Bayham Abbey is a fine example of 16th century destruction in an age of religious intolerance, grotesque public execution and profiteering. Today, it is a quiet place of crumbling sandstone set amongst beautiful and ancient trees at the base of a valley. The ruins sit next to an assortment of more recent buildings built by various belted earls, including…
Category: Gardens
Bore Place
Just round the corner from Bough Beech, among the mosaic of woods and pastures of the Weald, is Bore Place, a fine old brick and tile manor house. Today, it is the home of Commonwork, a charitable trust that seeks to educate, inspire and support people through contact with sustainable agriculture and nature. The place is at its heart a…
Dungeness A
The flat grazing marshes of Romney, with large farms and famous sheep flocks, now adorned by a wind farm and bigger airport outside the old village of Lydd, give way to low shingle ridges decked with bushes as the road heads south to Dungeness. A mile or so on is the turn to the RSPB reserve,…
Sissinghurst
In the Spring of 1939, my mother accompanied her mother on a visit by the Hildenborough Women’s Institute to Sissinghurst Castle Garden. The group alighted from a charabanc and were shown round the gardens by the owner, Vita Sackville-West. My mother, not quite in her teens, remembers a vibrant, kind woman with an easy manner….
Great Comp Garden
Great Comp Garden in late July is a study in green. The spring flowers have long faded and spindly Salvias, for which the garden is renowned, linger but, apart from one hot bed of red hot pokers (Kniphofia sp.) and yellow Dahlias by the old quiet house, this is a world of verdant, restful shades; yellow greens, green…
St John’s Jerusalem
On a July afternoon, a cock blackbird sunbathes in the hot sun splayed on the dry grass. I hope to see flat flies run for the cool shade of the adjacent copse or perhaps feather lice fried but no such luck. The pair are nesting in the copse somewhere and both appear from time to time but…