A noble act of revival

seventeenth-century Newhall House, the actor aims to recreate its former

glory.

AT first sight, Robert Hardy seems the archetypal Englishman. There's

the rather plummy voice, doubtless inherited from his father, a major,

and later honed at Rugby. There are the gentlemanly pursuits -- hunting,

fishing, horsemanship. Let us not forget the Churchillian connections

(he starred in The Wilderness Years in 1981). All in all -- and despite

the Black Watch tartan shirt he is sporting when we meet -- the actor's

image is that of a man as English as Jane Austen, one of whose novels he

has recently finished filming.

An Englishman's home, they say, is his castle. So perhaps it is no

surprise that the actor -- in his 70th year -- has just moved into a

magnificent, castellated mansion. But here the illusion ends. Hardy's

new, permanent home is north of the Border. He claims Scottish

connections. And the fact he plans to open his house to the public, and

highlight its unique literary associations, reveals there is more to

Timothy Sidney Robert Hardy CBE than meets the eye.

''People elect to think of you as x, y or z because it seems

convenient,'' concedes the star of TV's All Creatures Great and Small.

''I've got some Welsh blood and some Scottish -- if I could find it

among the packing cases, I'd bring out a great sheet of parchment to

prove it. After all, when the Scots invaded England, few English girls

can have got away chaste.'' His proudest link is with former

brother-in-law and one-time Secretary of State Michael Noble.

There is no doubt Hardy has sacrificed a lot for his new, 30-roomed

home, seventeenth-century Newhall House near Penicuik. His long love

affair with the building justifies, he believes, the sale of his house

of 30 years in Henley. It justifies the fact that the #800,000 proceeds

of the sale are to be ploughed straight into restoration. It even

justifies the fact that ownership of Newhall is not strictly his at all.

As a child, he sometimes accompanied his aunts when they journeyed to

stay with two old school chums, the Maclagan sisters -- twins and

chatelaines of Newhall. One sister died eight years ago; the other, one

assumes to be too elderly to manage the 160-acre property. But the

surviving Miss Maclagan has established a trust -- and Hardy has taken

it over for a peppercorn rent. ''Over the past few years, the move

became a point of discussion. Some of my family think I'm mad. The house

(which is in need of substantial redecoration) demands one's

concentration and input. But I do believe it's worth doing because of my

affection for the place -- a piece of conservation and perpetuation. I

aim to give it my best shot.''

Hardy's enthusiasm is tempered by sadness, however: the surviving Miss

Maclagan has found leaving the house ''a terrible wrench. I've hated

that part. But a cottage is being done up for her in the grounds.''

There is apprehension, too, about a condition of the tenancy. To

preserve its charitable status, the trust proposes to resume the

practice of opening the grounds to the public, along with certain rooms

in the house. ''I feel split about it,'' he admits frankly. ''It's a

price to pay, but I feel honour bound to implement it.''

As an English graduate (Magdalen College, Oxford, student of C S

Lewis), Hardy will take pleasure in sharing Newhall's literary heritage.

It was here the eighteenth-century Scots poet Allan Ramsay was given the

plot and scenery for his pastoral comedy The Gentle Shepherd. The owner

at the time (Newhall's history goes back to the Crichtouns and to a

monastery before that), poet and physician Dr Alexander Pennicuik, was a

friend.

One of Newhall's splendid sundials is a monument to Ramsay, each panel

on its square, tapering shaft referring to the play. The library ceiling

(complete with painting of eighteenth-century Scottish literati) carries

plaster motifs of a shepherd's crook and panpipes -- a rural image

repeated also on exterior stonework.

Reinforcing the pastoral idyll, subsequent owners landscaped the

grounds to match the play -- a case of life imitating art after art has

imitated life. Hardy is a Ramsay fan: after all, the inn at Carlops

which bears the writer's name is his local. ''The Gentle Shepherd hit a

particular nerve with its vernacular and rural felicity. Its tremendous

success at the time meant people learned a lot about the area and I hope

they can again.''

Notwithstanding love of the written word (Hardy's youngest daughter,

Justine, published a travel book this year), one suspects this

grandfather of three is really a historian manque. Newhall suits him. He

is a much respected consultant to the Mary Rose Trust, and is a member

of the board of trustees of the Royal Armouries.

HE is also a world expert on the longbow. ''I've got 30 bows and

eventually I'll have a bow room here,'' he says. Bowyery has long been a

fascination and he has often shot competitively against Scotland's Royal

Company of Archers. Our traditions in this field, he explains, are

honourable. ''Flowers of the Forest is about the bowmen of Ettrick

Forest. And the Scots Guards were originally bowmen/bodyguards to the

French king. It has always puzzled me why Scots bowmen didn't do better

in the wars -- I put it down to clan organisation.''

Hardy is a man in a hurry. He is writing a history of military

archery. Always in demand for work, he has just finished filming

Gulliver's Travels; new offers are ''being discussed'' (he yearns to

play Falstaff in a Branagh production). And now he has a property to

restore. In the absence of a wife (both marriages ''to splendid women

and excellent mothers'' are dissolved), will the refurbishment of

Newhall lack a woman's touch? ''I shall take lots of advice,'' the new

squire responds cautiously, ''and some of it will be female.''

Come October, Hardy will also fit in a 70th birthday celebration.

Astonishingly unlined and fit for his years, he plans to host the

occasion at Newhall -- filming permitting. He abominates the whole

business of ''luvvie-dom'' in his profession (''Some of it is media envy

looking in from the outside''); his unpretentious, practical qualities

should go down very well with Scots.

Newhall's Ramsay sundial bears some lines, attributed to Burns, which

seem very apt for a man approaching three score years and ten. The Bard

wrote:

Observe how fast, Time hurries past,

Then use each hour, while in your power,

For comes the sun, but time flies on.

Proceeding ever, returning never.

Hardy concurs with the sentiments. ''I've always believed that,'' he

nods, his peacocks mewing on the lawns outside his drawing room. ''My

motto is to live every day as if it's my last. But I'm not ready to

depart yet.''