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February 2006 Building work begins 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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November 2005 Landscape Restoration 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! Michael Twite Landscapes of Wellesbourne, are appointed and they start work at the beginning of March 2006. 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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November 2005 -February 2006 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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