Castle Bromwich Hall Gardens Trust
Aug. 18th, 2002 08:34 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
purpletigronThis weekend, I was supposed to be camping in Devon with my great friend and co-conspirator, N. Unfortunately, my last-minute call `just to be on the safe side' to re-reconfirm the arrangements with the staff at Plants for a Future revealed that the key person had gone sick, and the weekend work in which we were supposed to be participating, had been postponed. It was one of those times when the person who should have let us know the trip was off, was the one who was ill, and there was no failsafe system in place. Ah, well. There are upsides to paranoia.
So, as this was supposed to be a big celebratory trip for my hobbit 'Coming of Age', at 14:00 on Friday, it was time to rapidly come up with a desperately exciting Plan B.
This has turned out to involve, very boozy chocolate cake, much excitement in what might well turned out to be a shared project with N, and a trip to Castle Bromwich Hall Gardens Trust.
This is a place to which N and I definitely wish to return - with two of our best friends, keen gardeners both: our mothers - and we're staggered that we only just discovered it, as it is just 5 miles from where N has lived for over a decade.
The Hall was originally owned and layed out by the gentrified Bridgeman family (as distinct from the aristocracy). The plot of land makes the gardens particularly fascinating, as the house is not square to the main Birmingham Road outside, and so when the formal Jacobean gardens were laid out, many optical illusions had to be included to make the whole seem symmetric. The estate was then sold to a family which married into aristocracy, and they moved away to the far grander family home just at the time when `Capability' Brown was decimating older formal gardens. The owners only moved back after Italian-style gardens were back in fashion. Then, the Hall was again left `fallow' between the World Wars, and was lost to `bureaucratic' knowledge until the early 1980s. The then-West Midlands Borough Council blocked a planning application from a well-known housing developer to turn the whole place over to `little boxes made of ticky-tacky', and the Trust was formed and gifted the gardens (although, the house remains the property of various corporates, and is currently deteriorating because it's fate remains bound up with its most recent, recently liquidated, owner company). Since about 1989, huge sums of money have been gifted by various aristocratic and public benefactors, to restore the gardens to how they would have been in around 1730.
There is a holly maze (which we solved on the first attempt, from memory of having studied the layout on the Web page - it is topologically equivalent to the fine Hampton Court Palace maze), orchards, nut grounds, a vegetable garden, so-call 'Wilderness Gardens', parterres, extensive borders, in the largest walled garden in England (10 acres), all being gradually turned over to the correct plant varieties for the restoration period. N hopes to do some volunteer gardening work there - and to learn such things as pruning from the master gardener in the process. I'd like to do that too!
We hope to return for their Apple (cider, pear, perry) Day on Sun 20 October - the gardens then close for the winter from November until April.
So, as this was supposed to be a big celebratory trip for my hobbit 'Coming of Age', at 14:00 on Friday, it was time to rapidly come up with a desperately exciting Plan B.
This has turned out to involve, very boozy chocolate cake, much excitement in what might well turned out to be a shared project with N, and a trip to Castle Bromwich Hall Gardens Trust.
This is a place to which N and I definitely wish to return - with two of our best friends, keen gardeners both: our mothers - and we're staggered that we only just discovered it, as it is just 5 miles from where N has lived for over a decade.
The Hall was originally owned and layed out by the gentrified Bridgeman family (as distinct from the aristocracy). The plot of land makes the gardens particularly fascinating, as the house is not square to the main Birmingham Road outside, and so when the formal Jacobean gardens were laid out, many optical illusions had to be included to make the whole seem symmetric. The estate was then sold to a family which married into aristocracy, and they moved away to the far grander family home just at the time when `Capability' Brown was decimating older formal gardens. The owners only moved back after Italian-style gardens were back in fashion. Then, the Hall was again left `fallow' between the World Wars, and was lost to `bureaucratic' knowledge until the early 1980s. The then-West Midlands Borough Council blocked a planning application from a well-known housing developer to turn the whole place over to `little boxes made of ticky-tacky', and the Trust was formed and gifted the gardens (although, the house remains the property of various corporates, and is currently deteriorating because it's fate remains bound up with its most recent, recently liquidated, owner company). Since about 1989, huge sums of money have been gifted by various aristocratic and public benefactors, to restore the gardens to how they would have been in around 1730.
There is a holly maze (which we solved on the first attempt, from memory of having studied the layout on the Web page - it is topologically equivalent to the fine Hampton Court Palace maze), orchards, nut grounds, a vegetable garden, so-call 'Wilderness Gardens', parterres, extensive borders, in the largest walled garden in England (10 acres), all being gradually turned over to the correct plant varieties for the restoration period. N hopes to do some volunteer gardening work there - and to learn such things as pruning from the master gardener in the process. I'd like to do that too!
We hope to return for their Apple (cider, pear, perry) Day on Sun 20 October - the gardens then close for the winter from November until April.
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no subject
Date: 2002-08-18 01:45 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2002-08-19 12:48 am (UTC)I don't think that Castle Bromwich Hall has tangerine trees, but it does have oranges which might be very similar. I presume you've read all the books, but what you really need is an expert who can demonstrate?
no subject
Date: 2002-08-18 02:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2002-08-19 12:50 am (UTC)You do realise that Lambrini is (reasonably bad) perry, don't you?
Doesn't the real ale offie on Mill Road still exist, and can't they get you perry? Alternatively, enquire with CAMRA (http://www.camra.org.uk) for suppliers?
no subject
Date: 2002-08-18 04:40 pm (UTC)One question, what's perry?
pjt
no subject
Date: 2002-08-19 12:51 am (UTC)The maze isn't very big on the ground, but it is indeed fun. There is also a very large hedge maze at Longleat wildlife park in England, I have just been told (by Grimmie's human mummy).
no subject
Date: 2002-08-19 12:46 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2002-08-19 01:00 pm (UTC)Interesting garden, thanks for pointing it out.