from Harlech and London
fotoLibrarian
fotos, follies, fonts, food & other folderols

Archive for February, 2011

Past Parks and Bygone Gardens

Tuesday, February 15th, 2011

Oh, the thoughtlessness of people. They build themselves a pleasant house, construct a lovely garden, decorate it with a few scraps of interesting architecture and then they die. Or go bankrupt.

And the park is left lonely and unloved, decaying into wilderness.

Then a couple of centuries later along come Wim Meulenkamp and me, poking fun at the follies and rootling among the undergrowth with a deranged dog and one bored but patient wife (mine, not Wim’s).

Because what Wim and I see is the original dream. We don’t see the snotty, screaming kids, the pit bull terriers straining at their leashes; we don’t see the mud and the ice-cream wrappers, the hoodies, the discarded boxes of McDonald’s fries.

We seldom see — and shame on us — that behind the apparent desolation there is almost always a keen, enthusiastic and dedicated team who selflessly put themselves out to do all they can to rescue the past park. And they all suffer from the same malady: they have no money.

They need cash and they need physical help, but they cannot hope to approach the fortunes that were spent in the original creation of the parks and gardens, or recruit the armies of navvies who dug the lakes and built the bothies and grottoes.

Take Wanstead Park in east London. When Wanstead House was built by Colen Campbell for Sir Richard Child it cost something like £360,000. That’s about the same as you’d spend on a flat in Wanstead today. But £360,000 in 1714 equates to over half a billion pounds today. That’s quite a sum to envisage.

The back of Wanstead Grotto after recent extensive scrub clearance

The house was knocked down in 1824 because of the profligacy of the heiress’s husband, the repulsive reprobate William Pole-Tylney-Long-Wellesley. The great plantations were cut down by W.P.T.L.W for timber, but he couldn’t sell the lakes and so the park survives — just. It is quite possible to walk the park as we did, lost in the eighteenth century, with the dream aided by contemporary and current maps side by side on notice boards dotted here and there.

Readers of a certain age will remember Stephens’ Ink. Avenue House in Finchley, north London was bought from the fortunes made through the sale of the stuff, H. C. ‘Inky’ Stephens creating an agreeable, faintly French renaissance house set in a lovely arboretum, with Pulhamite water features, a romantic water tower and a bothy, one of the first concrete buildings to be constructed in England. When he died, Stephens left the house and grounds to the people of Finchley.

There are few similarities between Avenue House and Wanstead Park — one is an extremely large garden in an affluent northern suburb and the other is a rolling country estate surrounded by drab east London — but both contain follies, grottoes or garden buildings, which is what presses my buttons, and both are crying out for help.

If I were a rich man … but I’m not, so all I can do is publicise their plight. Alas, I’m also hopeless with a pair of secateurs. Both Avenue House and Wanstead Park have active conservation groups. They need support and help, both financial, intellectual and physical.

Until February 28th Wanstead Park is consulting on a conservation statement. You can get involved and comment even if you have nothing to do with Wanstead. Visit http://www.cityoflondon.gov.uk/wansteadparkproject

There’s an exhibition at the Temple in Wanstead Park till the end of the month. Call 020 8532 5334 for more information. They’re preparing an application to the Heritage Lottery Fund for a sum believed to be in the region of £6 million. A drop in the ocean compared to the original cost.

Avenue House has no such leisurely process to comfort them. They need hard cash and they need it NOW. They are suffering — truly suffering — in this climate of cuts and cold charity. Bill Tyler of the Avenue House Estate Trust writes “For over six years the Trustees have run the Mansion and Grounds in East End Road without any subsidy or grant whatsoever from Barnet Council. We have sought Council help to see us through the lean January/ February/March period when company budgets run out and private functions are at their lowest. Unless we receive immediate substantial funds the estate will have to be handed back to the council early in March.  We have already been told the Mansion could then be boarded up and with minimal maintenance for the Grounds.”

Local councillors agree that the Avenue House grounds are one of Finchley’s finest assets. If you can help in any way, please contact them through the Avenue House website, http://www.avenuehouse.org.uk

Both are worthy of every piece of help we can give.

Share

Posted in Uncategorized | 8 Comments »

  • Last 5 Posts

    • Presentism
    • How big were the Beatles?
    • Anosmia
    • A Duty Of Care
    • 34 REASONS TO READ  THE MIRROR AND THE LIGHT by HILARY MANTEL
  • Pages

    • About Gwyn Headley
  • Archives

    • June 2020
    • May 2020
    • April 2020
    • March 2020
    • January 2020
    • November 2019
    • October 2019
    • September 2019
    • July 2019
    • February 2019
    • January 2019
    • December 2018
    • November 2018
    • October 2018
    • September 2018
    • July 2018
    • March 2018
    • December 2017
    • November 2017
    • October 2017
    • August 2017
    • July 2017
    • June 2017
    • May 2017
    • April 2017
    • February 2017
    • January 2017
    • December 2016
    • November 2016
    • October 2016
    • September 2016
    • August 2016
    • July 2016
    • June 2016
    • May 2016
    • April 2016
    • March 2016
    • February 2016
    • January 2016
    • December 2015
    • November 2015
    • September 2015
    • July 2015
    • June 2015
    • May 2015
    • February 2015
    • January 2015
    • December 2014
    • October 2014
    • August 2014
    • July 2014
    • June 2014
    • May 2014
    • April 2014
    • March 2014
    • January 2014
    • December 2013
    • November 2013
    • October 2013
    • September 2013
    • August 2013
    • July 2013
    • June 2013
    • April 2013
    • December 2012
    • November 2012
    • October 2012
    • August 2012
    • July 2012
    • June 2012
    • May 2012
    • April 2012
    • March 2012
    • January 2012
    • December 2011
    • November 2011
    • September 2011
    • July 2011
    • June 2011
    • May 2011
    • April 2011
    • February 2011
    • December 2010
    • November 2010
    • September 2010
    • August 2010
    • July 2010
    • June 2010
    • May 2010
    • April 2010
    • March 2010
    • February 2010
    • January 2010
    • December 2009
    • November 2009
    • September 2009
    • August 2009
    • July 2009
    • June 2009
    • May 2009
    • April 2009
    • March 2009
    • February 2009
    • January 2009
    • December 2008
    • October 2008
    • September 2008
    • August 2008
    • July 2008
    • June 2008
    • May 2008
    • April 2008
    • March 2008
    • January 2008
    • December 2007
    • November 2007
  • Categories

    • Uncategorized (349)

fotoLibrarian is proudly powered by WordPress
Entries (RSS) and Comments (RSS).