NEWSLETTER

Members of the Essex Gardens Trust receive a full printed version of the Newsletter / Journal twice a year.

The lead article from the Autumn 2009 Newsletter is reproduced below.

2012 Spring Newsletter click here (Newsletter%20Spring2012)

SPRING VISIT TO CHIPPENHAM PARK

Essex Gardens Trust members were joined by members of Norfolk Gardens Trust and the Garden History society in February for a private tour of Chippenham Park led by the owner Mrs Anne Crawley. The visit was arranged to explore the expansive water system throughout the parkland but the group soon discovered that Chippenham is also home to an array of interesting, quirky and fun sculptural pieces highlighting various parts of the extensive gardens.  Lunch and refreshments were served in a very cosy yurt.  It is a delightful place and well worth visiting at different times of the year. Chippenham Park will be open to the public on 14th and 15th May, 3rd July and 16th October. Refreshments will be available as well as rare plant stalls. Please see their website for details www.chippenhamparkgardens.info

 

2010 AGM at Belchamp Walter

The Trust this year's held its Annual General Meeting in the Unusual setting of Belchamp Walterin north Essex about four miles west of Sudbury

 

The morning’s proceedings

Before the business meeting of the AGM began, Terry Raybould, a churchwarden of St Mary the Virgin parish church, very kindly and informatively told the attending members something of the fascinating history of the village and its church. Terry described the history of the village from the first signs of Roman activity in the area, through the arrival of the Anglo-Saxons and on to the Domesday Survey of 1086, in which Belchamp is mentioned by name for the first time. Most of the body of the church dates from the 13th century, and is built in flint and brick but, like most churches, its structure is effectively a record of work, life and worship through the centuries, some things having been kept in use from an even earlier building. The font, for instance, is partly Norman and a window in the north wall of the chancel contains stained glass that dates from the 10th or 11th centuries. The church tower was added in the 15th century, and in recent years there have been various repairs and restorations.

The most striking feature of the nave of the church, in which we were sitting, was a series of wall paintings, some of which date from the 14th century. These were only rediscovered in the 1960s during restoration work. On the north wall is a fine image of the Madonna and child; she is shown crowned and suckling her child to either side of them are angels these surviving only as remnants. Other scenes depict the Passion, and include images of Christ entering the gates of Jerusalem, Christ kneeling and washing the feet of Peter, the Last Supper, the betrayal by Judas, and Christ before Pilate. There are other paintings which are purely symbolic, such as one of a pelican in her piety, in which a pelican wounds herself to feed her young with her own blood, which symbolises both Christ’s self-sacrifice and the Eucharist. Other pictures are rather more open to interpretation. A man bound to a tree being shot with arrows, for instance, represents either the martyrdom of St Edmund or of St Sebastian. The paintings are a remarkable survival, and full of art historical and hagiographical interest.

AGM business

The business meeting of the AGM was chaired by our vice-chair, Fiona Wells, who welcomed members and their guests. The meeting was formally opened by the vice president, Marion Swetenham, who thanked Mr and Mrs Raymond, the owners of Belchamp Hall, for generously allowing us the use of their facilities and for encouraging members to explore their lovely gardens and house which has been in his family since the manor was purchased by John Raymond in c. 1611. Mr Raymond, indeed, later gave members a lively and fascinating tour of the house. Marian also took the opportunity to thank Steffie Shields, vice chairman of the Association of Gardens Trusts, for coming from Lincolnshire to give the afternoon talk.

The Trustees’ Report and Annual Accounts were presented by the treasurer and company secretary, Michael Meads. There were two significant items highlighted one of which is the year’s overspend due mainly to a series of one-off expenditures such as the new promotional leaflet produced to promote the Trust and increase membership. This is seen as necessary as subscriptions were slightly down and the Trust is looking at ways to raise awareness and membership. A Fundraising committee has been formed as a result with plans to instigate a corporate membership package. The second one-off expense was the publication of The Living Landscape produced by the Research Group with sales expected to cover all costs. On a positive note Michael rightly congratulated Jill Plater on obtaining a £3000 grant from Essex Heritage Trust to continue with research projects. The Trust was also able to support schools through its work with RHS Hyde Hall by funding transport for children to education days at Hyde Hall. A donation of £2000 was given this year and the Trust hopes to continue to support schools in the coming year.

An important item on the agenda was the election of members of the Board of Trustees. Fiona Wells was elected to the post of chairman and Sandra Nicholson was returned to the Board, assuming responsibility for conservation matters. The meeting approved the minutes of last year’s AGM, the Trustees’ Report and the Annual Accounts, and also the appointment of ASAP Accounting as the Trust’s independent examiners.

