The Gardens in Early Spring 2012

In recent days we have received a number of requests from visitors to this blog for some pictures of the Gardens as they are now, in early Spring. 

Your wish is our command, so here are some photographs taken today showing the Gardens being quietly magnificent.

Please click on each picture to view in full size. 

Enjoy!!

Lady Bridgeman’s Kitchen Garden.

Best Garden Flowerbeds at the rear of Castle Bromwich Hall Hotel.

Flower-beds at the Melon Ground.

Daffodils at the Nut Ground Entrance.

West Claire-voie.

Maze Entrance looking toward the Lower Wilderness.

Daffodils in beds along wall leading to the South-West Pier.

The new  takes its place with the old.

Castle Bromwich Hall Hotel as seen from West Claire-voie / North Pond.

Daffodils at the North Orchard;

...in beds by the Green House;

...and in the driveway to the Main Entrance.

Finally, the most fantastic blossom you will ever see.

The Summer Season opening times start on April 1st. See our website for full details. Don't miss out on a chance to visit this horticultural treasure-trove for yourself.

All pictures © Christopher High 2012 - licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.

Batty Langley 1696 - 1751

Welcome to the first of this occasional series of History stories of events and characters behind Castle Bromwich Hall Gardens. If you enjoy this article, please 'like' the author's new Facebook page (just launched). This will encourage him to wrire future articles of this nature.

This entry focuses on the architectual designer Batty Langley, whose design is used for the Kitchen and Fruit Gardens at the site. Langley (together with his illustrator brother Thomas) published many books on architecture, and exercise a considerable influence to this day.

Why not visit the gardens and check-out Mr. Langley's designs for yourself?

Please click your mouse on the pictures to see then at full size.

Batty Langley's name is not easily forgotten once heard. If you have heard of him at all though (outside of Castle Bromwich Hall Garden circles) it will probably be because of a book, written in 1741 entitled Ancient Architecture Restored and Improved by a Great Variety of Grand and Usefull Designs, Entirely New in the Gothick Mode. This book was later re-issued in 1742 with the (to us) even sillier title of Gothic Architecture, Improved by Rules and Proportions in Many Grand Designs. The debate as to whether or not ancient gothic architecture was actually built according to rules and proportions is best left for another time. Langley himself was also a great promoter of a systematised style of architecture that was all the rage in the eighteenth century Europe, called Palladian Architecture.

Palladian architecture is derived from the designs of the Venetian architect Andrea Palladio (1508–1580). The term Palladian normally refers to buildings in a style inspired by Palladio's own work. That which is recognised as Palladian architecture today is a 17th to 18th Century evolution of Palladio's original concepts. Palladio's work was strongly based on the symmetry, perspective and values of formal classical temple architecture of the Ancient Greeks and Romans. From the 17th century onwards Palladio's interpretation of these classical forms were adapted as Palladianism. This style continued to develop throughout 18th century; A typical example of an English house in the Palladian style is Stourhead House.

Photograph © Jon Wornham. Licensed for reuse under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 license.

Both Palladian architecture and the designs of Batty Langley held great influential sway in America in the eighteenth century, but more about that later. 

Langley’s architectural aesthetic was based on what was known as the Five Orders of Architecture. The Order of a classical building is akin to the mode or key of classical music, or the latic grammar of rhetoric within classical literature or speech. The Five Orders were established in architecture rather like the intervals of music, raising certain expectations in an audience attuned to its language. Three ancient orders of architecture—the Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian—originated in Greece. To these the Romans added Tuscan (which they made simpler than Doric), and Composite (which was more ornamental than the Corinthian). The orders themselves are illustrated below:

 Encyclopedie: Classical Orders, engraving from the Encyclopédie vol. 18. - Public domain

More information on Palladianism and the Orders of Architecture is available from Wikipedia. Click on the underlined words to read the articles.

Batty and his brother Thomas (who mainly dealt with the engraved illustrated plates) published around 20 books in their career. Only one book dealt with Gothic, while the remaining books were devoted to instructions on how to deal with Classical Design using the elements of building technology that were available at the time.

These books were extremely well written and researched, and enjoyed an enormous comtemporary circulation. The unusual thing was that (on the whole) Langley books were bought and read by tradesmen (carpenters, masons, joiners, plasterers and so on), rather than the gentry or nobility. Langley books were also sophisticated architectural textbooks for the artisan class, literate craftsmen, or for apprentices with an eye on preferment. The influential nature of the books can be stated with some confidence; Looking at the subscription list for a Langley book published in 1733 reveals nearly 300 hundred subscribers, almost all of them being builders and craftsman in London and the provinces.

