The magic of Rousham never fails. For decades now I’ve called it my favourite English garden. It has slumbered beside the river Cherwell since the 17th century, no doubt much greener and with bigger trees now than when Colonel Dormer created it, not long after he had fought at the battle of Blenheim, but still the house of the Dormer family and seemingly altered only by time.
We were at Rousham on our way to The Newt in Somerset, a prodigy of garden-making in the grand style, of masonry as well as tillage. Of course the pale stone, the statues and temples were once as bright as butter at Rousham too. I remember the Newt, though, when it was just Hadspen House, the home of the Hobhouse family for almost as long as the Dormers have been at Rousham. It was as mature and tranquil. For a few years it then went through a technicolour phase; tenants made it sparkle with, as I remember, tulips. It was when the Bekkers arrived from the Cape that the chrysalis exploded into a butterfly.
Byron, in his epic he called Donnie Johnnie, describes a pleasure-palace; ‘Wealth had done wonders….’. Daisy Ashford (I hope people still read The Young Visiters) talks of ‘good dodges of a rich nature’.
No good dodges are missing at The Newt. Its base is the parabolic walled garden at a distance from Hadspen House, best seen from its excellent restaurant on stilts. Don’t linger too long over lunch, though; you still have lots to see; the high point being the Roman villa.
A sketch, or sample, of this marvellous reconstruction appeared at this year’s Chelsea Flower Show; enough to start me salivating. The full dress version is almost England’s Pompeii. In modern terms it was probably the manor house of a substantial estate. Certainly its owners lived in style – and in a style it is easy to appreciate, down to the flavours of the food being prepared in the courtyard kitchen. The Bekkers, media moguls in South Africa, I believe, have given us a splendid new visitor attraction. I anticipate an overflowing car park.
