In Pursuit of Butterflies by Matthew Oates

Author:Matthew Oates
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

19 High adventures in the mid-1990s

The 1994 butterflying season was launched by a Small Tortoiseshell at Chartwell, Sir Winston Churchill's former residence west of Sevenoaks in Kent, with shimmering views over the High Weald. There are many hidden aspects of Churchill, such as his ability as an artist, his passion for bricklaying, his love of cats and, most notably for us, his interest in butterflies. He began collecting butterflies at prep school, on the Sussex downs, then maintained his interest abroad as a young man, collecting in India, South Africa and the West Indies. It was, of course, a common hobby at the time. His collections, sadly, have not survived. Indeed, one was eaten by a rat. A letter home recalls that he then caught the rat, and had it dispatched by his pet dog, which happened to be called Winston. After the Second World War Churchill's passion was revived, partly through the energies of L Hugh Newman, who ran a butterfly farm at nearby Westerham, selling livestock and specimens from home and abroad. The farm had been started by Newman's father, Leonard, a deeply respected lepidopterist, in a back garden in Bexley in 1894. Hugh Newman persuaded Churchill to breed and release butterflies at Chartwell, and advised on how to develop a butterfly garden in the grounds, elements of which still survive. Churchill knew his butterflies, and not merely by their English names. In correspondence with Newman he freely uses the scientific names.

When it came to butterflies and moths, Hugh Newman epitomised over-enthusiasm. He got carried away with himself at Chartwell, making naive attempts to establish the Black-veined White and the continental subspecies of the Swallowtail there. These attempts ended farcically, when the gardeners burnt the muslin sleeves containing the Black-veined White caterpillars and cut down the Swallowtail's Fennel plants. Churchill wanted the garden full of butterflies for his famous summer parties, but quickly realised that butterflies have a strong dispersal instinct, a fact that Newman had curiously overlooked. Churchill therefore tactfully dispensed with Newman's services. Nonetheless, Newman went on to other great things, becoming a regular contributor to Nature Parliament on BBC Radio's Children's Hour and appearing on Desert Island Discs.

On the positive side, Newman converted a summerhouse, originally built as a game larder, into an insectorium. Here Churchill used to watch caterpillars feeding, and would release freshly emerged butterflies into the gardens. In effect, the butterfly borders at Chartwell are probably the oldest surviving butterfly garden in the country. Moreover, we can regard Churchill as a pioneer of wildlife gardening. The National Trust, which runs Chartwell, restored Churchill's butterfly house and breeds a small number of common butterflies for release into the garden.

Winter sogged on, enlightened by a few periods when the rain turned briefly to snow, only to melt as the temperature rose fractionally and the rains returned. Churchill would have loathed it. March dripped and dripped, before eventually producing a few reasonable days. One pleasant day in early March was spent looking for Heath Fritillary larvae at Halse Combe, with naturalist colleague Nigel Hester.

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