Batty Langley was born in 1696 in Twickenham. He was the son of a jobbing gardener, and bore the name of David Batty, a patron of his father's. Twickenham was then a village of suburban villas within easy reach of London by a pleasant water journey on the Thames. Whilst there he inherited some of his father's clients, an early one being Thomas Vernon of Twickenham Park. From Twickenham Langley moved to Parliament Stairs in Westminster, and in 1742 moved to Meard Street, Soho. 

Meard Street was very much a craftsman's area at that time, and this was the location where the Langley's produced the thousands of engraved plates for their books. Thomas Langley also ran night classes for apprentices and other tradesmen there. The subjects ranged from architecture, drawing, geometry, and mensuration (the calculation of the total amount of materials required to construct a building). This poorly paid occupation demonstrates the Langley's enthusiasm for education of the artisan classes. In 1727 (whilst he was still at Twickenham) Batty Langley complained that the young were 'ignorant of proportion'. He also warned parents who were thinking of binding their sons as apprentice builders, to have a covenant entered in the articles to ensure that they received education in the five orders of architecture.

English architecture was riding high with the Palliadian fashion, and the Langley's saw it as their job to ensure that all builders were thoroughly competent in the style in order to keep Britain ahead. In the 1730s there were an astounding number of buildings following this trend all over the country.

The first of the Langley books was Practical Geometry Applied to the Useful Arts of Building, Surveying, Gardening, and Mensuration (1726). The style of this book was low key, presenting the subject matter as nothing more than a pleasant intellectual study. This was not a successful book in terms of sales, and the next book The Builder's Chestbook, or a Complete Key to the Five Orders in Architecture (1727) did much better. This was probably because the style of this book was much more didactic, and could be used as a practical resource for those actually involved in building. The book consisted of eleven sections in the form of a dialogue between master and pupil. The first seven sections was a catechism on the Five Orders, with the following three sections dealing with building materials, and the final (very long) section covered mensuration.

In 1728 Langley published the book probably of most interest to most enthusiasts of Castle Bromwich Hall Gardens, this being New principles of gardening: or The laying out and planting parterres, groves, wildernesses, labyrinths, avenues, parks, & c. after a more grand and rural manner, than has been done before; with experimental directions for raising the several kinds of fruit-trees, forest-trees, evergreens and flowering shrubs with which gardens are adorned. To which is added, the various names, descriptions, temperatures, medicinal virtues, uses and cultivation of several roots, pulse, herbs, & c. of the kitchen and physick gardens, that are absolutely necessary for the service of families in general. (They certainly could come up with titles in those days!) 

Although Batty Langley was the son of a landscape gardener, this book is in many ways out of step with the main sequence of his work. It may have been an attempt by the Langley's to obtain patronage of the 'well-to-do'. If this was the idea it signally failed in its purpose. The Langley's were never fated to get that sort of patronage, as the wealthier classes found them somewhat pushy and illiterate. 

This presents a genuine historical mystery as to why Langley's designs were taken up by the Bridgeman family for the Kitchen and Fruit Gardens at Castle Bromwich Hall. Further research is needed in this area. Any local historians want to take a crack at it?

Here are some plates from the book:

 Langley - New Priciples of Gardening - Public Domain

...and here is a picture of the Langley designed kitchen and fruit gardens at Castle Bromwich Hall Gardens, Feb 2012. The design of the layout is easier to see without the plants.

Photograph © Graham High. Licensed for reuse under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 license.

In 1734 -1736 Batty Langley published his biggest work (though not his most popular) in the form of a two-volume folio set Ancient Masonry. It was more about freemasonry than masonry as we understand it today. This encyclopaedic work has over 500 plates, all illustrated by the Langley's. The workload is jaw-dropping in its complexity and thoroughness. In the two volumes were all the technical and technological data that a builder was ever likely to need in order to practise his trade. There are even plates (one of which is shown below) that geometrically sets out every letter of the alphabet from A to Z.

In 1740, The Langley's published their most successful work The City and Country Builder's and Workman's Treasury of Designs, or, The Art of Drawing and Working the Ornamental Parts of Architecture. Here we have the Five Orders again, only this time in teh form of a pattern book, showing cornices, windows, niches, chimney pieces, pulpits, alterpeices, and other items. The craftsman could lift out of it highly competent designs in the style of Inigo Jones, Kent, or Gibbs. There are hundreds of surviving chimney pieces still all over the country that owe their origins to this book, which ran into two editions.

