NGT Newsletter 10-16
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NorfolkNorfolk GardensGardens T Trustrust Autumn 2016 No.22 norfolkgt.org.uk 1 : Cover: Elsing Hall. Above: Patrick Lines (right) co-owner of Elsing Hall with gardener Robin Mahoney. All photos: Karen Roseberry Karen All photos: Manor Farm, Coston: above, back cover and inside back cover. : Contents Chairman’s Report ............................................................ 2 Norfolk Gardens History Jonathan Spurrell - Bessingham Manor ............................ 3 Sally Bate - ‘Capability Brown in Norfolk’ ....................... 8 Norfolk Gardens Deb Jordan - Pensthorpe ................................................... 10 Clive Lloyd - How Hill Farm Gardens .............................. 14 In Town Lesley Cunneen - Sandys-Winsch: Tree-life ....................... 17 George Ishmael - Heavenly Gardens ................................. 21 Garden History in Art Lisa Little - Bringing the Outside In .................................. 25 News on Ash Dieback Allan Downie and Anne Edwards ..................................... 30 The Professional Gardeners’ Trust Jeremy Garnett ................................................................... 34 RHS Plant of the Year 2016 Sue Roe .............................................................................. 37 Readers’ Gardens Mary Wade ......................................................................... 38 The NGT Website David King ......................................................................... 39 Dates for Your Diary ......................................................... 41 Membership Matters Tony Stimpson ................................................................... 44 1 Welcome Chairman’s Report - Autumn 2016 After a very wet early part of the year me. However others were a pure delight. followed by some sun and warmth there In addition to the show gardens there has been plenty to do in our gardens. were others, including some trade stands, There has been little time to stand and where it was impossible not to come away stare and appreciate all our hard work without a leaflet. At the end of the day The Norfolk Gardens Trust has also been I was weighed down with quite a bundle flourishing. I hope you enjoy this edition and it is only now I can begin to weed of our News. them out. The trip to Herefordshire in June 2017 This year has seen many events will only go ahead if we have the requisite countrywide to mark the tercentenary number of takers so please let Karen of Capability Brown’s birth. In Norfolk, Moore early if you would like to join the our Vice-Chairman Sally Bate along with group. The visit to Sir Roy Strong’s garden Professor Tom Williamson have edited is a special treat. a book called “Capability Brown in Norfolk”. As well as Sally and Tom the I met Sir Roy earlier this year and, without book is co-authored by Kate Minnis and making any promises, he said he hoped to Marcia Fenwick. As I write this Report be there to greet us. The Laskett gardens, the book is on the cusp of being released. which he and his late wife Julia Trevelyan So much diligent research has gone into Oman created over several decades, are it; I feel sure that you will all be interested one of the largest private formal gardens to learn more about the local landscapes to be laid out in England since 1945. created by this extraordinary “place These two people were at the centre of maker”. the arts in this country embracing theatre, opera, ballet, film, museums, exhibitions And now back to tackling the exuberant as well as writing. What makes this garden weeds in my garden … unique is that it makers wove the story Matthew Martin of their marriage and their lives into its fabric. Courtesy of some sponsors my wife and I went to the Chelsea Flower Show in May. It is many years since I last went. It remains an extraordinary feat of myriad achievements. Inevitably there were some stands containing nothing of interest for 2 Norfolk Gardens History Bessingham Manor House: Its Gardens and Parkland By Jonathan Spurrell While the small village of Bessingham, Manor House to reflect his position as near Cromer, is often confused with the main landowner in Bessingham. Bressingham, near Diss, the confusion Instead of building on the site of the rarely occurs from a horticultural existing manor house, Daniel chose point of view. Yet Bessingham Manor a different location on slightly higher House once boasted a beautiful and ground that overlooked the meadows varied garden too and was home to and stream. The new red-brick an Edwardian daffodil breeder whose house had Dutch gables and a heated cultivars won awards from the RHS. conservatory at the rear. Visitors to Decades of neglect in the second half of the house in later years remember a the twentieth century led to the gardens large camellia as well as maidenhair – and very nearly the house – being lost. ferns and Primula obonica plants in I have spent the last few years researching the conservatory. A window