ALAN POWER: Welcome to the new National Trust Podcast series.
I'm Alan Power Head Gardener at Stourhead and somebody who's
very passionate about everything outdoors. In this series, we'll
be exploring the Trust's amazing spaces delving into the stories
and characters that make each place so special. We'll be
traveling all around the country from hilltop to seaside.
We'll tread sandy paths and the polished wooden floors of
country homes. Not to mention some spectacular gardens. We
delight in bird song, sublime views and exceptionally good
cream teas. So join me on this journey and immerse yourself in
the wonders of the National Trust.
In this episode, we're exploring the magnificent gardens of
Cliveden set high above the Thames in Buckinghamshire. Just
a stone's throw from London, This enchanting garden has been
in the care of the National Trust since the 1940s.
Everything about Cliveden exudes grandeur. You know, it's a
magnificent garden. Every corner you turn around, there's
something unique and special to see. Well, at the moment, I'm
standing on the terrace just outside the grand house which
overlooks the parterre.
An ornamental garden of huge scale that was developed by the
renowned gardener John Fleming while this area of the garden
was developed in the 19th century. It was based on the
geometric patterns and traditional Knot Gardens of the
Elizabethan era.
The parterre at Cliveden is particularly impressive with 2.5
miles of hedges and topiary and over 30,000 plants. It's no mean
feat.
My eye is immediately drawn to the parterre. You've got this
really strong formal lines of box hedging running down the
parterre and then within that box hedging is, is multicoloured
bedding, impeccably laid out.
So you can see kind of whites and reds and blues in the first
triangular bed and then you move into the next one and you've got
yellows and whites and reds and you know, we are so far away
from it and it's hard to tell what those plants are.
So that gives you an idea of what the scale is and then these
beautiful pyramids of Yew that just punctuate the parts you
can't see a building or a town or an urban area here from the
view that we're standing at.
I did a very, very brief period in my history. I came to
Cliveden and it was only for about eight or nine months and
it's a garden of such scale and deep history that it's hard to
connect with it entirely in such a short period of time. But what
I really did take away was the variety of people that influence
the place over the years.
Today Cliveden House isn't actually run by the National
Trust.
It's a luxury hotel, but it can be seen from many parts of the
garden and its history is fundamental to this place. I'm
here with one of the National Trust's volunteer historians,
Mike Bellum to learn a little bit more about the house and its
inhabitants.
MIKE BELLUM: Well, we're standing at the moment by the
shell fountain which Astor put together around about 1900.
ALAN POWER: So Mike for, for the listeners out there who haven't
seen the spectacular house at Cliveden. Can you just describe
it from where we are on the drive?
MIKE BELLUM: Well, from where we are, it's sort of three stories
goes back to 1670.
You've got to remember that Cliveden always was used for
entertaining when we say people lived here, they didn't really
live here very much. They came here for weekends or weeks in
the summer.
Heyday was probably around about the thirties, late twenties,
thirties. When you had so many politicians here, you had kings
and queens, you had Franklin Roosevelt was here with his
wife, Henry Ford, Charlie Chaplin.
George Bernard Shaw was a regular visitor and of course
Churchill. English politicians like Balfour- Gandhi was here,
but it's often said that events were discussed here and agreed
here which still affect us now because a lot of politics took
place at country house weekends and this was one of them.
ALAN POWER: And you, you kind of reeled off an amazing list of
visitors and people. But I think one name that's fairly strongly
associated with Cliveden is Nancy Astor, isn't it? And can
you tell us a little bit about kind of who she was?
MIKE BELLUM: Well, Nancy was from Virginia in the States and
she married a rich New Yorker and the, the marriage didn't
last very long. He accused her of all sorts of things. She
accused him of drunkenness, but eventually she decided that she
wanted to travel and came over to England.
She was accused at one point of coming over here to find a
husband. She is supposed to have said, "My dear, if you knew how
much trouble it was to get rid of the first one, you wouldn't
say that."
But she met, on the way back on the ship, coming back to
England, she met a guy called Waldorf Astor who was the son of
William Waldorf Astor who owned the place. So 1906, Waldorf
comes back and says dad, I want to get married.
Dad being a nice dad or sucker. I'm not sure which you want to
put it! Says, "don't worry, son, here's £10 million in Cliveden
and I'll go and live in my other house, Hever Castle."
So Nancy was the Chatelaine of this place from 1906 until she
died in the 1960s.
ALAN POWER: Do you have an insight into what kind of a
character she was?
MIKE BELLUM: Yes, a bit abrasive at times. She was an intriguing
character because I'm sure, you know, she became the first
female MP to take her seat in the House Of Commons.