In 1741, The Builder's Jewel or Youth's Instructor and Workman's Remembrancer was published. Only 5 by 4 inches in size, it could easily fit snugly into a 18th Century pocket. It is illustrated with some beautifully miniature inscribed plates.

Langley - Builder's Jewel - Public Domain

In 1742 The Langley's published the second edition of Gothic Architecture Improved book as mentioned in the opening of this article. Nothing is mentioned at all about Gothic in any of the Langley's previous works, but now Batty launches himself full-on into the head stream of Gothic design. He provides a complete system of Gothic-inspired geometry. The problem with it is that the system he employs is largly ad-hoc, and is used in an attempt to fuse Gothic Design togther with the Five Orders.

Langley - Gothic Architecture - Public Domain

This book thoroughly irritated Horace Walpole, whose Gothick villa at Twickenham, Strawberry Hill, gave impetus to the stirrings of the Gothic Revival:
 

'All that his books achieved, has been to teach carpenters to massacre that venerable species, and to give occasion to those who know nothing of the matter, and who mistake his clumsy efforts for real imitations, to censure the productions of our ancestors, whose bold and beautiful fabrics Sir Christopher Wren viewed and reviewed with astonishment, and never mentioned without esteem'. (Walpole, Anecdotes of Painting, 1798, p 484)

Batty Langley's attempts at Gothic were also very soon discredited by serious students of the style; nevertheless the book did have a very strong influence, and there is an argument to support that it was the most culturally sucessfull books ever produced by them. There are many instances of buildings still standing that can almost have been taken straight out of the plates of the book, like the one illustrated below:

 Langley - Gothic Architecture - Public Domain

In 1747 Batty Langley resumed his mission of making classical textbooks for builders with the handsome folio, The Builder's Directory or Bench-mate. This ran to five editions. Then in 1750 came his final work: The Workman's Golden Rule for Drawing and Working the Five Orders in Architecture. . for the Instruction of Apprentices and Journey Men. This book is remarkable for its size. It is tiny; only 4 inches by 2 ½ inches. 

The very small print includes a dedication to the author's worthy friends, the masters and journeymen of the building trade. They are, he said 

'...the best builders in the world; and for that no thanks is due to the nobility and gentry of this country. All they have encouraged are vice, ignorance, and luxury'. 

With that vengeful kick up the backside for the ruling class, Batty Langley left the arena. He died the following year, aged 55.

Here's his portrait:

  Public Domain

Batty had married twice, and brought up a large family naming some of his sons Hiram, Euclid, Vitruvius and Archimedes. A tribute to his four passions, Geometry, Architecture, Mechanics and Freemasonry.

Batty's somewhat silly name coupled with his quirky Gothic book has made him (quite unjustifiably) a figure of fun amongst architects and building historians. However Batty and Thomas Langley's books still stand for the sheer quality and quantity of their work. They also stand out (unlike modern day architects) for their touching concern for the young in trying to give apprentices job-satisfaction.

Langley's books were also enormously influential in Britain's American colonies where Palladianism was immensely popular (just look at the White House!). At Mount Vernon, George Washington relied upon plate 51 of Langley's The City and Country Builder's and Workman's Treasury of Designs as the source for the famous Venetian (or Palladian) window in the dining room; upon plate 54 of the same book for the ocular window on Mount Vernon's western facade; and upon plate 75 of Langley's The Builder's Jewel for the rusticated wood siding. Copies of Langley's works were also given prominence in the library of Thomas Jefferson. Not bad for a landscape gardener's son from Twickenham!

Thanks to:

The Late Sir John Newenham Summerson CH CBE. The notes I made whilst an undergraduate at his Batty Langley lecture forms the back-bone of this article;

The Open University http://www.open.ac.uk/

Wikipedia.


Further Reading:

Most of Langley's book are available from Google Books http://books.google.com/ I recommend them over the reprinted modern editions, as the scanning quality is variable, verging on the 'waste of money'. Google's scans are usually first-rate.

Ackerman, Jaaes S. (1994). '/Palladio (seraes "Architect and Society")

Halliday, E" E. (1967). Cultural History of England. London: Thames and Hudson.

Jackson-Stops, Gervase (1990). The Country House in Perspective. Pavilion Books Ltd.

Marten Paolo, (1993). Palladio. Benedikt Taschen Verlag GmbH, Koln (Photos of Palladio's surviving buildings)

Reed, Henry Hope, and Joseph C. Farber, (1980) Palladio's Architecture and Its Influence, Dover Publications Inc., New York.

