This is the second series in the Gardens Trust’s new partnership with the county gardens trusts, looking at restoration in action. Join Yorkshire Gardens Trust to learn about researching, restoring and reinterpreting a selection of glorious gardens in the county. The chosen projects cover four centuries of garden design and showcase the skills, sensitivities and determination needed to conserve and enhance historic gardens. This ticket is for the course of 3 sessions. or you may purchase a ticket for individual sessions, costing £8. [Gardens Trust and Yorkshire Gardens Trust Members may purchase tickets at £15.75 for the series or £6 each talk]. Register at https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/restoration-in-action-yorkshire-tickets-780066468807 Attendees will be sent a Zoom link 2 days (and again a few hours) prior to the start of the first talk (If you do not receive this link please contact us), and a link to the recorded session will be sent shortly after each session and will be available for 1 week.
The first lecture is on March 6. Bramham Park was created by Robert Benson, Lord Bingley at the beginning of the Eighteenth Century, as a residence and landscape to demonstrate the status he had risen to as Chancellor of the Exchequer and a Director of the South Sea Company. In the three following centuries a combination of irresponsible illegitimate children, gambling debts, a disastrous fire, two world wars, inheritance taxes and a hurricane-force gale meant that Benson’s design has never been substantially changed. This makes Bramham a rare survival of the period between baroque formality and the Landscape Movement, showing the development from one to the other.
Since the gale in 1962, Benson’s descendants have sought to restore Bramham to its original condition and the current owner, Nick Lane Fox will recount his efforts, since taking over from his father in 1997.
For ten years after university, Nick Lane Fox was a soldier in the Blues and Royals, in which time he went nowhere even remotely dangerous. He was an investment manager for a further ten years, taking over the running of Bramham when his mother died in 1997. Nick is ashamed to recall telling his mother, when he was 11 years-old, that he was “bored and there was nothing to do at Bramham”.
He is married to Rachel, daughter of Lord Charles Howick VMH, owner of Howick Hall in Northumberland and collector of all the wild-origin trees in its arboretum.
When they first took over Bramham, Nick and Rachel were advised by the garden designer and writer Lady Mary Keen and by John Sales, then senior gardens adviser to the National Trust. These two were instrumental in educating and setting the direction for the restoration of the Bramham Landscape. Now Nick is the chain-saw gardener and Rachel the real gardener.
