Building Up!

An Edwardian photograph of the bridge in the garden, with special effects curtesy of the fire!

Monday was one of those days. Hours and hours of planning had gone into planning the moment, namely, the arrival of the visitors’ hub. It’s taken us five years to get here, from dreaming the project up, grant applications and the grueling planning process. Oh, and the not insubstantial matter of the huge fire in August that destroyed the main house and flats. All of that, notwithstanding, the day arrived. If we thought it was doing to go smoothly, we were mistaken!

The lorry arrives with materials, the last stop on a journey that started in Lithuania. Photo: Su Hurrell 

Alas, the delivery driver was bested by the gate posts of the tercentenary gates. We knew it would be tight, but we have taken large vehicles down into the garage forecourt before.

Hub construction materials unloaded by the gate.

I say we, of course I mean the skilled operatives, like the drivers of the asbestos container and numerous lorry drivers delivering skips. I leave it to the experts! In the end though the decision was made to unload the lorry outside the gates and manhandle the load down to site. As the new visitors’ hub is a cabin-style building, this meant carrying pre-cut lengths of wood to where the hub is being erected.

Construction kit, all carted down to the hub site. Phot: Nigel Brown

Mystery objects. Photos: Nigel Brown

It took the contractors a day to cart materials from the garden entrance down to the hub site. Well done those men! It was an intriguing pile of wood, and I know they have some sort of system for putting it all up, but it’s all a bit mystifying just now. The initial photos Nigel sent me from site are really exciting! It’s astonishing how quickly the hub is going up!

Rooms taking shape in the hub. Photo: Nigel Brown

Log-style cabin construction. Photo: Nigel Brown

Elsewhere, Shane and Paul, the digger-man have been landscaping the scalped ground around the hub’s site. Paul uses his diggers to pluck out huge tree roots. I make this sound simple, but these roots are immense, and it involves scraping soil off to expose the roots, then using the digger arm to wriggle the roots out, like dislodging a molar. Once removed, the roots are joining those already in Shane’s stumpery, and the soil backfilled into the holes.

Shane and Melvyn replaced tonnes of cobbles onto the edge of the bank between the car park and the hub. Shane’s left little gaps and infilled them with clumps of bulbs and ivy that was displaced when they created the foundations. Hopefully, the plants will settle in and naturalize quickly. Some of the enormous tree trunks have been utilized to create a barrier to keep cars from slipping down the bank. We are trying to reduce waste coming of the gardens by reusing any materials around the place. In that vein, some of the oak trunks will be sawn into planks as Nigel has found a timber company with a mobile sawmill. My sister and her partner both work in the timber industry, so we’ve taken a lot of advice on how to season the planks for use later.

Finally, I’m sharing some photos Shane found in a less-burnt part of the main house. These used to hang in the residents’ corridor, I think, and depict different parts of the garden. We put them up so that residents and visitors could have a glimpse of the gardens even if they were in the house. The photos have been distorted by the fire and the emulsion films changed by water. It is a marvelously trippy vision of the gardens at Betley Court.

The gazebo, as it's never been seen before!

I was saying to someone this week that I’m so pleased we had initiated this project and it was well underway before the disaster of August’s fire. It’s been a terrific focus for everyone at Betley Court; our family, our loyal staff, and former residents, who are keeping in touch with events through the blog. Every week something new is happening, and the garden project continues to grow. It’s a fantastic project to be part of!

All best wishes

Ladybird Su