Losing keys, and opening doors

 

One of the most infuriating things about the fire at Betley Court in 2019 was losing all the keys. They’d been stored in a key safe, in an under-the-stairs cupboard beneath the grand staircase in the main house. As you can imagine, in a place the size of Betley Court, and with 14 individual apartments, and numerous garages and outbuildings, we had hundreds and hundreds of keys. Such was the ferocity of the inferno in this part of the house, that no trace of the keys, or their safe survived. As we lost almost all the doors in the main house that day, the loss of the majority of the keys was neither here nor there. However, the loss of keys to the outbuildings, in the short term, caused us no end of problems. Gradually paddocks have been ground off, keys copied from family members’ keysets and locks replaced, but were two locks that had proved a challenge; the gazebo and the ‘station’.

The gazebo is a red sandstone folly on the garden, where we keep the barbecue tools, and picnic chairs for family and residents to use, and we’ve managed without access to that since the fire. The other, known as ‘Crewe Station’ is an old refrigeration unit from an articulated lorry that was tucked behind some lime trees. It acquired its name when Prof Brown bought, on impulse from an auction, a miniature railway, complete with two engines and carriages big enough for the grandchildren to ride on. Helped by the handyman at the time, Tony, Godfrey recreated a child-sized railway based on an old local train route, the Knotty Line (sadly lost during the Beeching railway cuts of 1963).

A schematic plan of the 'Knotty' I drew for Prof Brown

Prof Brown tasked Tony with turning junk from the cellar into the stations of the knotty sign, including a Mow Cop station fashioned from a plastic barrel.  When not in use, the two engines, named Laura and Teddy ‘slept’ in the station, along with the carriages and props for the minor stations.

Prof Brown with Laura the engine

Since the day of the fire, the little engines been imprisoned in Crewe Station. As Nigel’s brother, Martin is staying at Betley Court, he hatched a plan to rescue Laura and Teddy. Yesterday, armed with bolt cutters to cut the paddock off, and loppers to cut back overhanging branches, he headed out with his son, and liberated the ‘Betley Court Two’. The news cheered us all up; things are gradually being recovered. Those two little trains are held in such affection by Prof Brown’s seven grandchildren – all grown adults now! They are a reminder of their beloved grandad, and sunny afternoons in the garden.

All aboard!

Prof Brown’s name cropped up in a different arena too this week. A publisher contacted Nigel to ask permission to republish a book Godfrey wrote in 1974. It was quite a touching thought, coming a matter of weeks after his death. It will also mean the family have a copy of one of his books, after we lost the rest in the fire.

Prof Brown would be pleased that another academic author would like to include Betley Court in a book he is putting together. Peter Robinson, chair of Friends of Elvaston Castle, in Derbyshire is putting together a book about celebrated Victorian landscape designer, William Barron. He is the man, known as ‘The Tree Mover’ who used his famous machine to move our magnificent Cedar of Lebanon tree to its current position. He also designed an Italianate parterre for Betley Court, alas, no longer intact, but the lowered lawn remains, as does a rather overgrown yew screen, which was once a neat topiary hedge feature near the house. I just need to dig out our digital copies of old postcards and plans, and fingers crossed, Betley Court will be included in the new book. Incidentally, as things open up, following the Covid lockdown, can I recommend Elvaston Castle Gardens as a great day out, if you enjoy gardens? It’s run by Derbyshire City Council, and for the cost of carparking, you can witness Victorian topiary gardening at its very finest.

Finally, a quick update on the house and gardens….

I measure how well things are progressing inside Betley Court with the rebuild by how quickly the palettes of bricks disappear. Evidently, the scorching weather has not diminished Midlands Conservation Ltd’s work rate! Apparently, the temporary roof structure creates a shady work environment, and they are going, as my Irish granny would have said, “great guns!!”. Last week, work started on the stairwell, to rebuild a wobbly wall that was demolished after the fire. The old study is once again a discreet room, thanks to another wall. New door and window lintels have been installed on much of the house facing Main Road.

Rebuilt interior wall for the stairwell

The study wall

The top of the walls in ‘the factory’ – that is the servants wing of the old house are being made safe, and repointed, ready to receive the new roof in due course. We found that that when Freda and Godfrey Brown undertook the restoration of Betley Court in the 70s, they had refurbished the Georgian cast iron by fitting aluminium channels inside. From ground level, no one could tell! We’ll be replacing all of the guttering as little remains of the original following the fire. Our architect, Mark, has sourced us some lovely reproduction cast iron guttering of the type that is used on other heritage buildings. It’ll look amazing when it’s done.

Top of the wall at the 'factory' section of the house

Top of one of the bows

No Mow May has given way to ‘get the mower out, Shane!’ June. It’s been like getting the first haircut after lockdown! The paddock always looks great at this time of year. Shane and Melvyn have established a labyrinth of mown paths over the years, and we allow areas to go over to brambles and nettles as appropriate, to support wildlife in the gardens. I enjoy the contrast between mown and unmown.

Mown paths on the paddock

I’ve been continuing to work in the little garden cage created by the builders. This week our eldest, joined me for edging and weeding duties. We were accompanied by the sounds of Betley village, cricket, the church bells of St Margaret’s, and the rumble of tractors – could anywhere be more quintessentially English, I wonder? Pulling out grass from the borders, I came across choice plants that had survived the winter (William Barron may have been a wonderful landscape designer, but he created the most annoying frost pocket when he lowered the lawn at Betley Court. Every year we lose supposedly ‘hardy’ plants to vicious frosts and a biting wind that scythes its way across from the Shropshire hills).

Geum Mrs Bradshaw

Sea Holly, amongst some weeds!

All the Verbena bonariensis has gone, but two out of four of a stunning electric blue sea holly survived. And the salvias and veronicas I planted a couple of years ago are starting to make satisfying mounts of flower spires that the bees adore. 

The surviving Indian chestnut tree

One of the two Indian chestnut trees, grown from a gift of conkers from Royal Botanical gardens, Kew survived the winter, and has a good covering of leaves. Generally, if I can get trees thought the first summer and winter, they get a decent number of roots into better soil that lies under our sandy topsoil. So, in balance more wins than losses in the garden, and that’s no bad thing!

To borrow from Mark Twain, I apologise for such a long blog post, but I didn’t have time to write a short one!

All best wishes

Ladybird Su