The curious incident of the vanishing glasshouses: Country Life's photographs are all that remains of these awe-inspiring structures

Cherkley Court had been the later-life project of its recently-deceased owner Abraham Dixon — a hugely-successful Birmingham businessman specialising in the somewhat incongruous production and export of cutlery and guns. He retired to the Surrey Hills in about 1860 after his health ‘broke down’.

Here, the philanthropic and charitable Dixon found peace in retirement, using some of his vast wealth to create a personal utopia (other parts of his wealth went to funding the Homeopathic Hospital and Dispensary in Birmingham and many local charities). Even after a devastating fire caused by a lightning strike in July 1893 — which gutted the vast majority of his entire home — Dixon was undeterred. The man himself, then in his late seventies, was: ‘somewhat scorched in the face’ from fruitlessly trying to extinguish the blaze, but his love for the area and his home and gardens was not to be deterred by a mere fire and some crispy whiskers.

His passion to continue might have been fuelled by the remarkable fact that his spectacular glasshouses had been spared. With no time to lose, he instructed architects and builders to reimagine his property. Work began in September of the same year, with a report in the Surrey Advertiser stating completion had been estimated for May 1894. By the time Country Life visited, in 1900, you would never have known such devastation had occurred.

The photographer commissioned by Country Life lavished most of their time and effort on the glasshouses. This must have been an incredibly tricky assignment; the humidity within the vast structures would have played havoc with fogging not only the camera lens, but also the glass plate negatives. On the upside, the sheer amount of natural light would have meant that the negatives would not have needed to have been exposed for very long.

The most jaw-dropping was the Victoria Regia, a purpose-built, heated and electrically lit home — installed for Dixon’s mammoth Victoria Amazonica specimen. Though not fully grown when photographed, its leaves measured well over 7ft in diameter, and could support the weight of a small child — a feat apparently photographed, sadly before Country Life’s time, in the 1880s. The only other known contemporary examples of the South American giant water lily, in the UK, were housed at Chatsworth and Kew.

Glass dome lights, hanging from its arched ceiling, threw out a myriad colours, and were also employed in the striking conservatory, featuring a Classical-style pool and a backdrop that echoed the Moorish architecture of the Alhambra. Though photographed in black-and-white, at the tail end of Queen Victoria’s reign, the space would arguably not look out of place in the 21st century, unsullied as it was by the hallmark fussiness of the great queen’s era. Giant banana plants grew proud alongside all manner of cacti (some look entirely lethal), lilies, Begonia Rex and soft and scented pelargoniums.

Following Dixon’s death in 1907, and subsequently that of his wife, Margaret in 1909, the house was bought for £30,000 by the Canadian newspaper magnate Max Aitken, 1st Baron Beaverbrook. The house witnessed a period of huge influence and prosperity, as its new owner wined and dined leading figures from the worlds of politics and finance, but the hugely extensive and expensive botanical collections… vanished. As Kathryn Bradley-Hole’s wonderful Lost Gardens of England book explains, there appears to be no record of what happened.

In time, the property, and small parts of Dixon’s gardens were transformed into Beaverbrook, a five-star hotel and spa. The glasshouses and their contents are still missing.

The Country Life Image Archive contains more than 150,000 images documenting British culture and heritage, from 1897 to the present day. An additional 50,000 assets from the historic archive are scheduled to be added this year — with completion expected in Summer 2025. To search and purchase images directly from the Image Archive, please register here