Gardening – Spring
I wouldn’t say that the Winter has been particularly bad, looking back on my gardening diary we had 7ft snow drifts in 2014 in South Derbyshire but I do think it has been a long one. For the first time in 20 years we had snow early in December so after stop – start with the Gardening we are now getting some clearer, warmer days. This month sees the start of the “grow your own” season, again with many new varieties of vegetables. I can’t wait to start on my own allotment and I’ve already planted my potatoes and onion sets – but I also had great success with carrots so I’m going to try the heritage varieties. I sprayed less insecticide last year because of the companion planting I used (blackpepper mint and basil) to keep away greenfly and whitefly. Also another tip, using white alyssum (the summer bedding plant) planted in containers near plants or vegetables, thrips are attracted to the alyssum and not your plants or veg. Once the alyssum are swamped with thrips simply dispose of them in the green waste wheely bin.Look out for the N.G.S Open Garden booklets. The reason I love the open garden scheme is because these are “real” gardens that easily relate to our own gardens. So pick up a yellow booklet for dates and locations from any good plant nursery or garden centre and also look out for the yellow posters – the open gardens are a great source of inspiration. Allotment or Vegetable Patch: Still a good time to sow green manure Buy vegetable plug plants (approx Easter weekend onwards) Fertilise spring cabbage with a high nitrogen feed Plant new asparagus “crowns” Potatoes, shallots and onion sets should still be available to buy Feed fruit trees and bushes with sulphate of potash Crops to sow directly outside or under cloches are peas, mange tout, mixed salad leaves, radish, cauliflower, turnip, lettuce, carrots, beetroot, cabbage, Brussels, broad beans, leeks, rocket, Swiss chard and spinach. Also sow in your vegetable plot tagetes and poached egg plant to attract beneficial insects. In the Greenhouse: Protect any seedling from cold Water any seedling trays or pots with copper fungicide to help prevent damping off disease. Remember to increase ventilation on warm days If too hot, put up shading to protect plants Buy plug plants to grow on for pots, bedding displays and baskets. Sow French and runner beans in pots. Sow melons, cucumbers, marrows and courgettes in a heated propagator Check plants regularly for signs of pests or disease Plant tomatoes in grow bags or large pots. General Garden Maintenance: Repair or sow new lawns with grass seed. Apply moss killer to lawns – or sulphate of iron which is the active ingredient in moss killers. Rake out any dead grass from lawns. Start to feed the lawn with a suitable lawn fertiliser. Prune out any green shoots (reversion) off any variegated shrubs. Check that stakes are not rubbing against trees or tree ties are not too tight. Cut away any “suckers” growing around the base of trees and shrubs. Last month’s top shrubs forsythia and ribes (flowering currants) prune back after flowers have finished. Sprinkle a handful of sulphate of potash around tulips to improve flowering Sow sweet peas outside around the base of cane supports, obelisks or even try a hanging basket for them to trail down. Give camelias, rhododendrons, azaleas and pieris a good handful of ericaceous (acidic) fertiliser. Now is the ideal time to start to spray roses as a preventive for mildew, rust and blackspot. Keep topiary in check by giving a light clip now. Look out for new varieties of trees and shrubs this month but here are some that are old favourites. Japanese Maples: My most favourite of all shrubs, these stunning shrubs / trees are ideal in containers and make a great feature plant in the garden. The choice of varieties is vast, with red or green, finely cut or palmate leaf. Pick a variety like Acer Palmatum Sango Kaku and you also get colourful stems in winter. Acers like a moist but well drained, neutral to acid soil in a non exposed windy position. Despite what you read in some books, Acers with sensible care are easy to grow. My personal favourites are … Acer Palmatum `Sango Kaku` (coloured stems) , Acer Palmatum `Bloodgood` (the best upright red leaf maple) Acer Palmatum Dissectum `Greenlace` (very finely cut, green leaf maple), Acer Palmatum Dissectum `Garnet` (very finely cut, red leaf maple) and Acer Shirasawanum `Aureum` (bright yellow leafed maple). Spiraea x cinerea `Grefsheim`: or “bridal wreath” currently mine at home is full of flower bud so this will look fantastic at this