Send us Fan Mail

The Laskett in Herefordshire is one of the most remarkable gardens to have been created in the 20th century but now it’s future is threatened. Sir Roy Strong, scholar, museum director and the author of over 70 erudite books, and his theatre-designer wife Julia Trevelyan Oman created it as a bolt hole from London, beginning in 1973 – a bleak time of industrial unrest and inflation. It grew to become the largest formal garden made in the UK since the Second World War. This intensely personal arcadia was a place of memory, where plants, statuary and garden spaces remembered people whom the Strongs knew and important and recorded important events in the Strongs’ life together. Clive and John describe the origins and importance of this Elysium, which can be comipared to Horace Walpole’s Strawberry Hill.
After a long and painful reflection, the National Trust turned down Sir Roy’s offer to g give it them. It seemed though that a solution had been found when half a dozen years ago it went instead to the gardening charity Perennial. Perennial has found that it cannot generate the visitors needed to make it pay, not least because they have not succeeded in making a car park. Since their main charitable purpose is to support working gardeners in old age, illness or hard times, they cannot keep a loss-making property on their books and have decided, if possible, to find a new owner. If one does not come forward, The Laskett will be broken up. Already the catalogue of a sale at the Cotswolds auction house of Chorley’s has been published, although the date of the auction has been postponed from the end of this month until June.
In this emergency episode of ypompod, John and Clive discuss The Lastkett’s importance. How will it be viewed by future generations? Is it possible for gardens to keep their soul once the people who first made them have left? What should we think of this cultural catastrophe in the making?

Send us Fan Mail

One of the most famous Catholic schools in Britain, Ampleforth College in Yorkshire this year celebrates the centenary of its chapel, designed by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott. Scott has emerged in recent years as a colossus of 20th-century architecture, bestriding it alike with his religious buildings – notably the Anglican cathedral in Liverpool – and his secular designs, such as Battersea Power Station and the familiar red telephone kiosk.
John describes the remarkable history of Ampleforth Abbey, established as a Benedictine community in 1802, and the foundation of the college, the next year. Scott’s chapel was preceded by a High Victorian one designed by Joseph Hansom, inventor of the Hansom cab. This soon proved inadequate but it was the First World War provided the main spur to enlargement – the new chapel would be a monument to the Fallen. Scott’s design features a 122ft tower, and combines a 1922 Romanesque-style retrochoir with a later, simpler 1961 nave and transepts. A triumph of 20th century architecture, it provides exceptional insights into the social and spiritual values of its time. The altar (John claims) is unique!

Send us Fan Mail

Few houses better convey the opulence of Edwardian country house life than Manderston in the Scottish Borders. Built in the first years of the 20th century, it is an exquisite work of the scholarly architect John Kinross – which has always been kept up to the high standards set by Kinross’s client, the racehorse owner Sir James Miller. Clive reveals a particular affection for Kinross because he knew his son, also called John Kinross, when the latter was an old but sprightly man with many memories to share – as well as because Manderston was the subject of one of his first sets of country-house articles for Country Life.
Sir James had married Eveline, a daughter of Lord Scarsdale of Kedleston Hall, in Derbyshire, a masterpiece by Robert Adam which finds its reflection in Manderston. But if the architectural style is Adamesque, the decoration by Charles Mellier and Company often strikes a French note. Entirely of its time, however, is the staircase, whose balustrade is plated with silver. There was a marble dairy to keep the milk cool in the Scottish Baronial home farm. Given Sir James’s interest in horses, it is no surprise that the stables are splendid. But this was also the age of the first motor cars, much feared by some as an agent of change – which indeed it was.
Not that Manderston itself has changed very much: it still perfectly conveys the domestic priorities of the Edwardian age, when country houses more comfortable than ever before.