A lost Surrey garden infested with peacocks and influenced by Gertrude Jekyll

Christopher Hussey’s unusually effusive 1935 Country Life article on the achingly romantic Valewood Farm speaks of childlike wonder.

He describes his first vision of the property: 'Its wavy russet roof is bosomed deep in profuse vegetation, so that one’s first impression is of straying into a Hans Christian Andersen fairy story. One expects curious creatures of doubtful ancestry to peer imploringly or menacingly out of the encircling boscage.'

Valewood Farmhouse was, as the name would suggest, an old farm and associated buildings perched on the edge of the Blackdown Hills on the Surrey/West Sussex borders. Commanding glorious views across the South Downs, the romantic, mid-14th century timber-framed property had over the years been dressed with sandstone and half-hung with rich, red tiles characteristic of this corner of the Weald.

During the majority of the 19th century, it was home to the Mangles family. Captain James Mangles, who had spent a number of years in the Bengal Civil Service and was a keen horticulturalist, returned to this sleepy corner of the countryside after many years abroad, armed with copious samples of rhododendrons. He set about hybridising the plants and establishing them on his lands at Valewood.

At their heart, the Mangles were creatives. They were strongly connected to artists and artisans, counting their neighbours Alfred, Lord Tennyson, and Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) among their closest friends. Their daughter, Alice, married artist William George Daffarn, with his contemporary Helen Allingham painting numerous watercolours of the picturesque property. Another great artisan of the time, and great friend of the family, was Gertrude Jekyll, Country Life’s formidable gardens expert.

An 1866 edition of the Journal of the Royal Horticultural Society of London mentions H.A. Mangles winning a unanimous merit for his Rhodeodenron 'Gertrude Jekyll', named in honour of the great garden designer. Jekyll’s influence on the gardens here would continue into the 20th century.

Fast forward to the 1920s, and Alice Daffarn (nee Mangles) had inherited Valewood from her parents. Not wanting to relinquish the idyllic property, but also wanting to remain in London for the foreseeable future, Daffarn set about finding a suitable tenant. She first let it out to Allingham, who had a short tenure, dying at the property in 1926. What followed next was, well, a case of, as the late Queen said, recollections may vary.

After completing his First World War service, and returning to the UK, the Modernist architect Oliver Hill had been searching for respite from his busy London life in the form of a fashionable weekend retreat.

According to a 1928 article in Country Life by fellow architect R. Randal Phillips, after years of fruitless sorties trying to find the right property, Hill had seen….’…through a break in the trees, the chimney and roof of an old house, and, after a brief examination, realised its possibilities.’ It had, according to Randal Phillips, lain abandoned for over eight years, and the garden was described as ‘a swamp’.

This description greatly upset Daffarn, who in all likelihood was already acquainted with Hill and had previously agreed to let it to him. She wrote to the magazine to protest against the description of her family home being in a 'ruinous state' before Hill had 'saved' it. She did, despite this slur on the family property, let him stay. The results of his work in the gardens were spectacular.

Right in the centre of what would have been the old farmyard, Hill constructed a 30ft long, oval bathing pool. It was filled from a natural spring via the mouth of a magnificent jade pottery frog.

Always concerned with the aesthetic, Hill ensured the water was always the perfect shade of azure by occasionally scattering in a (don’t try this at home, kids) few, highly toxic, copper sulphate grains. An adjacent old grain store and byre were transformed into a changing room/sun trap, and cooling loggia respectively. By 1935, the whole scheme was surrounded by a menagerie of beasts, some real, some less so.

In 1928, Hill had been assisted by Jekyll with a naturalistic planting scheme — one of her last — for the gardens. She had even provided plants from her nursery at Munstead Woods. But by the 1935 article, Hill had reportedly gone his own way, largely departing from her scheme, although vast, soft blue swathes of delphiniums, anchusas and Salvia virgata, softened by pink sidalcea and grey foliage — classic Jekyll varigated height and colour combinations — waved joyously by the side of the swimming pool in summer.

Slightly above the pool, a more conventional terrace was laid out. Despite the heavy clay soil, a rose garden tried its best on the lower terraces, although it was noted that between the congested soil and Hill’s beloved peacocks, who were rather overly fond of ingesting the blooms, this garden was not the property’s most prolific.

Passing through the barn, away from the pool, led to a straight, brick path which transported you to a short ha-ha overlooking what today would be called a wildflower meadow. In spring, it bobbed with a profusion of bouncy, white cow parsley.

During his long tenancy at Valewood, Hill’s architectural creativity flourished. During his time at the farm, he designed, among others, the British Art Deco icons the Midland Hotel in Morecombe and the entire Art Deco enclave in Frinton-on-Sea, Essex. The clean, dramatic lines of his work were a far cry from the romanticism and 'organised chaos' of his weekend retreat.

Hill’s tenancy came to an abrupt end at the start of 1948 following the death of Daffarn. So did his gardens at Valewood. By the dawn of the 21st century, while the aged farmhouse spread its roots deeper into the land, very little remained of Hill’s idyllic weekend retreat gardens. The pool was filled in. The jade ceramic frog and porcelain fawns were (hopefully) rehomed.

But there was one happy ending to the fairytale. One echo of the past does continue to flourish in rude health around the lanes in the area. Vast drifts of Capt Mangles’ invasive rhododendrons burst into flower every spring in this corner of the country.

If you wish to see his work in a more contained setting, Leonardslee Gardens, roughly 10 miles to the east of Valewood, inherited the majority of his collection, which puts on a magnificent technicolour display every April-May.

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