Visit Reports
Cambridgeshire Gardens 16th June 2011
Fifty of us went by coach first to Island Hall in Godmachester, the home of Christopher Vane Percy and Lady Linda. We picked up our guide,
John Drake, en route. He is the chairman of the Cambridgeshire Gardens Trust and had persuaded the owners of the two private houses we visited
to allow us to see them.
We were singularly fortunate in Island Hall because Grace, the eldest daughter, had been married there on the previous Saturday and the hall where
Lady Linda poured our tea and coffee was still decorated with flowers galore. Her husband gave us a talk on his family’s long connection with the
house, which the couple have restored after its being requisitioned during the war by the air force and later turned into thirteen flats. The proud
father even showed pictures of the bride and said he’s so passionate about his house that he wished us all to see it as well as the garden. It is
always interesting to see other people’s homes – we went upstairs and downstairs freely and then explored the garden, crossing the bridge he had restored
to the island.
We then went by coach for lunch at the Axe and Compasses in the next bijou village of Hemingford Abbots where we were well fed and watered – put this on your list of
pubs worth visiting.
In the afternoon we visited Mrs Chloe Jenkins’ home, Childerley Hall, in Dry Drayton. She adores old roses and colour. Her garden was immaculate and
tea had been laid on in the chapel. She had erected two gazebos and in the chapel were chairs and sofas galore for us to sit under cover if it rained,
but Cambridgeshire lived up to its reputation as a county of drought and the sun shone, so the chairs were all carried outside. After a sumptuous tea we
were taken into her late fifteenth century Tudor room where Charles I met Oliver Cromwell face to face for the first time, two years before Charles was
beheaded. Mrs Jenkins gave a talk (three times over as only sixteen could get in at a time) about the history of the house and answered our many
questions.
The coach journeys were uneventful as we were never held up; John directed the driver, Harold, where to go and we were back home at 6pm after a good
visit to two very different and lovely gardens, where we had been made really welcome by the owners. Apparently there was a lot of rain in Harpenden
that day!
Patricia Lloyd June 2011(Photographs by Maureen Welsh and Diana Diggines)