time of year, long flower racemes of pure white hang down almost weeping. Very easy to grow it likes most soils in full sun to part shade. I wouldn’t recommend this for a pot but planted in a border or a informal hedge makes a good feature. The R.H.S has given this plant the Award of Garden Merit. Cercis chinensis `Avondale`: Might be a bit hard to find this one but worth hunting it out. This is a beautiful species which is native to China, Cercis chinensis ‘Avondale’ has bare stems which are studded with pretty, rich purple-pink flowers in late April or early May before the foliage emerges. This variety is grown mainly for it’s striking flowers but there is also Cercis canadensis `Forest Pansy`which has beautiful deep plum red leaves and new this year Cercis canadensis `Hearts of Gold` which has large bright yellow leaves. 00
Lost Houses – Swarkestone Old Hall
If you drive along the road from Swarkestone Bridge to Chellaston you will notice, just as you turn east after passing the Crewe & Harpur Arms, a pair of sturdy stone gatepiers topped with large ball finials. Those not having to concentrate upon the road ahead will also see, in the field beyond the gate piers, an engaging stone two storey structure with a pair of ogee domed turrets. The latter, beautifully restored, is now a holiday cottage for two, although I visited once, soon after commissioning, when it was being occupied by a lady barrister appearing at Burton Crown Court. It was ferociously cold and the only way to the loo (in one turret) was to cross the leads from a door (in the other turret). On the day I called, the leads were a lethal sheet of ice, making the essential transition exceedingly hazardous! This is Swarkestone Stand, still with gun embrasures on the side facing the road, evidence of a Civil War siege. Were one to wander beyond the former bowling alley in front of the building, onto the pasture of the present 17th century Swarkestone Hall farm house, one might well notice some unusually high field boundaries, one with superimposed fireplaces still in situ. All these component parts once made up the whole of a lost mid-Tudor great house, built by Chief Justice Sir Richard Harpur (1515-1577), a Royal legal officer who dexterously served four sovereigns – Kings Henry VIII, Edward VI, Queens Mary I and Elizabeth – without losing his head. The Harpurs were an old Warwickshire and later Staffordshire family, seated at Pelsall. Sir Richard’s branch had become merchants at Chester, of which County Palatine Sir Richard latterly became Chief Justice. In 1544 he married Jane Fynderne, whose family owned estates at Findern, Littleover and Twyford. Although she was her brother’s heiress, she was of a junior branch of her family, although when her cousin Michael died two decades after her in 1618, her children inherited all that was left of the family estates. Ironically, most of them had been purchased by the Harpurs years before to prevent young Michael frittering them away! Harpur began buying up land in and around Swarkestone, from the Wilne family, some from the Sacheverells and most in 1558 from John Rolleston. Thereafter he began to build (probably on the site of its predecessor) his ‘newe mansion howse’ which was completed in 1567. From what evidence remains, it must have been quite impressive; the house was approximately 115 ft. square and with a central court yard. The best rooms were, almost certainly, from the evidence of remains, on the first floor (the piano nobile), with others facing the church to the west. The structure was built in coarse Keuper sandstone blocks with fine ashlar quoins and detailing, all from the nearby quarry at Weston Cliff. The whole ensemble was approximately orientated north-south, the northernmost feature being the Stand added by Sir Richard’s grandson in 1632, built by Richard Shepperd at a cost of £111 – 12s – 4d and designed, according to Professor Mark Girouard, by John Smythson, creator of Bolsover Castle. The Stand, or pavilion, has a south facing arcade with a viewing room above with big windows to observe the bowling in the rectangular sward on the south side. Opposite is a re-positioned Tudor door-case set in the surviving boundary wall. Beyond again would have been the 38 foot wide two storey gatehouse, probably also embellished with onion or ogee domes, but now entirely vanished bar a few fragments at ground level. From this a straight drive took one to the north range of the house through an impressive archway and into the courtyard. The present farm house to the south east is post-civil war and some consider it