But Nancy was an MP and a husband who was still into
politics even though he was now Lord Astor, which is why he had
to give up his seat in Plymouth. They used it for entertaining
their political friends.
ALAN POWER: You know, how was Nancy as to received in England
as a politician when she started?
MIKE BELLUM: Well, as a politician. No, she was very
unpopular. It took about a year before people would speak to
her. Churchill apparently once said something along the lines
of, "well, I was so embarrassed because it felt like it was
caught in a bathroom with just a loofah to cover me, having a
woman in parliament."
The famous saying was for Nancy was "Winston, if I was your
wife, I'd poison you." "
If I was your husband, I'd take it."
You know, that defines some of some of the elements of the lack
of empathy between men and women in power in those days. And that
was one of many examples that took place.
But Nancy was Nancy.
ALAN POWER: Now tell me, Mike, the swimming pool has got a
little bit of a story behind it, hasn't it?
MIKE BELLUM: It has yes. It's the infamous swimming pool in
1961 Astor had won some money on the, on the racing and he built
himself a swimming pool and he was doing entertainment for the
government, I say for the government because it was
included the president of Pakistan. It included Louis
Mountbatten who was the chief in imperial staff.
And it included John Profumo Minister of War. And he went out
for a walk to have a look at the swimming pool. And they came
across a couple of young ladies wearing not very much. Profumo,
rather liked the looks of one of them. Her name was Christine
Keeler and he slipped her, his phone number and an affair
started.
It wasn't a great passionate affair wasn't helped by the fact
she was also sharing a pillow with the Russian Naval Attaché,
Mr Ivanov.
Now, for the younger people, they weren't understand the
paranoia that 1961, Cold War and Russia and the defense minister
would have.
But basically the big connection was Russia, Cold War, Minister
of War, Toffs, all the bits and pieces, all the things that
embrace paranoia in the country.
Profumo called it off. Two years later, it came out and it didn't
topple the government, but it had a bearing on it. Certainly.
So one of the major political events was triggered here.
ALAN POWER: So I'm heading off now to meet Andrew Mudge, the
Head Gardener. Really just to find out what's going on in all
the garden at Cliveden nowadays.
Hi, Andrew. Great, great to see you again.
ANDREW MUDGE: Good to see you again.
ALAN POWER: And we're standing here today. In the baking heat
outside the rose garden. And I know that you've been
fundamental in sort in the rose garden out here, haven't you?
ANDREW MUDGE: We have. Yeah. Yeah. Very fortunately, the
Trust many years ago did a radio interview with Geoffrey Jellicoe
who designed the first rose garden for the Third Lord Astor
in 1959. So we had a fabulous record and from that record,
we've been able to do the restoration of the rose garden
probably as Jellicoe intended. And this is the first time, it
never got completed.
ALAN POWER: To give you some context. Geoffrey Jellicoe was a
prominent garden designer whose creations dazzled the nation
throughout the 20th century. He had architectural training and a
particular interest in the Italian Gardens of the
Renaissance. Both influences are clear in his structured and
ornate gardens.
ANDREW MUDGE: What Jellicoe had really, really tried to capture
was the garden as the sunrise on the east there going across to
sunset in the west. So the sort of pale yellows going through
the the spectrum to go out the real dark colours on the on the
other side, you can really see that.
You know, as the sun gets to sort of midday, it's above those
real intense reds and so forth.
And then as it goes over in the later afternoon, you know, it
goes into those really scarlet colours representing sunset and
the other clever bit of the design that Jellicoe described
really well is that you, the garden should envelop you.
So when you go into the garden, you've got the taller plants on
the outside, the shorter ones in the middle and you can sit on
the seats, and just be enveloped with the scent, the colour. It's
just wonderful.
ALAN POWER: I think what's beautiful about this garden and
we're standing underneath some Pine Trees. You know, there's
some Sweet Chestnut around some Beech Trees and it feels as if
the rose gardens in the middle of a- of a woodland, doesn't it?
You know, it's backdrop of Yew trees. So it's a real oasis of
colour in the middle of the woods, isn't it?
ANDREW MUDGE: It really is. And we've tried to fit it into the
original round point in the 18th century landscape because that's
what this was. And it's had many, many overlays, but this is
the one I think that works the best.
ALAN POWER: It's fantastic.
ANDREW MUDGE: Great- great visitor enjoyment. You can hear
people in the distance really enjoying it and talking about
the roses and having a good old laugh and chat and it is a nice
place to go and sit and just absorb the atmosphere.
ALAN POWER: Isn't it funny when you enter a garden like this?