Special mention was made of the work done by Michele Freeman in producing the new EGT brochure. Marian Fell was also thanked for all her efforts in keeping the Trust organised and up to date.  And, of course, gratitude was expressed for all the work done by the Trustees and committee members to ensure that the work of the Trust continues as it does, with special thanks going to the former chairman, Jane Valentine, for all her time and effort.

 

After the AGM’s business was taken care of members were free to join the tour of the house or stroll around the garden before lunch.

Belchamp Walter Hall

Lunch and afternoon lecture

A buffet lunch was served in the gallery of Belchamp Hall. This house and garden was one of the first sites to be recorded by the Research Group in preparing the inventory for Braintree district. The main entrance to the Hall is directly opposite the church and is flanked by brick pillars. The house itself, which is listed Grade II*, is a pleasingly symmetrical Queen Anne-style mansion built in about 1720 by John Raymond to replace an earlier 16th-century manor house. The position of the house in relation to the church creates a pleasing visual link between them.

The research and lecture theme for 2010–2011 is water in the landscape: Water – Sparkling or Still? And to launch the theme the main speaker at the AGM was Steffie Shields, who gave a lecture entitled A Profusion of Water, based on her research into the work of Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown. She began her research in 1987 and has visited over 180 sites attributed to Brown. Steffie’s well-illustrated talk went beyond the usual approach of viewing the work of this most celebrated landscape architect through the relationship between the designer and owner or through aesthetic analysis, but explored the practical aspects of how and why particular water features were created within any given site. She provided us with a fascinating look at many of the mechanical and topographical constraints and opportunities at work, and we learned how the shape in plan of a piece of water need not have been arbitrary and can suggest how the area was probably used. For example, narrow slips off the main body of water would have had a practical purpose, to make netting water fowl easier. Brown’s concern to maintain the health of the water, especially avoiding water stagnating, is evident in his schemes to control the flow of water by means of dams, sluices and chains of ponds.

EGT lectures this year continue the theme of Water in the Garden

A happy band!

 

From a previous Newsletter

ADAM HOLT: FATHER AND SON?

By Richard Smith

Can we throw more light on the shadowy figure of an eighteenth-century nurseryman and garden designer, Adam Holt? Both Fiona Cowell (1998) and the late Nancy Briggs (2006) followed John Harvey (1974) and Ray Desmond (1977), who had briefly identified Adam Holt as a nurseryman in Leytonstone, the gardener and surveyor of Sir Richard Child’s great house at Wanstead, and also a garden designer elsewhere between the 1720s and the 1740s. I would like to propose an alternative to this relatively unknown figure by suggesting that there were in fact two Adam Holts, father and son, both gardeners and both distinguished in their respective fields, as nurseryman and exotic plant curator, and gardener and waterworks designer, at the height of this era of elegant but ephemeral fashion.

 

Adam Holt senior is buried at St Mary’s Wanstead; he was born in 1668 (Potter pers. comm.) and died in August 1750. His wife, Mary, also lies at Wanstead, having died in 1724. This Holt was, I feel, the gardener to Bishop Compton of Fulham Palace, a soldier and prelate who both married William and Mary and crowned them! Compton was one of the first plantsmen in England to establish firm links with botanical collectors in the Americas for plant importers, and Adam Holt was duly charged to care for such precious introductions. Richard Bradley, himself a gardener but later the first Professor of Botany in the University of Cambridge (1724–1732) recalled that ‘the curious Mr Adam Holt, gardener to the late Bishop of London, shew’d him a letter from the West Indies where a recent passion flower species had been received’ (Rhode 1932). George London, garden consultant and nurseryman to Queen Anne and the 3rd Earl of Carlisle at Castle Howard, was also associated with the Fulham Palace garden and carried his responsibilities to Wanstead Park with its new ‘Whit Palace’ by Colen Campbell and, just as importantly, a new garden. Maybe it is not surprising that Adam Holt junior found employment with Sir Richard Child, being both the son of London’s Fulham Palace associate and also a relative of Thomas Holt, who was steward and scrivener to the Childs as well as agent to the dukes of Bedford. On London’s death in 1714 Adam junior inherited the position of gardener and surveyor. Like London and his Brompton nursery partner, Henry Wise, I believe Adam Holt spent time outside the environs of Wanstead and through his design portfolios reviewed by Fiona Cowell (op. cit.) furnished his father’s Leytonstone nursery with suitable clients, although not on the well-documented scale of the Brompton Road establishment (Willson 1982).

