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Building work The Trust has appointed R Pittaway of Coventry to be contractors for the building of the new Welcome Centre, and this
picture shows work having just started early in February. The foundations of the triangular Welcome Building have now been laid out and can just be seen, with the tip towards the bottom of the building site
here. The contractors' stores are currently occupying the garden to the left of it (north) where shortly, the "slinky", the heat exchanger for our geothermal heating system, will be laid out. The
racecourse in that area is pretty busy with works at the moment, as car park surfacing work is happening just outside our gate, and the building on Bread and Meat Close is still underway. |
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Landscape Restoration Last November, our Head Gardener, Ben Greenhalf, started to work for us. Under hs guidance, a
considerable amount of preparation has been done for the work to come. Hedges have been cut back to regenerate, plants have been moved safely out of th way of works to paths and summerhouses, and he has
joined enthusiastically in with the archaeology too! We have now appointed Michael Twite Landscapes of Wellesbourne, and they will be starting work at the beginning of March. In the meantime, there
will be special working party days to remove old concrete paths and do other gardening preparation and planting, on alternate Saturdays, on March 4 and 18, April 1, 15 and 29, and May 13 and 27, starting at
9.30. there will also be working parties every Wednesday. |
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Archaeology We were required to investigate some features in the gardens to enable the best possible restoration to take
place. With the help of some Warwick University Open Studies studens last term, and two mammoth days work by Coventry and District Archaeological Society, some really solid information has been achieved. |
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Some of the discoveries have been quite minor: the location of a water butt to collect water from a summerhouse roof; some coloured glass from the windows of one of the summerhouses, and
a pretty window or door stay, hand wrought and twisted from a piece of iron bar. We have also discovered that most of the paths were originally surfaced with ash. This was probably obtained from the nearby gas works,
put possibly later from the power station too. It was ground finely and produced a very hard and level surface. There are memories of mixing it with some cement to stabilise it. One path had been made with pebbles, dug
from the garden and tightly packed. The paths in the restored gardens will emulate the ash surface. The most interesting discoveries are the terrace steps and base of a summerhouse illustrated above. Plot 12 had a
terrace with steps in Victorian times, and we hoped to locate them and find more about their construction. They had been completely obliterated when a sewer was dug for a neighbouring development, and we were not
optimistic that much would be found. In fact, a flight of four steps gradually came into view. They were made of brick, and had a low retaining wall with saddle shaped copings. They had clearly been extensively repaired
and rebuilt, with a concrete surface, (as recently as 1952) but it seems quite certain that the original brick steps were encased in the repair. What was truly amazing was the original ground level at the foot of the
steps, more than two feet below the present, demonstrating how easily the soil can move downhill over time. The search for a disappeared summerhouse was also successful. Just below the surface, we found a brick floor
and first course of the walls, only one brick wide. It was entered by a single brick step. It was probably never as elaborate as the surviving buildings. The garden was always tenanted in Victorian times, and the only
time the building is mentioned, it is called a tool shed. (which some of the others sometimes were, too). Local report has it that it was later used as a pig stye, probably reduced in height. Some of the corner had
disappeared, perhaps when an old water pipe was laid, and we checked beneath the floor to establish that there was not an older floor below.
The Trust is most grateful to Margaret Rylatt and Adrian Adams for overseeing the investigation. |
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Tribute - John Picking Hill Close lost one of its earliest friends with the premature death in November of John Picking. He was the newly appointed Chief Executive of Warwick
District Council in 1993 when the Lamas residents became aware of the neglected treasure on their doorsteps whcih was about to be lost to development. He came to Warwick as a moderniser, and with a belief in listening
to what residents had to say. He started the process of modernisation of the council, and of listening to what residents have to say. He persuaded the councillors to hold back the develoopment for which they had
planning permission, until English Heritage had given their verdict, and, once the positive reply had been received from them, set in train the process of setting up the Trust which now controls the gardens. His
approachability, negotiating skills, and the support which he gave to conservation projects in the area will be much missed. |
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