Up amongst the Chimneys

The gardens at Betley Court are looking lovely at the moment. The cooler May this year has contributed to a long blossom season, so we’re still enjoying the apple and cherry blossom up in the pippin orchard.

Flowering cherries up in the pippin orchard

Silene dioica, one of the woodland flowers down by the visitors' hub

The bluebells (hyacinthoides non scripta) are at their full glory now, and their flowering coincides with the first of the red campion flowers (Selene dioica).

Silene dioica - red campion

The red campions are part of the native woodland wildflowers I sowed last year, and are the perfect woodland edge flowers, thriving in partial shade. Forget-me-nots (Myosotis sylvatica) seem to be cropping up everywhere both the common blue and a white version. Their Latin name sylvatica points to their suitability to this part of the garden. Sylvatica meanings ‘pertaining to forest’.

Forget-me-not (Myosotis sylvatica) - the more usual blue variety

White forget-me-nots

Shane is managing this part of the garden quite sensitively – he ‘tops’ the grass, with the mower blade set to its highest setting, and determines where to mow by avoiding wildflowers when they are in bloom. It gives this area a lovely soft feel, naturalist, and not formal. Exactly the ambience we were looking for. The ox-eye daisies will soon be in full flower too. I cannot believe how well this part of the garden is doing when it was a destruction site of bare earth just over a year ago.

English bluebells (Hyacinthoides non-scripta)

Nigel and I had another visit to the main house at the weekend. More internal scaffolding has been erected so our conservation builders from Midland Conservation Ltd have easy access to make repairs to the chimneys, tops of walls and to the ornamental façade that faces the road.

The (non-existant) roof line of the 'factory' as the former servants' wing was perjoratively known as. Second floor windows visible

Remaining roof structure over Fletcher House

They are working on the most severely damaged part of the building, installing new lintels, tying in walls to each other, recreating door openings. We have a master stonemason coming to make repairs to the ornamental urns on top of the ‘scrolly’ bit at the front.

The urns, that sit on the 'scrolly bits' at the front of Betley Court. Nigel's in the photo to give and idea of scale

The urns look about a foot tall when you look at them from ground level. Up close, they are massive! A special winch was installed to bring the pieces of masonry down to a working platform. We found evidence of Godfrey and Freda’s restoration in the 70’s; concrete collars installed by their builder, Dave Bridges, to hold the urns in place. A somewhat unconventional repair, but to be fair, it survived forty years and the disastrous fire, so we can feel they had their monies worth.

Dave Bridge's 70s concrete collar repair - survived the fire!

The urns, being prepared for restoration

Awaiting the master stonemason's attention

Repairing the bay section of the wall

It is strange walking around at roof level inside Betley Court. Logically, you know you’re up at roof level, after all you’re surrounded by chimneys, but the scaffold wrap hides the fact you’re are way up high. Birds fly in and out, calling to each other’s mates, and several of the lime tree crows have nested in the chimney pots. A Mr & Mrs Blackbird have unofficially taken over the tenancy of what’s left of flat 7, and are raising a brood of chicks amongst the debris. We’re confident the chicks will have fledged long before our builders need to get into that part of the house for repairs.

Our quest to find a new main front door earlier this month has proved more successful than we could have imagined. My tale of finding a court door from Oldham Town Hall prompted Jo Thomas to get in touch. It seems that Jo and her husband Philip have a number of old doors in their shippen (cow shed), leftover from when they restored Burland Hall. Would we be interested?

In the shippen at Burland Hall- a wonderful store for doors and other bits and bobs that just might come in handy.

Nigel has totted up how many doors we lost in the fire, and the total comes to 72, assuming we haven’t forgotten any or decide to add any! To comply with current building regulations, some will need to be new fire doors, but many internal doors, particularly within the flats will be ordinary ones. I think the late Professor Brown would heartily approve of our reusing the Thomas’s doors – very much in the spirit of the restoration the Browns undertook all those years ago. 

All best wishes

Ladybird Su