was probably adapted from the original stable block and indeed, it may have served a similar purpose, at least for a while, before conversion, prior to 1750, into a farmhouse. Other schools of thought consider it to have been a factor’s house or similar, as with the equally adjacent ‘Georgian House’ at Hampton Court, but altered later. On the west side of the main house, where there is still a two storey stretch of wall with three chimney pieces surviving. To its west lay a large formal garden with cruciform paths radiating from a circle containing a pond, to divide the parterres, all revealed by work on the farm in 1988 and partly excavated. To the north west lies the so-called tithe barn, tactfully converted into a pair of luxury homes in 1988. Clearly it was never a barn as such, lacking the usual full height wide doors, but the suggestion that it was a malt-house has not found universal favour either. It probably formed part of a utilitarian yard with other buildings, but its five bays of south facing windows in moulded surrounds over two storeys and lack of chimneys would suggest some kind of storage was intended. The best way to appreciate the entire once very grand ensemble is to stand on the leads at the pavilion and look south towards where once stood the gatehouse and main residence. During the Civil War the house, still then held by the Royalist Harpurs, held out, ultimately unsuccessfully, against Sir John Gell’s Parliamentary forces from Derby, under the command of Sir John Harpur (1612-1679) from December 1642 to January 1643. Sir John survived exile as a widower and married again after the war. In 1662 he had to pay the new hearth tax on a massive 28 hearths, one more than Sir Edward Coke at Longford (less than half of whose house survives today), two more than Sutton Scarsdale and two less than Staveley. Risley, another very similar house, was taxed on 33 hearths. William Woolley, writing about 1713, wrote of Swarkeston that it was ‘a large, convenient stone building, seated on the banks of the Trent’, but within months the house had become empty on
Lost House – Derwent Hall
Architect Joseph Aloysius Hansom undertook the work of creating an Elysium amongst the dark hills above Derwent. Next time you turn on the tap, you might spare a thought for poor old Derwent Hall. This interesting and distinguished house disappeared slowly beneath the waters of Derwent Reservoir between summer 1943 and 1945, when the last vestiges of its half-demolished shell finally disappeared beneath the waters. The culprits were the combined water authorities of Derby, Nottingham, Leicester and Sheffield, eager to ensure uninterrupted clean water for their burgeoning populations, and the entire operation was nationalised in 1947. So what was lost? Essentially a typical upland Derbyshire stone built 16th or 17th century gabled country house much enlarged and equipped with all the latest comforts in the late 19th century, but none the less interesting for all that. Although Derwent was part of the extensive upland parish of Hathersage, the unforgiving terrain was not inductive to the accumulation of a landed estate and the site from late medieval time was a farm held by the Barber family. The father of Henry Balguy (pronounced ‘bawgee’), a younger son of the Balguys of Aston-in-Peak, bought some land at Derwent and later acquired more at Rowlee and Henry (1648-1685) combined the two to create a modest estate, acquiring Derwent Hall, then a moderate sized farm house taxed in 1670 on four hearths, in 1672. His son – another Henry – rebuilt the house some two decades later (it bore an entirely convincing date-stone of 1692), leaving an attractive small H-plan manor house of two storeys with gabled attics, built of coarse local Kinderscout grit with ashlar detailing: coped gables, four, six and eight light mullion-and-transomed windows with string courses over, and quoins at the angles, all under a stone slate roof. The central entrance had a round arched top with the date-stone and an armorial set above it, the string course dipping down above for emphasis. The east elevation was five bays, the two closest to the main front being full height and the three towards the north being lower with attics, representing service accommodation. In the early 19th century a pair of ten light matching windows were installed here. There was also a lower wing to the west and a stable block beyond, at right angles to the house, the whole ensemble being set on the lower slopes of the hill behind with parterres and terraces running down to the Derwent. A third Henry