A Tale of a Cup and Saucer
It has been a long time in the making, but Betley Court Garden’s very own website is now live. We’ll be posting about upcoming events, and you’ll be able to buy tickets through our partner website too. Andy, at A Spark, A Flame, A Fire is our very patient web designer, and he’s done a beautiful job. He’s included a place for me to update work on the build, and a ‘Season of Interest’ area, where we can share what’s looking good in the garden month-by-month, even when we’re not open.
Do have a look: BETLEY COURT GARDENS
Nigel and I were on our travels last
week, to North Wales and back in some extraordinary weather conditions. On the
way home we got the chance to explore a bit of garden history when we stopped
off at Erdigg Hall, a National Trust property two miles outside Wrexham. We
knew that Erdigg shared something in common with Betley Court, namely a working association with the
landscape designer William Emes, and we were keen to learn more.Plas Erdigg House, near Wrexham
William Emes was invited to redesign Betley
Court Gardens by Anastasia Fenton in 1785. Anastasia had decided to return to Betley
Court from her marital home in Newcastle-under-Lyme after a horrendous period
of personal bereavement. In quick succession, Anastasia lost her namesake
daughter in 1780, (known as Miss Ta by the family) to consumption aged just 29,
then her husband John, quite suddenly in March 1782, aged 61. A further compounding
bereavement happened that September, when her son, also named John, died in the
influenza epidemic that swept the country that autumn, aged just 33.
Anastasia’s improvements were to add
what I think are Betley Court’s most distinctive features; the double height bow
window sections to the East elevation of the house and the addition of a dining
room and first floor bedroom to the south west of John Craddock’s original
house, also with bowed window sections. Hipped roofs (the conical areas of roof), tiled in Westmorland
green slate topped the bay sections, giving it an appearance quite unique amongst
Georgian houses.Francis RandleTwemlow's diagram of Anastasia Fenton's additions to Betley Court in 1783. The green area is the house she started with and the lilac areas, her additions.
Anastasia Fenton's addition to the roof line - the conical hipped roofs
Anastasia also turned her attention
to the grounds of Betley Court, and sought the services of respected landscaper
to the squirearchy, William Emes, to redesign the grounds according to the
prevailing fashion. Charles Tollet wrote in a letter dated 24th
March 1785[1]
“Mrs Fenton has
had Mr Emes to lay out her grounds…so that Betley [Court] will soon be a pritty
(sic) place, having plenty of woods and waters about us, which are agreeable
things to a skilful person.”
William Emes original design can
still be viewed at the Staffordshire Records Office in the William Salt Library.
It included a ha-ha that separated the gardens near the house from the rougher
pasture, a gravel circular walk, and a wild walk down to Betley Mere.William Emes' plan for the gardens, including a ha-ha, gravel circular path and a 'wild walk' down to Betley Mere. (William Salt Library)
The Wikipedia page for Betley Court
states, “extensive gardens, including parterres and water features were laid
out by Emes.” Water features in this context, can mean water within the
landscape, for example, framing a view of a sheet of water with banks of trees.
However, Emes was also known for the ingenious ways he employed water in the
landscapes he designed.
Emes was often engaged by wealthy
landowners, not just to improve the aesthetics of their landscape, but also to
improve the rental value of the land they let to tenant farmers. Sometimes,
this meant changing water courses to improve drainage on arable land, or to
create other income generating features such as fishing ponds or mill leats (water
channels). At Erdigg Hall, Emes create a unique water feature to deal with a
stream that was prone to terrible flooding, and problematic erosion. The
stream, known as Afon Clwedog in Welsh (Black Brook in English,
so named due to the coal dust and slag it carried from a local pit) swells dramatically
in periods of rain (as we witnessed on Sunday!).
How it works:
Water from the brook gathers in the
circular basin of the feature, falling over a central weir and exiting via a
tunnel a few metres away. It is a clever piece of engineering, as it responds
quickly to rapidly rising water levels, allowing flood water to leave without
washing away soil.
 |
| The Cup and Saucer (Cwpan a Soser) water feature at Plas Erdigg House |
The water feature is known as the ‘Cup and Saucer Waterfall’ (Cwpan a Soser in Welsh) due to its shape. The ‘cup’ being a hole in the middle of a large disc, the ‘saucer’ which gathers the water, that in turn disappears down the cup, creating an internal cylindrical waterfall. The water is channeled away to emerge under an arch, to continue its journey downstream.
A link to a Youtube video is
included HERE, because it is extremely hard to explain how the Cup and saucer
work!
Emes started work at Erdigg Hall ten years
before he transformed Betley Court gardens, and it formed one of his first
schemes of works. Sadly, there’s no feature like the Cup and Saucer Waterfall at
Betley Court, but it was fascinating for us to see a feature created by William
Emes still in use today, still doing the job it was created to do nearly 250
years after it was dreamed up. What’s a fantastic piece of design!
And I hope that William Emes' pleasure grounds gave Anastasia Fenton some comfort in her latter years. It just goes to show that Georgian wealth guaranteed little protection against disease
All best wishes
Ladybird Su
[1]
Quoted in Francis Randle Twemlow’s The Twemlows, Their Wives and Their Homes
From Original Records, pp217, 1910, Whitehead Brothers, Wolverhampton. This
book is available in facsimile form from well-known internet bookshops. ISBN
97813667948
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