The Thinking Gardener

Elizabeth Macleod Matthews, chatelaine of Chenies Manor died in April 2016. An amazingly stalwart and resourceful lady, for a period of over fifty years she painstakingly resurrected the gardens of Chenies with a lot of back aching work and great panache. 

It is not my purpose on this occasion to discuss the present gardens; the thousands of jewelled tulips in the spring, the blazing Mexican colours of the dahlias in the summer, they are there for all to see.

The history of Chenies is ancient.  From 1180 until 1523 it was owned by the Cheyne family.  In 1523 Anne Sapcote who had inherited Chenies Manor, married into the Russell family who were to become the Dukes of Bedford. 

Royalty was regularly entertained at Chenies.  Henry the Eighth with his queen, Anne Boleyn and their daughter Elizabeth staying for a week in 1534. In 1541 Henry again visited Chenies, this time with a new wife, Kathryn Howard. Later in the next century Queen Elizabeth visited several times, staying for one month in 1570, the longest visit recorded to any subject’s house.  The gardens would have been on a scale to reflect this. 

Two hunting parks lay to the West and South West, one of the parks was of 484 acres which Elizabeth would certainly have enjoyed, hunting was a great passion for her.  

Preparations for a royal visit were immense and very expensive, very often bankrupting the hosts.  Lord John Russell instituted massive building works.  In those days it was the latest fashion for the gardens to contain a banqueting house, he set about building one. A description of this house is on record by the chronicler Leland who visited the manor house while the first Earl and his wife were alive and described his impressions:

‘The Old house of the Cheynies is so translated (changed) by my Lord Ruseell that hath that house in the righte of his wife, that little or nothing remaineth ontranslated (unchanged): and a great deal of the house is even newly set up –  made of Brick and Timber; a fair loggings be new erected in the garden. The house is within diverse Places richly painted with antique works of White and Black. And there be about The House two Parkes as I remember’.

Russell was well rewarded for his efforts because in 1539 he was created Baron Russell of Chenies.

So, what would the gardens have looked like when Henry arrived at Chenies? According to English Heritage he would probably have approached the manor from the west, (the modern drive is to the east).  His lodgings were facing formal gardens to the north over-looking the River Chess, with large stepped terraces down towards the river.  A small Privy garden was probably lying to the south. 

A privy garden was always much used by royalty and the aristocracy.  It was an intimate garden with easy access from their apartments.  ‘Walls have ears’ and a garden was the best place to gain privacy from prying eyes and ears, a place where they could exercise and relax without the formalities of court. This was a garden of repose full of the scent of roses.  Cherries and apples would have been espaliered against the walls, fountains playing.

When Elizabeth visited, the second Earl Francis was her host, the gardens would have contained more emphasis on symbolism.  She was the Virgin Queen and the white rose symbolising purity would have been planted in her honour, a red rose to represent their love for her. Lavish and expensive masques would have been performed in the gardens in her honour, maybe fireworks over the River Chess which she would have been able to enjoy from the gardens outside the royal apartments.

The gardens continued to be of great beauty. The third Earl Russell was married to an immensely wealthy heiress, Lucy Harrington.  She was a most lively, beautiful, intelligent woman and one of her passions were gardens, so much so, that she bankrupted herself, spending the equivalent of millions on designing and stocking her gardens.  Certainly the masques and romance of the gardens at Chenies continued under her influence. 

Sadly, in around 1608, the Russells left Chenies permanently. Although the gardens were kept in a tidy and orderly manner for a while, a gradual decline occurred, much of the manor was demolished, the house and gardens were occupied by the estate farmers. So although still owned by the Russells, Chenies  Manor was neglected and became a backwater, used for agricultural purposes.

In 1745 in the field on the opposite side of the road to the Bedford Arms, hops were grown for beer, and just near to this was a vineyard.  

So sad, the roofs were falling in and part of the manor had been converted to five homes for the agricultural workers.  In 1760 the Duke of Bedford’s estate manager recommended that Chenies should be demolished.  

Thank goodness this was not followed through with and Elizabeth Macleod Matthews was able to bring the gardens back to life. The gardens remain in good hands, Elizabeth’s son Charles and his wife Boo will be carrying on the good work.

I have resolutely avoided discussing that most famous of garden designers, Capability Brown. So many others far better qualified than me have written much. However, there is an interesting conundrum in which he figures.

What connects Yale University, Latimer House, the churches of Flaunden, Latimer and Chenies, the slave trade and Capability Brown?