Balguy (1700-1770), having acquired by marriage extensive coal mining interests in the Alfreton area, sold up in 1767 and moved there, selling to the Bennet family, a numerous and well-off farming family in the Dark Peak. The purchaser’s son, John Bennet, acquired tapestries rescued from the fire that destroyed Lord Shrewsbury’s epic prodigy house, Worksop Manor and had them altered to fit Derwent’s parlour and dining room. In 1831, however, the estate was sold to John Read (1777-1862) initially as a summer retreat. He re-ordered the gardens as recorded in the lithograph by W L Walton. He sold it on in 1846 to the Newdigates of West Hallam Hall and Arbury (Warwickshire) who tenanted it as a farm. They too sold it on, in 1876, and this time the purchaser was Henry, 15th Duke of Norfolk, who vested it, as a coming-of-age present, to his younger son, Lord Edmund Bernard FitzAlan-Howard. Although the Howards were normally seated at Arundel, it must not be forgotten that they also owned Glossop Hall and the vast, if rather barren, hills that surrounded it; indeed the lad’s politician great uncle Edward, who lived there, was in 1869 created 1st Lord Howard of Glossop. Lord Edmund, as a FitzAlan-Howard, was a strong Catholic, and also a talented and energetic fellow. He immediately set about transforming the very modest old house into a considerable seat, employing the then doyen of Roman Catholic architects, Joseph Aloysius Hansom (of cab fame) to undertake the work of creating an Elysium amongst the dark hills above Derwent. The work began in 1878 and was completed in 1882. Although the original south front was kept, the remainder of the house was almost completely rebuilt, although with considerable tact. The two cross wings were extended back into the hillside, the main range was doubled in depth, and new service wing was added to the west and the stable range was re-ordered to create a courtyard around it. The East front was enlivened with two ground floor square bays and a large projecting bay containing a vast new drawing room with a canted end, beyond which was built a simple gothic domestic chapel, slightly higher than the house itself. Attic dormers were also added, and the interior acquired new oak panelling to match the old, along with a completely new and very fine oak staircase. The interior also gained an overmantel dated 1634 from old Norton Hall (replaced in 1796 and now in Sheffield). The gardens were completely re-arranged and the estate increased to 1,274 acres. The result was a house of some style and ambition, fitted with all modern conveniences, including home-produced gas and, after a decade or so, electric light installed by George Crompton of Stanton Hall, Stanton-by-Dale, a pioneer in this field. In 1921, Lord Edmund was appointed Lord Lieutenant of Ireland – the last person to hold that office and the first Catholic to do so since 1686 – and was ennobled as Viscount FitzAlan of Derwent in consequence. By the time he laid down office in 1922, as a result of the declaration of the Irish Free State, he had decided, with advancing years to live at Cumberland Lodge at Windsor, and the family just went to Derwent for part of the summer and the shooting season. Then, in 1920 the various local authorities determined to build a further series of reservoirs to alleviate an impending water shortage, and it soon became clear that the days of Derwent Hall were numbered. In 1920 the Norton Old
Lost Houses – The Old Mayor’s Parlour
Of all the losses of large houses in Derbyshire one of the most grievous was the completely unnecessary – if not vindictive – demolition of the largest urban timber framed domestic residence in Britain of its date, the Old Mayor’s Parlour, 15 Tenant Street, Derby in 1948. By a cruel irony this was the same year that the first Statutory List for Derby was prepared. Had the building survived a few more months, it would without doubt have been listed grade I. From the 18th century until the late 1930s it was a difficult house to see, for like all houses built in Derby before the modern era, it had to be fitted onto one of the long, narrow and in this case slightly curving burgage plots with which the Saxon burh was laid out in the early 10th century. It was thus end-on to Tenant Street and in c1740 a Georgian house was grafted onto its street front, so you could no longer get a glimpse of its ornamentally timbered north front from the street. It was only when the requirements of the 1929 Derby Central Improvement Plan were being met, that Corporation Street was driven through close by the east end