above the the history of Bessingham for a book, dining room’s fireplace allowed guests to ‘Bessingham: The Story of a Norfolk look directly into the conservatory. Estate, 1766-1970’, and have unearthed The parkland a number of interesting facts about the To set the new Manor House in gardens at the Manor House. the ‘polite’ landscape it required, The house Daniel converted about forty acres of In 1766 John Spurrell, a farmer and agricultural land into a park, separating maltster, purchased the core of the it from the house and lawn by a brick Bessingham estate from Viscount Anson. and flint ha-ha. It was grazed by sheep John and his son enlarged the estate over and contained tree plantations and the the following ruins of the old manor house and farm century, creating buildings. a prosperous Daniel turned one of the lanes in the farming business village into the driveway to the new that supplied Manor House and built another road malt to some – New Road – slightly to the north. of the leading Along New Road, between Manor House breweries in Farm and the entrance to the driveway, London. By he built a brick and flint wall as well 1870 John’s as a tower, or dovecote, designed by grandson, Daniel his nephew Herbert Spurrell. Herbert Spurrell, decided trained with Alfred Waterhouse and Daniel Spurrell to build a new later became an architect in Eastbourne. 3 Norfolk ‘Capability’ Gardens Brown History - Norfolk Gardens History The tower at Bessingham is his earliest surviving work, although its roof has now collapsed. Along the new driveway Daniel planted a number of trees, including some that had been given to him by John Mott of nearby Barningham Hall. A note in Daniel’s account book for November 1871 mentions an Austrian pine, Corsican pine, Douglas fir, noble fir, Nordmann Bessingham Manor House and conservatory (c.1880) fir, Morinda spruce and Wellingtonia gigantea (or giant sequoia, 1940s remember espaliered fruit trees the first specimens of which had arrived (apples, pears, peaches and medlars), in Britain in the 1850s), all of which redcurrant and whitecurrant bushes, came from Barningham. raspberries and a prized asparagus bed. In the late nineteenth century the church at Burgh St. Margaret acquired a new font and the rector, the Rev. C. J. Lucas, presented the old mediaeval font to Daniel Spurrell, ‘who gave it a home in the beautiful garden of Bessingham Manor’. It was a plain font, the scenes of the seven sacraments having been removed by the iconoclasts OS map of the Manor House and park (1885) of the seventeenth century. Daniel’s son, Denham Spurrell, later offered to The gardens returned it to Burgh St. Margaret, but A walled garden was designed in the ‘much as the present Rector would like area between the driveway and New to see the font once again restored to Road, divided into various beds by paths its old home, yet he is unable to accept that can clearly be seen on the 1885 this kind offer,’ since the new font was a Ordnance Survey map and the 1946 memorial to his aunt. The font appears aerial map of Norfolk. Flowers, fruit and to have removed from the gardens in the vegetables were grown there; people who late twentieth century and its current grew up in Bessingham in the 1930s and whereabouts are unknown. 4 Norfolk Gardens History The garden also contained a grotto to one side of the driveway, built of bricks and stones from various sources. Katherine Spurrell, daffodil breeder A springtime visitor to the walled garden in the early years of the twentieth century would have been welcomed by a host of daffodils bred by Daniel Spurrell’s daughter Katherine (1852-1919). Her planting book Aerial map of the Manor House showing the walled garden (1946) from 1906-1907 lists forty rows of bulbs. 1877, named a variety after her. Later, Kitty, as she was known, was not the only at the 1890 Daffodil Conference, the member of the family to take an interest Manchester Courier described Narcissus in gardening. The 1870 summer show ‘Katherine Spurrell’ as one of the best of the local horticultural society, held exhibits, and it became a popular choice at Baconsthorpe Rectory, included ‘a for gardeners in the final decades of charming basket of wildflowers arranged the nineteenth century. Writing in by some of the younger members of Gardening Illustrated in 1907, E. H. the family of D. Spurrell, Esq., of Jenkins told readers that ‘no good Bessingham, of which older adepts would collection was considered complete’ have no reason to be ashamed’. But it without it, and also rated it highly as a was Kitty who turned out to have the cut flower. greenest fingers. Although her name is In the 1880s Kitty wrote to the widely- now forgotten, read periodical The Garden with reports she won several of the plants growing at Bessingham awards for Manor House. One spring she described the daffodils the flowers in bloom, stating that ‘there she bred at are so many things budding up in the Bessingham well-stored garden,’ referring especially Manor House. to the double-yellow wallflowers.