Goddards Historic Report

YORKSHIRE GARDENS TRUST Historic Designed Landscapes Project - York Goddards, Dringhouses, York Report by Gillian Parker, January 2021 1. CORE DATA 1.1 Name of site: Goddards 1.2 Grid reference: SE 589 497 1.3 Administrative area: Dringhouses Without Civil Parish; York City Council; County n/a (modern); West Riding of Yorkshire, Ainsty of York (historic) 1.4 Current site designation: Not on the Historic England Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest. 2. SUMMARY OF HISTORIC INTEREST George Dillistone, who designed the garden at Goddards, is a neglected figure in garden history, despite the gardens he designed, the approval of his contemporaries, his extensive writing on garden design and planning, his importance in the history of the British Iris Society, and his founding role in the Institute of Landscape Architects. Goddards may be the only garden where Dillistone designed both hard landscaping and planting, and that still exists in its entirety and attached to the house for which it was designed. The rich archival record for Goddards’ garden provides detailed examples of Dillistone’s planting ideas that challenge implications (Wood 1996, 331) that he held onto the coat tails of Gertrude Jekyll. Dillistone may have towed the Edwardian planting line in his earlier years (see, for example, ‘E.S.’ 1919, 185–86) but the shaping and repetition in his planting plans, and his colour palette and 1 plant choices at Goddards, described below, suggest something different and more modern. Similarly, the clean and sharp lines of the hard landscaping, and its use of English Renaissance devices (the ‘Long Walk’, ‘Bowling Green’, a mount) indicate other influences (see, Blomfield and Thomas 1892). The evidence also shows that the hard landscaping was Dillistone’s alone – an issue that is often unclear in writing about his other gardens (see, for example, Hitchmough 1999, 46–49). In 1978, even in its then overgrown state, James Russell described ‘well-landscaped gardens’ and the lower garden as, ‘very well planted with interesting and rare trees, and [with] a beautifully designed rock-garden’ (BIA, JR/1/386). In 1998, the garden’s importance was acknowledged, being described as ‘a remarkably complete and well-documented example of an inter-war design influenced strongly by the Arts and Crafts tradition’ where ‘imaginative treatment of an awkwardly oriented site results in a very harmonious and well- integrated creation’ with ‘[m]eticulous attention to detail in the design and composition’ (GGF Garden Reports, Garden Report 1998). The National Trust produced a Statement of Significance for the garden in 2006 (GGF Garden Reports, Goddards: Statement of Significance for the Garden). The history of Goddards is also important for the light it throws on an under-researched period of ‘suburban’ garden history between the two world wars and on the relationship between garden designer, architect and owner. 3. HISTORIC DEVELOPMENT OF THE SITE 3.1 Estate owners The Goddards site was sold to Noel Terry, the chocolate manufacturer, in August 1925, by George Alexander Eason Wilkinson, Lord of the Manor of Dringhouses, with additional sales in December 1925 and August 1928. In the 1930s, Terry increased the site again when he bought 23 Tadcaster Road in the mid-1930s; the house at 23 Tadcaster Road was subsequently sold, but a large part of the garden - including the brick boundary with the Knavesmire and the brick hut evident on the 1892 OS map (Figure 1) - was retained as the ‘paddock’ at Goddards (NTRA, Property Register, “Goddards” Tadcaster Road, Dringhouses, York). Kathleen and Noel Terry died in 1980 and Goddards remained empty until the National Trust (NT) acquired it in 1984 for its regional headquarters. At this point the garden was largely overgrown. After a programme of clearing and simplification, the garden was open intermittently for pre-booked visits and open days. In 2012 parts of the house and all of the garden were opened to any visitors. Key owners responsible for the major development of the designed landscape and dates of their involvement: Noel and Kathleen Terry (1925-1980) Terry Family (1980-1984) National Trust (1984 to date) 2 3.2 Early history of the site In 1925, Dringhouses was still a separate village in the Ainsty of York but is now a York suburb. The land on which Goddards sits was part of the ancient manor of Dringhouses. Dringhouses comes into early modern view with Samuel Parson’s map of 1624 (Figure 2). This ‘Plott of the Manor of Dringhouses lyinge within the Countie of the Cittie of Yorke’ (YCA DRI/1) is seen as an accurate representation of Dringhouses in the early 17th century, although drawn with south to the top (Smith, Reed and Ramsbottom 2010, 25). Comparison of Figures 1 and 2 shows that Goddards sits on what was ‘Mr Padmore’s field’ in 1624. Given the existence of