of the house and the surrounding properties were razed, that the house once again became visible. With the coming of war in 1939, the scheme stalled for a decade until peace enabled the Council House to be finished in 1947, after the lifting of building restrictions. The Mayor would have occupied his fine suite of rooms (panelled with oak from freshly demolished Derwent Hall) and looked out of the window across the smart dual carriageway of Corporation Street. One can imagine the elected man of the people, seeing the decaying hulk of the Old Mayor’s Parlour before him, demanding it be cleared away forthwith as an eyesore, despite the undertaking by a predecessor to allow the Derbyshire Archaeological Society to purchase it for a nominal sum for re-erection elsewhere. No doubt ingratiating officers rushed to do His Worship’s bidding, for within weeks this fine old edifice was no more. It was a most terrible waste too, for the site has never subsequently been built upon. How splendid the old building would have looked, fully restored and put to beneficial community use and as a draw for tourists, if only some municipal grandee had not had his head full of the imagined desire of ‘the people’ for universal newness and for the destruction of what one of his colleagues called the ‘worn-out shibboleths of outmoded privilege’! The house itself was described even in the 1880s as ‘a picture more than a place; a ballad rather than a building’. Behind its Georgian street front it stretched over four wide gables containing the attics, with two floors below. The construction was close-studded oak framing with a heavy carved cornice below the gables. Issuing from each end of the façade on the first floor were two astonishing groups of four timber canted oriel windows, flanking a central bay that was almost blank, being lit only by an inconsequential three light mullioned window. On the ground floor each oriel crowned a four light flush mullioned window on the west end of the façade, whilst at the east the lower fenestration was only of three lights. There were no less than four doors, of which one, an impressive double-leafed affair elevated atop a flight of five stone steps, was the original entrance, whilst the others were evidence of the eastern end of the house having been turned into three tenements at an earlier date. This magnificent old town house once bore a date of 1483 which nobody has ever challenged since I first published it in 1987. Inside there was much period and later oak paneling, a massive oak newel staircase and a jolly frieze around part of the first floor landing of Achilles leading the Achaean cavalry against Troy, probably later 17th century in date. The name Old Mayor’s Parlour, is traditional but is only met with in the 19th century, when the house was occupied by various departments of the municipality and actually owned by two mayors. Yet its builder’s name is entirely lost to us, but from its size and magnificence it is likely to have been the town residence of one of the grandest County families, perhaps the Blounts, Lords Mountjoy, seated at Barton Blunt and at this period pre-eminent, but until some documentary evidence is found, we shall never be sure. By the time of the Hearth Tax return for Derby in 1670, the house seems to have been divided into two, with the east end rebuilt with an east facing seven bay two storey brick range under a hipped roof, clearly visible of the 1693 (Sitwell) and 1728 (Bucks’) East Prospects of the town. This part was the home of and was presumably extended by Dr Percival Willoughby (1596-1685) Britain’s first specialist gynaecologist. He was a younger son of the Willoughbys of Wollaton Hall, and had a long career in Derby. Even without his fees, his aristocratic background would have enabled him to fund such an extension. He is buried under a slab in the side aisle of St Peter’s church engraved with his coat of arms. The gardens stretched down to the river where once stood a fishing pavilion and a 19th century author claims that the river at this point was once spanned by a ‘bridge of crazy timbers’ although no confirmation of this bold assertion has ever emerged. It was after Dr Willoughby’s time, c1740 that the street front was rebuilt in Georgian style with a fine interior including a pretty mahogany staircase with two twisted balusters per tread. This was probably when the western part of the old house was adapted as a service wing and the eastern part divided up to make three houses – hence the multiplicity of doors. At some stage in the late 18th century, the building was