Summerson, John. The Architecture of the Eighteenth Century (1986),

Tavernor, Robert, (1979).Palladio and Palladianism (series "World of Art")

Watkin, David (1979). English Architecture. London: Thames and Hudson.

Wittkower, Rudolf. Architectural Principles in the Age of Humanism 

There are precious few biographical publications on Batty or Thomas Langley. If you are aware of any, please contact me via the comments section of this bog, and I will add them to this list.

If you enjoyed this article, please don't forget to 'like' my new Facebook page, and I will set about writing others on the architecture and design of the period. Thank you!

Plant of the Month - March 2012

Cyclamen

This fragrant plant from sunny Italy,

Plucked by our passing hand, was homeward brought:

Memorial of that favoured clime to be,

And minister sweet food to retrospective thought.

Unchecked in growth, it well repays our care,

Gladdening our cottage with its constant bloom:

By nature prompted, half the varied year;

The other,--gay in honour of its new--found home.

On a Cyclamen – Henry Alford (1810 – 1871)

The Cyclamen is a genus of 23 species of perennials growing from tubers, valued for their flowers with up-swept petals and variably patterned leaves. Cyclamen species are native from Europe and the Mediterranean region east to Iran, with one species in Somalia.

The fresh and delicate beauty of Cyclamen flowers were beloved by illustrators of the past, both for horticultural identification,

Cyclamen purpurascens - Original book source: Prof. Dr. Otto Wilhelm Thomé Flora von Deutschland, Österreich und der Schweiz 1885, Gera, Germany. Permission granted to use under GFDL by Kurt Stueber.

and for attractive greetings cards.

Vintage birthday postcard with country scene surrounded by pink Cyclamen flowers, by John Winsch 1910

The species of Cyclamen of most interest to Castle Bromwich Hall Garden fans is Cyclamen coum. 

Cyclamen coum is a beautiful hardy perennial, that produces lovely dainty flowers from late winter to early spring. The leaves have silver marks around the edges and are over the beautiful dark green leaves. Coum loves both shade and partial shade, is not fussy with soil type, this can vary from light well drained soil to heavy clay soil. Likes acid or alkaline soil.

Cyclamen coum is one of a group of cyclamens (Cyclamen sub genus Gyrophoebe series Pubipedia) with stubby flowers and nearly round leaves. Species of the group are native to areas near the coasts of the eastern Mediterranean and the Black and Caspian Seas, from sea level to alpine tundra.

The tuber produces roots from the center of the bottom only.[2] It remains small, only reaching about 6.5 cm (2.6 in) across.

Leaves are round or kidney-shaped to long heart-shaped. The colour is all-silver, all-green, or silver variegated with a variably sized green hastate (arrowhead-shaped) or "Christmas tree" pattern and a green edge. The edge is smooth or gently toothed, but never angled and pointed as in Cyclamen hederifolium.

Flowers are squat, with almost round petals, unlike any other group of cyclamen species. They bloom from winter to spring. The petals are magenta, pink, or white, with a darker blotch at the base. Below the blotch is a small white or pink "eye".

The Cyclamen coum group also includes Cyclamen abchasicum, Cyclamen elegans, Cyclamen alpinum, Cyclamen parviflorum and Cyclamen pseudibericum.

Cyclamen coum can be located in the deciduous area of the lower wilderness.

 www.cbhgt.org.uk

Here are some photographs of the Cyclamen coum taken just a few days ago at Castle Bromwich Hall Gardens (click on the pictures for full size):

All photographs copyright © 2012 Steve Webb - Used by kind permission.

The height of cyclamen coum is about 8cm and spread 10cm.

It is recommended that these gorgeous plants should be mulched annually with leaf mulch to prevent tubers drying out in the summer and protect from winter cold.

Unless you buy a named variety, the flower colour can vary from white to deep red. Plant the tubers 3cm to 5cm (1in to-2in) deep in humus-rich soil under the shade of trees. Mulch annually with leaf mould to help prevent the tubers from drying out in the summer and from winter cold. This plant has been given a Award of Garden Merit (AGM), which is for plants of outstanding excellence.

Medicinal history and folklore:

http://etc.usf.edu/clipart/76200/76257/76257_herb-meds_lg.gif

WARNING: THIS INFORMATION IS PRESENTED FOR HISTORICAL / ENTERTAINMENT PURPOSES ONLY! WE MAKE NO CLAIMS WHATSOEVER FOR THE EFFICACY OF THE REMEDIES. SOME OF THEM MAY BE HARMFUL. MESS AROUND WITH YOUR BODY AT YOUR OWN RISK!