In the early seventeenth century Lord James Cavendish, third son of William the first Duke of Devonshire, married Anne Yale (d.1734), whose father was Elihu Yale (1649-1721), an American of Welsh origin.  

Elihu spent the first three years of his life in Boston, America but thereafter lived in Britain and India. As a young man of twenty three he was sent to work in Madras by the East India Company, there the English had a frontier trading post named Fort St George.

At that time Fort St George was rough and tough, small and rather miserable where heavy drinking and fighting were commonplace amongst the residents, the civilising influence of women non-existent and the Indian Ocean slave trade an immensely profitable business – larger even than the Atlantic slave trade.

The Indian Ocean trade in slaves linked S.E. Asia with the Middle East, the Indonesian archipelago and the African coastline. Yale bought hundreds of slaves and shipped them to St Helena.  In one month alone in 1687 at least 665 slaves were exported from Fort St George.

Elihu rose up the ranks and became governor of Fort St George in 1687; he amassed an extremely large fortune from illegal profiteering, dealing in diamonds and of course the slave trade (he enforced the law whereby at least ten slaves had to be carried on every ship bound for Europe). However his underhand dealings were to prove too much even for those days and he was eventually relieved of his post as governor. 

Upon his return to England as a very rich man he leased Latimer Manor for his estranged wife Catherine and unmarried daughter Ursula from his son-in-law Lord James Cavendish (Yale had by that time acquired two mistresses, one of whom was a diamond smuggler and several illegitimate children). 

In 1718, three years short of his death, Yale was called upon to support a small American educational establishment then known as the Collegiate School of Connecticut. He responded by sending £800 worth of pictures and artefacts, a huge sum in those days. With the money from the sale of some of these the school was re-built and re-named in Elihu’s honour as Yale. 

Elihu Yale (centre) with William Cavendish, the second Duke of Devonshire; Lord James Cavendish; Mr. Tunstal; and an Enslaved Servant. Image: Yale University

In 1751 Latimer Court as it was known then, was occupied by Elihu’s grand-daughter Elizabeth Cavendish and her husband Richard Chandler (he became Lord Cavendish by deed of parliament in 1751) and it was they who re-fronted the house and employed Capability Brown to re-design the pleasure gardens.  

In the 1750s two lakes known as the Great Water and the Lower Water were formed by damming the River Chess, a cascade known as the Neptune cascade was created with an accompanying folly known as The Tower, the latter demolished in 1763. On the west side of The Grove was another folly, a cave, sadly also no longer extant. 

Having gained permission from the Duke of Devonshire to cut some of the trees to the west of Chenies Church, the view of the Church was ‘procurred’ and incorporated into Brown’s design for the pleasure gardens of Latimer. A perimeter belt of trees were planted on the ridge behind the house, thus enclosing the bucolic scene and providing privacy from the public road running behind.

The Cavendishes would have enjoyed riding around their estate and looking upon the serpentine water, a little bridge, strategically placed trees either singly or in clumps, and the church of Chenies in the distance, the little village of Latimer nestling around.

This brings me to the connection between Capability Brown, Sir Gilbert Scott  and slavery.

Capability Brown’s wife Bridget nee Wayet, was a direct relation of Sir Gilbert Scott who designed the church of St Mary Magdalen in Flaunden in 1838, describing it as ‘that poor barn designed for my uncle King’ who was rector of Latimer and Flaunden at that time.

Sir Gilbert Scott’s great grandfather was connected by marriage with one Edward Kelsall, vicar of Boston. His wife Mary was a Wayet and the sister of Bridget Brown, who in turn were related to Sir Gilbert Scott’s mother’s family.

His mother was a West Indian, daughter of Dr Lynch of Antigua, Scott’s grandfather.  They were a family of rich West Indian planters, owners of the Gilberts Estate and involved with the slave trade.  

In 1833 the Slavery Abolition Act was passed and compensation was paid to all who were either directly or indirectly deriving all or part of their fortunes from slavery. One fifth of Victorian society was involved. These were people who were not all of the aristocracy but covering the entire spectrum of society. The government paid out 40 per cent of the treasury’s annual spending equivalent to £16.5 billion in today’s money.  

The Rev.Thomas Scott of Wappenham, Scott’s father, claimed for slave compensation on behalf of Elizabeth Gilbert Sir Gilbert’s great aunt.

Sir Gilbert Scott once described the beautiful Chiltern countryside as ‘of a little paradise, The hills, valley, river, trees, flowers, fruits, fossils, all seem encircled in a kind of imaginary halo’.

There are always two sides to the coin, the ugly and the beautiful. 

Not one penny of compensation was paid to the slaves.