And I'm sure you walk the way I walk at work, you know, you're,
you're strolling between points of the garden is quite fast. You
get to an area and both of us came in and our pace slowed
down. Immediately slowed down because you're just observing
the colour and inhaling the scent and-
ANDREW MUDGE: Yeah, and just taking it in, you know, it's
quite a confined space and it's, the design is, is what actually
makes this garden, you know, so unique. I think it's the
statues, the arches in that humanist form, which are the,
these are original Jellicoe designs. And the original arches
that he intended to go here.
ALAN POWER: I'm a little bit jealous to be honest.
ANDREW MUDGE: I mean, you, you hit the nail on your head. It's,
it's team effort, team effort. And Jen who is one of my team
looks after this. I mean, it's a daily, dead head.
JEN: Well, basically, I'm in here nearly all the time. It's
been pretty full on since the since the roses started
flowering a couple of weeks ago. So, every morning before we
open, I'm in here deadheading.
ALAN POWER: So, Jen, how many roses in here do you have to
Deadhead?
JEN: So we have over 900 individual rose plants in here.
Something like 44 varieties. Yeah, 900 keeps me busy.
ALAN POWER: I bet it does all done with your secateurs gently
and carefully.
JEN: Yes. Yeah. No, no hedge trimmers in here. Not even when
we prune, it's all done by secateurs. So all the roses that
we have in here are repeat flowers. So as soon as they
start flowering this year, they started in May, they will go on
right.
The way through to sort of September, October. I've even
seen flowers in December and we wouldn't have that if I didn't
Deadhead.
So by deadheading every day, certainly during its peak means
that we get more roses coming through and more for the
visitors to enjoy.
ALAN POWER: Do you have a favorite rose in this amazing
collection?
JEN: I do. I have a number, I would say my favorite is
Fellowship, which is the orange one. It's just on the inner
beds.
I like it for a number of reasons. Not necessarily for the
fragrance because actually of the roses in here is probably
one of the least fragrant, but it's easy to Deadhead. It's a
nice colour and it's got a really lush green leaf as well.
So I think that that one works really well in here.
ALAN POWER: I've seen a couple of members of your team out and
about today, some of them, you know, doing the bedding in this
heat, you know, working really hard. How many have you got on
the team in total?
ANDREW MUDGE: Yeah, there's 10 of us all together full time in
the garden. So if you work that out 100 acres, that's 10 acres
each and pretty labour intensive. So I don't think we
do too bad, but most importantly, we have a great
team of volunteers that help us as well.
We have 45 + volunteers that join us during the course of the
week. And we're also training as Well, we've got a couple of
trainees here that are learning the ropes. So we want to pass on
those skills.
ALAN POWER: I'm just approaching a space that's underneath the
terrace at Cliveden. It really is on underneath the terrace.
And I'm actually had to stop here because I've been stopped
by heras fencing. Can see scaffolding ladders, light bulbs
strung with yellow cables around here. It's a real work zone. Got
all sorts of workmen inside this chamber.
And I can only describe it as a chamber and it's quite an
intriguing space. I can't go in today because the team are in
the throes of restoring this magical space. But it's
intriguing because it's true story isn't really known, you
know, it's, it's an echoey chamber and the sound bellows
throughout the chamber.
There are two funnels, you know, in one half of the chamber and
perhaps their purpose was to direct the sound up into the
house or to echo it back out the doors into the landscape. So I
suppose in, in a little part of my mind, I'm thinking that this
is a huge speaker, you know, and you just turn the volume up on
the sound of an orchestra so that it can be cast across the
whole property.
I don't know. You know, it's not something that I can say,
'Actually this is definitely used for this' but I love the
sense of mystery. It's not a space that the National Trust
have known about forever. It wasn't until 2012 that they
discovered it as part of another restoration project and it does
appear on an infantry in 1849 that describes it as a sounding
room.
So it must have been used for some amazing recitals and
amazing parties and used to echo the sound up into this towering
building that stands above it.
To help really imagine what this sounding chamber might have been
used for. In 2016, the National Trust commissioned a sound
artist Robin Rimbaud, also known as Scanner to recreate some of
those historic sounds in this chamber. It must have been
magnificent. [
GENERIC: SFX] And now... a toast, I think to the great and
glorious majesty- [
SFX Continues]
ALAN POWER: The Astors were not only socialites, Cliveden was
not merely a party place. I've just arrived in a very special
part of Cliveden to meet Stephen Acourt who's got some really
interesting stories to share with me about Cliveden's rather
surprising role in the First World War. Hi, Stephen, how are
you doing?
STEPHEN ACOURT: I'm very well. Thank you and lovely to meet you
here today,
ALAN POWER: Stephen, So what brought you to volunteer at
Cliveden or with the National Trust?