substantial areas of strip fields on Parson’s map, it is possible that ‘Mr Padmore’s field’ was the result of early enclosure. Dringhouses’ historical land ownership is complex, but the Barlow family were significant owners from the 17th to 20th centuries (BIA, DRU 78-79). A line of disinherited eldest sons, early deaths and childless marriages saw the manorial estate pass in 1813 to Frances Barlow. She first married the Reverend Trafford Leigh and then Dr Eason Wilkinson of Manchester. There were no children from either marriage. Dr Wilkinson remarried on Frances’s death and several children followed, the eldest of whom was the pioneering female landscape gardener, Frances (Fanny) Rollo Wilkinson (BIA, Barlow Family of Middlethorpe). Dr Wilkinson died in 1878 and his widow and children relocated to the family estate at Middlethorpe. Middlethorpe Hall was sold in 1912 and presumably, at this point, they moved into the Dringhouses Manor House. George Alexander Eason Wilkinson, the eldest son, inherited the land, and in 1925 sold the field on which Goddards was built to Noel Terry. There is no evidence that the field was used for anything other than agricultural purposes before this. 3.3 Chronological history of the designed landscape 3.3.1 1925 to 1984 The site purchased for Goddards was between Aldersydes, the childhood home of Kathleen Terry (neé Leetham) which was further south on Tadcaster Road, and the Terry’s then home, in St George’s Place, off Tadcaster Road nearer to York. Colonel Wilkinson was gradually selling off manorial land for inter-war development and the Goddards site was both in an area that the Terrys knew and was also conveniently placed for the new Terry’s chocolate factory which was being built (1924-30) off Bishopthorpe Road and on the other side of the Knavesmire. Walter Brierley (1886-1926), a respected and sought-after architect based in the York practice established by John Carr in 1750, designed the house at Goddards, although his colleague, R. H. Rutherford, was responsible for its execution after Brierley’s death in August 1926. Brierley was a neighbour of the Terrys in St George’s Place at Bishopbarns, the house he designed for himself with its Jekyll-designed garden. Brierley drew preliminary ideas for both house and garden in June 1925 (Figure 3) but George Dillistone (1877-1957) subsequently designed the gardens contemporaneously with the house. 3 Dillistone was from the Essex family of Dillistone nurserymen but worked for seventeen years at Essex and Kent-based landscape and garden architects, Robert Wallace and Company (latterly as a director). He was responsible for the design of many gardens (not all yet identified) while at Wallaces and had an established reputation for his design work among his contemporaries (Bowles 1917, 114-5; Jekyll and Weaver 1927, xxiii – xxviii). Goddards seems to have been his first commission after setting up his own business. It has been assumed that Noel Terry did not like Brierley’s ideas for the garden and looked elsewhere for a landscape designer (Wood, 328; GGF Garden Reports, Goddards: Statement of Significance of the Garden). However, there is no evidence in the archival record to support this assumption. How Terry came to choose Dillistone, who mostly worked in the south of England, is not known. One suggestion is that Terry knew Dillistone’s work from the garden he had designed for his brother, Harold Terry, the playwright (Mercer 1933, 8–9) although the date of this other garden is not currently known. Another suggestion is that Edward Hudson, editor of Country Life and Noel Terry’s friend, recommended Dillistone, who published regularly in the magazine. Whatever route Dillistone took to Goddards, he received the site plan in mid-summer 1925, and the first extant letter from him to Brierley in the archives (25 September 1925) refers to their having met the previous week, and ‘revising’ the garden plans, on which he had already started work, in the light of their discussion. This indicates that Dillistone was involved very soon after the sale of the land and that Brierley and Dillistone had a working relationship (BIA, ATKB). Brierley certainly worked with landscape designers at other houses he designed. For example, in the archives for Sion Hill House, near Thirsk held at NYRO, a letter of 1 April 1912 from Brierley to Percy Stancliffe, the owner, refers to liking ‘Goldring’s’ ideas for the drive and the wish to see his plans for the garden and he is mentioned in the accounts Brierley presented to Stancliffe (Figure 4). Although there is no identifying information about ‘Mr. Goldring’ it is possible that this was William Goldring. He was briefly assistant editor of William Robinson’s, The Garden, and a landscape designer in his own right. Dillistone produced an initial plan for Goddards in January 1926.

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