Country diary: a stone dog marked by time and tides

Wrest Park, Bedfordshire The statue was pitted and scarred with marine fossils, drooling threads of spider web anchored to its teeth

Even before the stonemason struck soft rock with hard metal for the first time, he must have known that he was destined for imperfection. Three hundred years later, the evidence was plain to see on an animal sitting on the terrace of the big house, haughty, imperious and mildly deformed.

The mason had chiselled a block of sediment from an ancient sea into a guard dog of the land. The sculpture was well executed - the claws on the beast's forepaws overlapped the plinth, making a pleasing break to the block's rectangularity. A loop of its tail coiled daringly beyond the straight edge.