STEPHEN ACOURT: Well, it's, it's an interesting- because I've
done so many things over the last few years, five years to,
to be precise. But I first found myself up here as a visitor. I
live locally and I saw a notice on the notice board near the
information centre that was looking for people who wanted to
volunteer to be a charcoal maker.
Now as a latent bonfire and barbecue specialist, this was
right up my street. So I joined the charcoal making team, which
is all here on site from cutting the trees down, cutting them up,
putting them in the kiln producing the charcoal and
actually has sold you know, from the information centre.
ALAN POWER: So a completely homegrown product, those little
bags I saw down the information centre?
STEPHEN ACOURT: Made by volunteers made by volunteers
here.
No longer me, I've moved on from that. I've tended to migrate
more towards sort of historical research. I'm currently involved
in a project which is involved going to Reading University.
The Astor archive is held at Reading University in the Museum
Of English Rural Life and it's in there that there are all
sorts of records that relate to the generator house. That's a,
it's a building- a derelict building on site built in about
1895.
In line with the Victorian trend to have self generation of
electricity in English country houses.
And maybe this time next year, we'll see a generator house, not
generating electricity here but refurbished as maybe a new
visitor space.
ALAN POWER: It's great to be here. And I'm I'm intrigued
because over your shoulder, there's this magnificent space
in quite, I suppose off the beaten track part of Cliveden.
And I'm hoping that you can share its background and its
stories with us.
STEPHEN ACOURT: As I understand it. The starting point was the
establishment of a hospital. The Astors wanted to do something
for the war effort. They were both in politics. And they had
all this land and they wanted to do something.
They had this indoor tennis court which is on the other side
of the estate and it still exists today and they offered it
to the British authorities in the first instance to be a
hospital.
I think the intention was it was going to be something like 110
bed hospital. And the Canadian Red Cross took up the
opportunity to, invest in that tennis court and convert it into
a hospital for the First World War.
It was quite a successful hospital in the sense that the
mortality rate was not particularly high. And I don't
think necessarily all of the soldiers that died are buried
here, but I believe quite a number of them are, I mean, they
all that are buried here did die here.
ALAN POWER: I suppose the first thing you, you know, you come
around that corner and the first thing you sense is, is the
difference between the woodland walk that we've just been on and
the level of care and maintenance, you know, the grass
is perfectly clipped and the each, each headstone is, is
immaculately presented and edged and, and it's, it's like this
oval shape and it feels as if it's been cut into the bank and
it's got like rustic rock and ivy.
STEPHEN ACOURT: I would draw your attention to the statue
there of, of the lady, a statue which was commissioned by Nancy
Astor. Some say it's born in her own image, sort of her if you
will, looking over these graves is the sort of interpretation of
it and looking after them.
ALAN POWER: Yeah. Should we, should we go down the steps?
Stephen, you described wonderfully the, the statue that
we're looking at and she's in the sunshine at the moment, you
know, overlooking the graves that we can see in the garden
and it's a very peaceful spot.
And you said that she was possibly made in the likeness of
Nancy herself. But I mean, that, that for me has raised a
question, you know, about Nancy's role in, in all of this.
STEPHEN ACOURT: She was keen, she, I think she's undoubtedly
she was very keen to do her piece and offer part of her, of
the extensive property, to be this hospital in the First World
War.
And she visited it regularly and she talked to the men and she
went around and it is said in the records that, you know, she
really sort of uplifted their, their spirit and their morale
and, you know, in, in a hard but fair way, you know, told them to
sort of shape up and get on with it.
But, but at the same time, you know, it was, I think it was
thought to be a very happy hospital if that's such as
possible in the First World War.
ALAN POWER: Today has been an amazing day. Cliveden is a truly
beautiful garden. It's also brimming with history. I mean,
to think this is where the Profumo Affair all kicked off
that pivotal scandal that contributed to the defeat of the
then Prime Minister and changed the way the British public
thought about authority forever.
And what about Nancy Astor what a character she must have been
and the sounding chamber that really is a feast for the
imagination and the senses. What a treat. I hope you enjoyed it
as much as I did.
For more information about Cliveden, you can visit their
website at nationaltrust.org.uk/cliveden
and to learn more about the full range of podcasts at the
National Trust, go to nationaltrust.org.uk/podcasts.
You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter.
For our next full episode, which will be live at the end of the
month, I'll be in Stowe exploring the hidden meanings of
the incredible landscape gardens, but don't worry, there
will be a mini episode available next week.
We'll be going behind the scenes at Cliveden with one of our
National Trust volunteers, Josh Turner and also exploring some
fascinating creepy stories associated with the Astors.