Warley Place

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Over this last weekend I slipped in a sunny visit to Warley Place. How on earth did it manage to be sunny? I went early to Brentwood so that I could park easily. When I got there it was raining. Changed into walking shoes and set forth. Last time I visited with a group of people. This time I wished to be alone. Looking at something beautiful and romantic. As I chatted at the entrance, the sun came out, and it stayed out. No money to go in, a donation to Essex Wildlife Trust on the way out, and another chat. Lovely daffodils in drifts outside the Haha, and scattered among the trees. Visited the ruins of Miss Willmotts house, just the conservatory remains, and the cellars. Birdsong, moss covered bricky remains of Miss Wilmott’s huge gardening enterprise, with a hundred gardeners!!! She of Miss Willmotts ghost…. a giant Eryngium. There is a very good essay about her on the internet. Looked at the 2 ponds with bird hides, even a boating lake, a rocky torrent. All just faintly left in a riot of only just slightly tamed wildness. They do say a garden is just for the person who cultivates it. Sometimes, like Heligan, the garden is lost and found. This one was lost on her death, and now has faint echoes as nature claims it back. Her beloved bulbs are her greatest memorial, as they flower on over the decades.

This fallen giant on the pathway into the garden represents Warley. It fell in 1987 in the terrible hurricaine. Was left, upended, to get on with it. Now it is a little grove of trees.

This is the mansion that used to be Warley House.

A distant view of City of London, over the daffodils and over the M25, which hums in the distance. The reason why the monks of Barking Abbey owned the site. Why Henry gave it to one of his favourites at dissolution time.

Miss Willmotts memorial to her love for bulbs and narcissi

Where she sat and gazed, in old age, as her once beautiful garden dissolved around her. First world war requisition, debt from trying to run 3 gardens in 3 countries…..reminds me of Miss Havisham. The same story, wealthy, unmarried, dare to be independent in a mans world. Defeated by circumstance, a war , a financial crash, and old age. How she must have enjoyed her salad days!!!!

I wish I could leave something like this for others to enjoy.

These sweet chestnuts are said to be very old. On the edge of the Haha. The green in front of them is a complete carpet of moss

Down at the monks old carp pond a cheeky squirrel defies attempts to stop him feasting off bird food.

Taken from the hide at the carp pond. A long tailed tit, the only way I will get a photo of one.

There was a boat house here once. At the end of a long lake. Further along it is difficult to see there was ever a lake there.

A mossy brick plinth to 15 rows of glass frames, tended by 100 gardeners.

• 4 Apr, 2010
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