An overgrown garden has been reinvented for a new generation, writes Tiffany Daneff, with a new pool house and ingenious reuse of a derelict wing as an outdoor eating area
AFTER living abroad for several years in Sydney and Amsterdam, Mr and Mrs Paul Hilgers were looking for somewhere to settle and bring up their young family when they discovered exactly the place they were looking for in a quiet rural valley within easy distance of Tunbridge Wells in Kent.
In 2019, they moved into Pembury Hall, which had been built in 1803 and was home for 170 years to the Woodgate family, three members of which were vicars of the 14thcentury old parish church of St Peter's a few minutes' walk away. Push open the gate at the far end of the main lawn and a rutted track leads through a dappled tunnel of coppiced hazels and snaking rhododendrons-the same path the clergymen would have taken on their way to morning service. A yew treeechoing many in the garden overhangs the iron gate that leads into a small churchyard.
When Hilgers moved here, however, all was overgrown. The gardens and grounds had been neglected for many years with the usual results: 19th-century plantings of Cupressus leylandii and rhododendron had become overgrown, knotweed and other persistent weeds had taken hold in the gardens and tree shaving been left for decades unchecked-completely blocked the best view over meadows to the distant tree line beyond.
This story is from the {{IssueName}} edition of {{MagazineName}}.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber ? Sign In
This story is from the {{IssueName}} edition of {{MagazineName}}.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Sign In
Save our family farms
IT Tremains to be seen whether the Government will listen to the more than 20,000 farming people who thronged Whitehall in central London on November 19 to protest against changes to inheritance tax that could destroy countless family farms, but the impact of the good-hearted, sombre crowds was immediate and positive.
A very good dog
THE Spanish Pointer (1766–68) by Stubbs, a landmark painting in that it is the artist’s first depiction of a dog, has only been exhibited once in the 250 years since it was painted.
The great astral sneeze
Aurora Borealis, linked to celestial reindeer, firefoxes and assassinations, is one of Nature's most mesmerising, if fickle displays and has made headlines this year. Harry Pearson finds out why
'What a good boy am I'
We think of them as the stuff of childhood, but nursery rhymes such as Little Jack Horner tell tales of decidedly adult carryings-on, discovers Ian Morton
Forever a chorister
The music-and way of living-of the cabaret performer Kit Hesketh-Harvey was rooted in his upbringing as a cathedral chorister, as his sister, Sarah Sands, discovered after his death
Best of British
In this collection of short (5,000-6,000-word) pen portraits, writes the author, 'I wanted to present a number of \"Great British Commanders\" as individuals; not because I am a devotee of the \"great man, or woman, school of history\", but simply because the task is interesting.' It is, and so are Michael Clarke's choices.
Old habits die hard
Once an antique dealer, always an antique dealer, even well into retirement age, as a crop of interesting sales past and future proves
It takes the biscuit
Biscuit tins, with their whimsical shapes and delightful motifs, spark nostalgic memories of grandmother's sweet tea, but they are a remarkably recent invention. Matthew Dennison pays tribute to the ingenious Victorians who devised them
It's always darkest before the dawn
After witnessing a particularly lacklustre and insipid dawn on a leaden November day, John Lewis-Stempel takes solace in the fleeting appearance of a rare black fox and a kestrel in hot pursuit of a pipistrelle bat
Tarrying in the mulberry shade
On a visit to the Gainsborough Museum in Sudbury, Suffolk, in August, I lost my husband for half an hour and began to get nervous. Fortunately, an attendant had spotted him vanishing under the cloak of the old mulberry tree in the garden.