 I'm Gavin Frances and I'm going to talk about the legacy of William Morris' garden at Calmsgott Manning. I'm currently studying for my PhD at the University of Bath on the cultural identity of plantarine gardens and I'm researching how we protect and interpret imported gardens that are created by significant cultural figures and yet I've made up of largely ephemeral plant-based materials and therefore they fall outside traditional heritage conservation. Morison Calmscott yw'r ddweud eich ddweud o'r ddweud yma, ac mae Oedden Calmscott yn cael eu cyfnod i'ch ddwylo'r dyfodol sydd wedi'i gweithio'n ddigitio dwylo morysau. Mae gennym ni'n golygu i ddim yn ymwyaf. Mae'n ddim yn ei gwybod o'r ysgol yn oedd o groesol yn gyfnodol o morison Calmscott, ac mae'r ddweud o'r ddweud o'r ffordd maen nhw. Oedden yn ei ddweud o'r ddweud o'r ddweud o'r ddweud o'r ddweud o'r ddweud. Somewhere which are from the Society of Anthrop's archive that comes to that... ..and somewhere from a new archive that's been found at the Naster Library of Wales at Brucewick. There's loads of brilliant images and a track that Crayon Blotsie, say keep your eyes on the screen, because some of you will flash really quickly. You might miss it. So when we think of William Morris Gardner as not one of the first things that springs to mind is a great polymath. ydych chi'n dweud am effeithiau'r cheidio ar bobl gynnig i anodd ac yn ddweud ar pistonio, diolchio, poe, mwynhau, rhoi a oesol, ac y chryw ffordd y sbaf ar hyn. Mae Hwylfa wedi cael ei chyfydde i ddarparu morysau ar gyfnodd ar gyfnodd i geisio rhai o'r gwneud gwahanol ac yn bachio ar gyfnodd gyfer o gweld ar byd. Rwy'n ddweud yn ddwyll â'r byd i'r prinsyn. Mae'r Fynghraeg Ysgol iawn wedi bod yn fflu sydd ymweld ymweld yma yn y gwaith yma, yn gwarun'r fynd yn gyda'r gyfer Chalmwt, ac yn ei ffluio ymddangos yma yma yma yw'r cyflogol. Mae'r Fynghraeg yw'r Llywodraeth yn ymweld yma yw'r gyflogol yn ymweld ymweld ymweld ymweld ymweld ymweld, ac yn ymweld yn ymweld ymweld ymweld ymweld. Mae'r dweud o'r rhaid o'r ddwelliad ymargrifydd i ddweud o phreddgwrs i'r dweud argyfusur ac Мorris e. Mae'r traddut yn dechrau sy'n ei ddweud o'r ddweud cyfrydwr i ddweud i ddweud sy'n dechrau a oswn Llywyddau, i ddweud i haf Returns, ac i ddweud i broithoseau yn y priratholau a drwyddwrn yn eu cyfrwythu. Mae'r ddweud a'r Eau'r bobwysig yn bwynt i ddweud o'r ddweud i ddweud i ddweud a ddweud i Ddweud. The influence of Morris as a God entirely begins at Red House in Bexley Heath, where the House and Garden were designed in collaboration with the architect and friend, Fernick Webb. The garden was designed as a series of rooms within an orchid setting and placed emphasis on medieval details that related to the art he was engaged with at the time and later the gardens had consulate manna mantainness layouts of rooms but were less formal in structure and composition than a Red House, less medieval herver and more plantsmen. Ieithwyrd yn cael ei casf am y grwyddofn i siaradau ffordd yma i'r ffawr am Y Red House yw'r rai'r rhagol, ac mae Arhwyddon ddigon nhw ymwneud, gan gyda Diolch yn y cyfnodydd. Mae amser yn ganwg o'r gwcwmnau offent ac mae o gweithio'r ddyladig ar hynny o'r gweithio'r ddod, Mae'n oedd eich ddod o'r lleoli am y maen nhw wedi ddod. a bod hefyd yn ganddolgo'r pethau fel arfer. Felly, rydyn ni'n bwysigio hwn i gyfosgofydd ac yn lifio'r cyfodau a'r hanes y redhau. Yn y cwl leaks, gan y gyrfa oherwydd, rydych chi chi'n yn fyrdd ymgyrch yn Llywodraeth, ac yn y cyfosgofydd Caumscock yn Llywodraeth 1570, yn Llywodraeth i Caumscock yn y Llywodraeth wedi amgylch. Yma'n ddech chi gael ei ddod yn cyfle o'r llef. Ac mae'nkompat yn cair eu cefnogi yn y Calyswythol Ieithi ddweud y ddweud yn ymlaes y peth lleol sy'n ymlaen. Moryswch ar y Llyfrgellau a'r Ddechrau'n 1871, ond y ddweud yw'r ddweud yn y Llyfrgellau yn Dantigabrio. Ylltech chi'n eich ddweud y Llyfrgellau'n cerddol yng Nghariaid, mae'r ddweud yn y ddweud y Llyfrgellau'n ddweud o'r ddweud a'r ddweud. Mae'r ddweud yn ei ddweud. Yr adnod ddim yn gwneud ychydig yw'r rhannig, William, yn ystod am y bydd yn gwneud y etoedd o'r cymdeithas hwnnw, y cyllid yn cyfrannig o'r cymdeithas o'r cymdeithas iawn a'r amser yn gyfer y llun. Yr adnod y cilmscot maen nhw'n cael hwnnw i'r cyfrannig o'r cyfrannig o'r gyfrannig yma'r hoffodol. Mae'n gwleidio'r cyfrannig o'r cyfrannig o'r hwnnw, ond yw'r adnod yma'n gwneud yma'n cyfrannig o'r hawdd, alw'n gynhyblygu'r gael ar hadn ddiogel? Mae hyn oedd mynd wedi'i gyfweld y rhannu'r gwrth iawn yn rhanol o'r cyflwynt yn bwysigol yng nghyntau i'r gyfweld ymlaen o'r gwrth iawn o'r gyrddiaeth bwysigol yn bach i'r gштurai a'r gwrth wahanol yn ei gweithio ddweud ac mae'r hefyd yn ei ffordd honno cyfweld Bod y bwn cyfweld i gyrddiaeth i gael ar hyn y bod y dda i'r ardyf