Andrea Mattioli, a prominent physician and writer who devoted many years to publishing various editions in numerous languages of his translations of the Discourses of Dioscorides. In his 1559 edition in Italian, Chapter CLI II is devoted to cyclamen.

MATERlA MEDICINAL DISCOURSES FROM DIOSCORIDES

BY PIETRO ANDREA MATTIOLI - 1559

DEL ClCLAMINO - Cap. CLIII

Cyclamen has ivy like leaves, purplish, varied, with some spots on the top and white underneath. The stem is about four inches long and bare. On top are the flowers, red, rose like. The root is black, squashed, similar to a turnip.
Among the prescribed uses of cyclamen were the following:

It is said that pregnant women will abort if they walk over it.

If one wears it on herself, it speeds up delivery.

It can be drank to counteract any kind of poison, but especially the sea air.

As an ointment, it is good against serpent's bite.

Taken with wine, it makes one drunk.

It should be taken with wine or honey wine diluted with water for bile overflow in the proportion of three drams. It is necessary, however, to put the patient in a warm place with no drafts and well covered so that he will be able to sweat and the sweat will come out yellow like bile.

The juice of the root can be absorbed through the nose to purge the head.

Applied with honey to the eyes, it is good for cataracts and eye weakness.

The juice of the squeezed roots is cooked until it thickens like honey. The root purges and cleanses the skin; it cures and prevents blemishes and boils.

Taken alone or with honey, it heals wounds.

As a plaster, it dissolves the spleen; it does good to a sunburned face; and it makes hair grow again.

The decoction is good for dislocated limbs, gout, head ulcers, and chilblains. The old oil in which the root was fried makes ulcers heal. One can make a hole in the root and fill with oil and cook it on hot ashes. Sometimes they add Tirrenian wax so that it becomes similar to an oint-ment, especially effective with chilblains.

Somebody says that mashed into a paste it can be used as a love potion.

Centuries later, Gerard in his Herbal says - 'it is reported to me by men of good credit, that cyclamen or sow-bread groweth upon the mountains of Wales; on the hills of Lincolnshire and in Somerset-Shire. Being beaten and made up into trochisches, or little flat cakes, it is reputed to be a good amorous medicine to make one love, if it be inwardly taken'.

In modern herbals, Cyclamen are described as a 'Self-esteem builder essence', which allows the person to get in touch with their self-esteem and confidence. In addition to this rather vague reference, there are a number of more specific applications:

A homoeopathic tincture is made from fresh tubers and is applied as a liniment externally over the bowels, causing purging.

There is a story that in the past the tubers were baked and made into little flat cakes which were considered a good amorous medicine which caused the person eating them to fall violently in love.

The fresh tubers, bruised, and made into a cataplasm, make a stimulating application to indolent ulcers.

An ointment called 'Ointment of Arthainta' was made from the fresh tubers for expelling worms, and was rubbed on the umbilicus of children and on the abdomen of adultsto cause emesis, and in the region over the bladder to increase urinary discharge.

The popular name 'Sowbread' comes from the fact that the tubers were a source of food for wild boar.

There is a report that Cyclamen are poisonous to cats and fish.

In white magic circles, Cyclamen are listed as a plant which brings happiness.

If you thought from last months 'Plant of the Month entry' Snowdrops have an enthusiastic following, then you haven't seen anything yet! Pay a visit to The Cyclamen Society's Website at http://www.cyclamen.org where you will find out everything you could ever wish to know about Cyclamen (including some fascinating reports of expeditions to locate a particular speciman).
  
You can also read the reports by clicking here. They are highly recommended reading.

So there you have it, folks. The not-so-humble Cyclamen coum and friends. Come and visit them at Castle Bromwich Hall Gardens!

Wikipedia

The last word is left to Henry Alford:

Play on, thou little fount of blameless joy,

Freshening our souls through many a weary time;

Gladdening the stately hours of high employ,--

As blest in Britain's mists, as erst in happier clime.

http://www.arthursclipart.org/flowers/flowers/cyclamen%203.gif

Thanks to:

Gordon Sammons and Sue Brain for inspiration and assistance;

SteveWebb for the fanastic photographs;

Wikipedia;

BBC;

and The Cyclamen Society.

For the full text of On a Cyclamen by Henry Alford, click here.