Old bones and new beginnings

Steffie Shields visits Battleford Hall garden in Fleet, which opens this month.

With biting winds sweeping the South Holland fenland, I realised it was not exactly the best of weathers to visit a garden. Passing St Mary Magdalene’s churchyard in Fleet, I was pleased to find a gravel drive beyond a pair of ornamental brick and stone-capped gate piers.

As wintry daylight lent a Dickensian atmosphere, towering trees, laurels and yew, relieved only by patches of snowdrops at their feet, framed my first view of the house.

Perhaps Pevsner’s 1980s appraisal, finding this Gothic Revival rectory ‘forbidding’, also happened in bleak February.

The warm welcome from new owners John and Angela Holmes was the exact opposite. Their shared enthusiasm for their new home, now known as Battleford Hall, was immediately as engaging as its extraordinary architecture, in red brick with decorative yellow brick corners and a Collyweston slate roof.

Apparently, it was the three-acre garden that sold them the property. On moving there in 2021, they inherited Bobo, the resident cat, and a splendid, Victorian-style, glass and iron pavilion to house tender plants.

This month (April) the couple are opening the garden for the first time to groups of visitors, by arrangement, in aid of the National Garden Scheme.

Garden tour
John met Angela while she was studying art in Nottingham. After graduating, working for a time in the Paris fashion industry, Angela re-trained as a horticulturalist. Over the years, they have created a variety of gardens in several counties and soils; I suspect none as unusual as this one.

First stop on my whirlwind garden tour was the walled, herbalist garden, ideally sheltered next to the old washhouse, to inspect Angela’s collection of half-hardy exotics, including a quartet of olive trees, cosseted under winter wrapping, Echium pininana, a rare biennial, and an evergreen blossom tree Mimosa, Acacia dealbata.

A love of plants is in Angela’s DNA. She has fond memories of her maternal grandfather, head gardener of a significant country house in County Armagh, who used to graft apple trees, while encouraging her to get involved with strawberries and parsley! 

We moved out to the garden proper where, over many decades, what was once a beech hedge has grown into a fascinating fusion of gnarled tree trunks, a striking backdrop to the old, now shady parterre.

Rumour has it that Gertrude Jekyll, Edwardian designer queen of rose gardens, whose ancestors hailed from Lincolnshire, once visited this garden on a foray north. This proved sufficient inspiration for John and Angela to re-establish the roses in a second, more open, parterre, replacing failing roses with some eighty new plants, having treated their roots in mycorrhizal dip, and supplied from Style Roses, specialist-growers in Holbeach.

Tree count
The couple led me around gravel paths to introduce its admirable ‘old bones’, later sharing a copy of an acquired 1960 tree census. Quite a number have since been lost to age or disease, including a pair of elms. A single walnut tree survives where once there were eight. Even so, rarely have I come across an arboretum in a private garden in Lincolnshire with a finer selection of specimen trees.

Considering the nearby 14th-century church, here are biblical trees once favoured by the Freemasons for their meaning: a stately Cedar of Lebanon and a trinity of Robinia pseudo-acacia, commonly called locust trees.

A mulberry tree features in one garden room. A notable London plane dominates a woodland glade surrounded by hollies, yews and cherry blossom. A veteran Ginkgo biloba literally stopped me in my tracks, with its imposing, fissured trunk – such sculptural interest in the winter scene!

hree magnificently mature cut-leaved beech trees, first introduced from Europe in the 19th century; Fagus sylvatica ‘Laciniata’, its desiccated, fern-like foliage discarded all around. Come spring their crowning canopy sets off the principal, south-west facing elevation of the house, and masterfully screens the church.

As a result, not until visitors arrive at the front door of the house are they suddenly confronted by the breathtakingly elegant ancient church and spire. Who could have created this garden?

Jerram family
In 1853, on his appointment as Rector of Fleet, Reverend James Richard Jerram M.A. moved his young family from Chobham in leafy Surrey to Lincolnshire, perhaps persuaded by his wife Mary Stanger, the widow of Reverend Richard Dods of Fleet.

Sadly, Mary died in 1854 aged only 41. The new Rector found some consolation, deciding to replace old, early 17th-century thatched and timbered rectory buildings.

The same year, Benjamin Ferrey (1810 -1880) was commissioned to build a brand new home for the Jerram family.

This Hampshire-born architect had spent seven years from the age of 15 studying under famous father and son team, Augustus Charles Pugin and Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin, until the elder’s death in 1832. After travelling abroad, and further studies until 1834 under William Wilkins, architect associate of landscape designer Humphry Repton, Ferrey set up his own London practice.

Between 1836 and 1840 Ferrey collaborated with Decimus Burton, for a major development planting up Bournemouth Gardens, where the Upper Gardens had three different continental gardens – European, Asian and North American. Burton designed Chatsworth’s Great Stove with Joseph Paxton, and in 1848 was responsible for both Temperate House and Palm House transforming Kew Gardens. In 1850, following the death of Prince Adolphus Frederick, seventh son of George III and 1st Duke of Cambridge, Ferrey built St Anne’s mausoleum at Kew.

In that exciting, progressive era, most talented architects took a holistic view, selecting both the best artisan craftsmen to carry out their designs, and sourcing fashionable imported trees and exotic plants for the setting.

Safe to say, Benjamin Ferrey had the experience and aesthetic capability for the impeccable Victorian landscape design of this level fenland garden: the approach, allées, lawns, paths and parterres, the alpine rockery and shrubbery, all sheltered by noble and uncommon trees and, largely, still readable.

Little wonder, a century later, John Betjeman was moved. As editor to the Collins Guide to English Parish Churches (1958), the poet judged St Mary Magdalene, Fleet, with its separate embattled tower and spire, as ‘exceptionally attractive’. Recognised as a leading exponent of the Gothic Revival style in England, and known for his fine draughtsmanship and eye for simple detail, Ferrey deserves to be better known for his planting.

This Eastertide, those who venture out to visit Battleford Hall will find a floriferous corner of heaven. Remember the Good Shepherd appeared to St Mary Magdalene in a garden! Thankfully as with previous owners, the Holmes’ choice of garden ornaments shows respect for sense of place and history. Angela, with artist’s eye and horticultural expertise, is busy planning a new chapter. Hoping to return, this time in sunlight, I look forward to surveying her swathes of Narcissus ‘Marie Curie’ around the Paulownia, the dappled wild garlic carpet in the woodland, and especially, corralled by mazy box hedges in the old rose garden, her magical, new bluebell parterre. Happy Easter everyone!

We Recommend

Show your support for The Museum of the Horse

Good reads at auction

The romance of the new

A classic country house

One picture leads the field

LGT’s Photography Awards 2024

View all