THE Cotswolds are not short on famous gardens, nor on tourist coachloads. Upton Wold, only a few fields from Chipping Campden’s tea rooms, holds a rare, precious serenity amid the hordes. Sitting low and secretive in a valley fold, hugged by grassy slopes on three sides, the Jacobean Grade II*- listed manor has film-star good looks, with its symmetrical façade, mullioned windows, caramel stone, mossy slate roof.
When owners Ian and Caroline Bond arrived in 1973, it was less promising. The buildings form part of the Northwick estate and had been occupied by tenanted farmers. The approach was a muddy track and the garden an open field falling directly away from the house. Mrs Bond wrote to the Institute of Landscape Architects for help and received a recommendation for Brenda Colvin and Hal Moggridge. When Colvin arrived, Mrs Bond remembers, she ‘looked at the view, saying: “Hal, dear boy, if they agree to keep the sweep of the view, take the job. If they don’t, don’t.”’ The view stayed and Mr Moggridge did, too, helping develop the six-acre garden for more than 45 years.
As do its neighbours Kiftsgate and Hidcote, the garden at Upton Wold wraps around the manor in a series of rooms, divided by formal hedging and strong axis paths. Using stone quarried on the estate, the Bonds built boundary walls and an east-facing terrace, levelling the ground and anchoring the house. From this platform, three wide stone steps drop down to two tiered lawns, flanked on either side by vast, immaculately clipped yew hedges and ending with a ha-ha.
Preceding pages: Hundreds of Camassia leichtlinii are added to the orchard each year. Beyond the field gate lies a wildflower meadow.
The view from the dovecote: yew topiary, the canal garden and a spring border brimming with honesty, forget-me-not and tulips
Denne historien er fra April 01, 2020-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Denne historien er fra April 01, 2020-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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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.
