brown-not your average Hertfordsire commuter home.

By caroline Bouther.

It’s completely bonkers,”says Jeremy Langmead of his 97- acre Hertfor dishire estate”I was a committed Londer for 28 years, living in a nice flat in Primrose Hill, but then this came along.

“This ” is Toungsburt, a nice- bedroom listed Georian house built in 1745 and surrounded by parkland landscaped by capability Brown.

There is a stable block with a clock tower and staff flat, two ponds river frontage.

A tenuis court and a walled vegetable garden.

The drive is a mile long Rather a lot of potholes, and yes, we do have maintain it”and, despite being only 28 miles from London, at night there is littelr ambient light to dim the starts.

When langmeads husband.

Simon Rayaer first showed him the derails for the property.

Langmead refused to view it,but did a complete volte-face the momen he saw it.

Both men work in London-Rayner owns Essence communications.

A PR company, and Langmead is currently chief content officer for Christie’s auction house and initially the commute seemed daunting, but Langmead reckons the hour-and-quarter jourrey of getting home.

You can feel the stem drop off” he says.

Rayner grew up in the country

(his famtly own Lakeland, the kitchenware company based ing the lake Pistrict), so his adjustment to their now surrounfimgs was much easier than for Langmead , who moved all over the place dering his childhood “as my mother was married quite a lot”

With a carrer steeped in design (he was editer- in –chief of wall paper and Esquire), Langmead threw himself into transforming Youngsbury.