A brightly coloured old postcard on a market stall caught my eye the other day , and it turned out to be one of a series of “Famous Old Gardens” produced sometime in the very early 20thc by the firm of Raphael Tuck.
detail from a card of Drummond Castle
This series of cards are all in a very distinctive style, so I decided to track down Mr Tuck and more of his garden postcards to see if they’d make some light reading for the Saturday morning breakfast table, and indeed they do!
Anglesey Abbey Gardens with a Lady in White on a Grass Path holding a Parasol, by Edward Seago, 1949. National Trust
Just under a century ago two wealthy Anglo-American brothers, fanatical about horse racing bought a stud farm near Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk. They also wanted to enjoy the life of the huntin’ shootin’ and fishin’ set in the English countryside, and so looked for a suitable country house within relatively easy travel of Newmarket racecourse. In 1926 they ended up buying Anglesey Abbey a few miles north east of Cambridge for use during the summer months. They also agreed that whoever married first should sell his share in the estate to the other.
The brothers, Huttleston and Henry Broughton began an immediate and very sympathetic restoration of the house, and later extending it further. By 1966 when Huttleston died Anglesey Abbey also had a garden that was inspirational. Graham Thomas, then the Garden Adviser to the National Trust which had just been bequeathed the estate wrote: “In these islands I have not seen any garden which resembles this huge layout. Its conception owes much to the gentle magnificence of the English landscape school of the 18thc but with its numerous formal vistas, often terminated or enhanced by valuable and ancient statuary, vases, urns and the like, it strikes an earlier note. At the same time the more intimate gardens around the house are modern in treatment [Gardeners Chronicle 23rd August 1967]. John Sales, Thomas’s successor at the Trust says it is the only post-modern garden he knows.”
The South Front, DM 2013
Read on to find out why…
Did you realise we’re walking through a Repton landscape?
This is a bonus post to celebrate the fact that it’s now 5 years to the day that I started this blog, to let you know how its been doing in 2018, and to give you the chance to test your memory with the annual quiz.
Readership has continued to rise: about 73,000 hits in 2018 compared with 46,000 hits last year, 37,000 in 2016, 25,000 in 2015 and about 7000 in 2014.
How did the National Trust get away with building a toboggan runs through that Grade 2* listed Gothic garden lodge?
There are now 377 signed up subscribers, and this is the 256th post which means I’ve probably written about half a million words of wisdom. [And with apologies for the terrible captions today].
They’ll never miss just one from their pinetum…
Repton-logo
2018 has been a pretty extraordinary year for Humphry. He has surprised many – if not most of us – by his skill and understanding not just of landscapes and gardens but also by his ability to sell his ideas to clients. Thanks to the amazing amount of research that has gone on in County Gardens Trusts all round the country during the year I’ve gone – like most of us I suspect – from considerable ignorance of his work to a real appreciation of his significance. You can read more about these latest discoveries in the range of new publications our local researchers have produced and which listed on our website.
But all good things come to an end and although I’ve got about another dozen posts on Repton in various stages of completion I think this will be the last for a while to give us all a chance to recover and mitigate the risk of being Humphed out.
This final post seems particularly appropriate because although it’s about a great piece of design, even theatre, it reminds us that despite his own very high opinion of his ability Humphry didn’t always get his own way.
Before…
One of the 1986 Christmas stamps
One of the things that historians like to boast about is their devotion to evidence. Facts without corroboration are merely assertions. Good stories without witness statements or documentary support are just that: good stories. The further back in time one goes the harder it is to prove anything really, so legend and history often battle it out. And legend often has a firmer grip on the imagination than the hard reality of historical fact.
The tree flowers twice a year, at Easter and Christmas Credit: ITV News
That’s certainly the case for the story of the Glastonbury Thorn. There, fact and fiction clash nicely, with historical truth being a lot less romantic than the accretions of good storytelling, so maybe we should just read into it whatever we like and wish that it was true…. which we’re used to doing at this time of year anyway!
The Garden History Blog 
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