100-footer for the Ernest Cook Trust
The Ernest Cook Trust has added a
100-foot farm building to Filkins Farm, Filkins, near Letchlade in
Gloucestershire. The steel-framed building is 50 feet wide and 16
feet to the eaves. The steelwork is painted in 75 micron zinc
phosphate high-build primer. The roof cladding is grey single-skin
reinforced fibre cement, and Yorkshire boarding clads three of the
sides. The building incorporates the Shufflebottom galvanised eaves
beam gutter system.
Ernest Cook, grandson of Thomas Cook, founder of the Thomas Cook
Travel Agency, lived from 1865 to 1955. He and his brother Frank
worked in the family firm and in 1928 they sold it for £3.5 million
to Compagnie Internationale des Wagon-Lits of Belgium. Ernest
devoted the rest of his life to philanthropy, an important part of
which was the preservation of country houses, estates and
communities. The Ernest Cook Trust, founded in 1952, is an
educational charity.
Filkins Farm is part of the Filkins Estate, which was fully
bequeathed to the trust in 2007 by the executors of the late Sir
John Cripps. Sir John, son of the Labour politician Sir Stafford
Cripps who was Chancellor of the Exchequer between 1947 and 1950,
was devoted to the countryside and served as chairman of the
Countryside Commission as well as editing the Countryman
magazine.