wedi'u cyfweld i'r gyfweld i Gw contrast i gwydd If there are any gardens or garden enthusiasts present, you'll understand what he means by this phrase, when we stand on certain types of gardens, particularly in the early summer period, we experience the feeling of immersion in a garden of super abundance. It implies the generosity of the garden both in produce and artistically. And certainly when we look at pictures of the garden from Williams time and also in the following period where the garden was tended by his daughter May, there's a sense that plants are entering free growth with little tailor and lots of lushness. And a practice that stands out for me and is absent from recent iterations of the garden is height. Even in areas of the garden that are largely herbaceous, there's a great deal of height to the plant present, which would have given the gardens a more intimate feel. So the gardens of Cumscott came to encapsulate many of Morris's values and beliefs, not just strictly about garden design and flower use, but also around the philosophy and ideals of life for the working man. It's during these years, too, that Morris's influence began to impact the direction of gardening in the wider world. He contributed to William Robinson's influential garden magazine and his opinions on Victorian carpet-bedding that was really popular at the time. And, as he said, growing together profusely in order, I suppose, to show that even flowers can be thoroughly ugly. Comments like that can be made echoed in William Robinson's work, too. But his most lasting contribution to garden design is, arguably, through Gertrude Geekle, herself a great admirer of Morris and Ruskin, both of whom she met and enjoyed debating with, and whose theories can be found in the backbone of much of her work. Now, Morris's biographer, Fiona McAfee, questions whether Geekle, as we know her, would even exist without Morris, but I think this has undervalued in her unique contributions, but there's no doubt in the lasting influence of Morris on this great taste maker. And there's an underlying presence of Morris in the gardens and the influences of Geekle. So, at the time we got to know, we've come to look back a little better, so I'll take us on a little virtual tour. So, if we navigate ourselves first by looking at the bird's eye view, this is the H&U's drawing. And you can see there have gardens separated into rooms. It's a quick scan, so it starts in the front garden, goes round to the kitchen, and then we'll work a little back to be altered to the whole area at the back. So, we'll begin here in the front garden, which is iconic and depicted in an illustration on the frontest piece of News from Nowhere. This is arguably, in Calms Fox's most familiar image, and it's loosely representative of the garden, as it was, as you can see here in a period photograph. And the division between this area and the next section of the garden is formed by a new hedge, which was topped with a topiary dragon in the shape of Fafnir, the dragon that was from William's beloved Norse mythology. It's reported that Morris would shape Fafnir himself once a year in what became a ceremonial party. And next is the kitchen garden, and this was in Morris' days, as its name suggests, the produce garden was made up of beds of flowers and vegetables. And in a state that we can happily describe as abundant, including the presence of two victories in the northeast corner, the consumption of which is described in a memorial to Mae Morris after her death. And at the north door, there's a new hedge which wrapped itself around the entrance. You can imagine it would have passed quite a lot of shade over the wall, but possibly also providing some shelter that is the north side of the house. It may have protected that into the house from cold winds. And next comes the orchard, which is quite self-explanatory. And this photograph that we found is really valuable when it stood next to the drawing by Amon Vallance because it shows us that we can have some reliability from some of the depictions in how close the layout of the garden actually was. And then we go to what's known as the mulberry garden due to the large mulberry tree at its centre. And the view from the green room window, and which was one of Mae Morris' favourites, and it's easily in the most documented area of the garden, more photographs than any other area, and also being the subject of many paintings, including those by the Pre-Raphaelite artist Marius Bartali Stillman. It's another area which lends itself to the promise of superabundance as can be seen from the pictures, the tall flowers and many frames made up of sticks. It's been believed that the mulberry tree at the centre was present during Morris' time and it's even described in Derek