 

Adam Holt junior predeceased his father, and in his will of 1743 he left to his wife, Elizabeth, all his goods and property, including his nursery, and also, rather sadly, the small sum of five shillings (about twenty pounds in today’s money) to each of the four sons of his deceased brother John (d. 1734). According to surviving church records this linkage to brother John, and to another brother Richard, confirms that he himself had no children. The will was proved in September 1750 (Prob.11/782 NRO), making the document almost identical in date with the extant tombstone of his father at St Mary’s churchyard. His year of birth, deduced from county tax returns, was 1691 (Cowell op. cit.).

His final resting place is as yet unidentified. George London was buried in Fulham, Thomas Hold, Wanstead’s agent, lies in Thorney, the headquarters of the Russells’ fen drainage operations, while Richard Holt, a strong candidate for being the patentee and Lambeth producer of artificial stoneworks and the illegitimate son of Thomas Holt, rests at Streatham churchyard. The latter was a living of the Woburn Russells through the dowry of the second Duchess, granddaughter of Sir Josiah Child of Wanstead! The burial sites of eighteenth-century personnel are not always so clear.

Although most of Holt’s garden at Wanstead, which, like the house, was renowned as one of the most politically inspired creations of its time, has disappeared below a suburban golf course, a legacy still exists of this gardening family. A hybrid elm, the ‘Chichester’ elm (now Ulmus x hollandica ‘vegeta’), was known to another botanical churchman, the Reverend Adam Buddle of North Fambridge, and samples lodged by him at the Chelsea Physic Garden in 1711 were described as ‘… a broadleaf smooth wych elm that grows plentifully around Danbury.’ The site from which this elm was obtained is not far from one of Thomas Holt’s farms, Chichester Hall, near Rawreth. Such was the demand at this time for ‘fashion’ elms that local propagation was commercially attractive, as the Leytonstone nursery probably appreciated. It is known that such ‘vegeta’ elms had been planted at Woburn Abbey in about the 1720s, according to pre-World War I photographic evidence of the arboretum there, and by that time Thomas Holt’s role at Holborn and Woburn is unquestioned. Similar photographic evidence of ‘English’ elms at Hedingham Hall, where Adam Holt was commissioned to construct waterworks, has come to light. Both avenues have now been lost to Dutch elm disease. Tantalisingly, a Roman mosaic was unearthed at Wanstead in 1715 while ground works were in progress for planting avenues, by which time Holt was in charge of garden operations, but no record of the subject was recorded (Potter pers.comm.). Unlike the fated remnants of the garden and waterworks at Wanstead and other places, the ‘vegeta’ elm survives elsewhere. It may even survive in Wanstead Park (Hanson 1990), as the vigour implied by its nomen, first classified by the young John Lindley in 1823, ensures some tolerance of the Dutch elm disease of today. Queens’ College at Cambridge this summer will be propagating material from their surviving twin trees, whose heights top 140 feet, thus permitting the legacy of this eighteenth-century plant selection, perhaps by the hand of the Holts themselves, to continue for another 300 years.

The garden historian, Timothy Mowl (2000), in his book Gentlemen and Players puts such casual incidences into focus well, ‘… the English landscape park was created not by any retreat of the lords and gentlemen, but by the brazen advance into the expertise of the professionals or players.’ What a pity that these two Holts had not been more brazen so as to illuminate more fully their current state of ‘shadowy’ existence.

Wanstead House, 1783. Courtesy of Essex Record Office

References

Briggs, N, 2006 ‘Adam Holt’ in Rooted in Essex (Essex Gardens Trust 2006), 26–27

Cowell, F, 1998 ‘Adam Holt, gardener: his work at Coopersale House, Essex’ Garden History, 26 (1998), 214–217

Desmond, R, 1977 Directory of British and Irish botanists (London: Taylor Francis)

Hanson, M W, 1990 ‘Essex Elm’ Essex Naturalist, 10 (Essex Field Club, 1990)

Harvey, J, 1974 Early nurserymen (London & Chichester: Phillimore)

Leach, M, & Way, T, 2006 ‘Spencer Turner’, in Rooted in Essex (Essex Gardens Trust), 50

Mowl, T, 2000 Gentlemen and players: gardeners of the English landscape (Sutton Publishing)

Potter, Ralph, personal communication (2009)

Rackham, O, 1986 The woods of south-east Essex (Rochford District Council)

Rhode, E S, 1932 The story of the garden (Medici Society)

Sillson, E J, 1982 West London nursery gardens (Fulham and Hammersmith Historical Society)