The story of the Spa at Dorton and its subsequent disappearance into the realms of the forgotten or the unknown is perhaps one of the saddest in spa history. The Chalybeate spa which opened in 1833 was the brainchild of Charles Ricketts. He had become the owner of the Dorton Estate upon his marriage into the Aubrey family. The existence of the spring had been known since the late medieval period; it was Ricketts who had the water analyzed, improved the access and employed James Hakewill, architect, to design the pump room. Dorton Spa was never going to compete with the likes of Cheltenham or Leamington, being situated in a wood in the rural vale of Aylesbury, and plans were scaled back, the pump room and lodge/ refreshment room being the only buildings, both now gone. However, a boating lake was created, and some planting installed, including an avenue to the entrance of the grounds. This October 11 lecture, presented by The Gardens Trust, is part of a five part series on British Spa Landscapes. The presenter is Claire de Carle.
Claire de Carle is a garden historian, with a keen interest in horticulture, art and social history and she is the chair and a trustee of Buckinghamshire Gardens Trust which is celebrating its 25th anniversary in 2022. She was instrumental in the establishment of the Trust’s Research & Recording project in 2013 which has produced reports on around 100 locally important historic gardens. She enjoys researching and writing about little known historic landscape gardens and more recently she has set up two other projects: Artists and their Gardens and Public Parks in Buckinghamshire. She lectures to local groups about Buckinghamshire gardens and Maud Grieve, the herbalist who was the subject of her MA dissertation. Claire lives in Oakley a small village on the Bucks/Oxon border, in her spare time she works on her garden that she and her husband have created over the last seven years.www.bucksgardenstrust.org.uk
A ticket is for this individual session costs £5, and you may purchase tickets for other individual sessions, or you may purchase a ticket for the entire course of 5 sessions at a cost of £20 via the link here. Attendees will be sent a Zoom link 2 days prior to the start of the talk, and again a few hours before the talk. A link to the recorded session (available for 1 week) will be sent shortly afterwards.