Baker's book The Portment Regear on Mulberry Tree. But unfortunately sometimes archival research does not reveal what you want or expect, and we found a picture of the garden without a cleannwt. Something is missing. Now, the misunderstanding is quite the same, because mulberries have a really gnarly look about them, and they tend to look old before their time. And the most frustrating thing is that the photograph collection doesn't have any dates on it, and it's hard to know when this was taken. But the presence of the tree here in an image from 1905 suggested that the mulberry may have been planted before Morris' death or shortly afterwards. So, beyond the garden lies the meadow. Described evocatively by the residents of camps that William made, Janie and Rosetta, they all made mention of the meadow in their writings and letters. And they all take pleasure from it and describe the flowers it contained and the meanings it represented for them. Now, I see them displayed with the Thames Conservancy Board, not to cut back the wild flowers on the riverbank. And there was a row of owls bordering the edge of the meadow, which were lost as the same fate as most owls in the country. And this image here from the Aberystwyth archive, the figure on the right is Mary-Loth, and was Mae Morris' companion in letter units. It's a very interesting character. There were many things we noted in Groman gardens. The silver estrus, naturalised air and frital areas were abundant. And many native varieties of plants, which is something else that was adopted by Jekyll. And also we can assume a lack of double flowers as Morris had a disapproval of plant breeding and sound observations of double flowers are less valuable to insects. So, I think one of the reasons that Morris is significant to gardens is not fully recognised as Judah is falling out of favour in the middle of the 20th century. There was less appetite for Morris in this period and his gardens fell into disrepair as did the properties themselves to a lesser extent. And given the revival and appreciation for his work now, it's hard to imagine that the Red House was almost lost due to its lack of perceived value. And Count Scott didn't fare much better as we'll come to see shortly. When William died, his body was laid to rest in the church yard at Camp Scott, just down the road from the gardens, under a stone designed by Philip Webb. And after his death, it was William's daughter, Maymor, who became most associated with the Manor and its gardens, continuing to live there for a further 24 years after her mother died with her companion Mary Lodge when we saw her in the previous picture. May continue to enjoy the gardens and maintain many of the philosophies of her father. She became an accomplished designer and evil crafter in her own right and became closely engaged with the Count Scott community. Her father's legacy was important to her and she intended for Count Scott to become a place where his values were upheld. And upon her death, she bequeathed Count Scott Manor to Oxford University, wishing for it to be maintained as it was in the time of her father, with the intention that it should serve as a place of rest for artists and men of letters and scholars. Now, this period under their guardianship of Oxford University was not successful. The timing was unfortunate with the outbreak of war. The isolation of Count Scott made it very unpeeling and the journey to reaching was difficult and so it was very hard to maintain. John Bachelor was one of the few people to stay during this period, but it appears out of a sense of duty more than anything else. And the house suffered serious decay, however, not quite to the extent that the gardens and a very quick solution was needed sadly. At some point during this period, Oxford University took a decision to turf over the gardens entirely. By this time, the gardens must have been overgrown, however, the act of removal of all the plant materials from the plot was denying a future understanding of these very significant gardens. It could be argued that it was understandable under the circumstances if somewhat regrettable. Excuse me. In 1962, Count Scott passed into the hands of his current guardian to the Society of Antiquaries, and over the following period it was both tenanted and open to the public. There were more as out of fate, the visitor numbers were quite few and this only began to grow into much more significant figures like 15,000 in 2010. And the next significant date for the gardens is 1993 when the Society of Antiquaries undertook restoration commissioning the local firm of Colvin and Marbridge to undertake the work. Now in 1993 the significance of the gardens at Count Scott were not fully understood and garden conservation was a young discipline and in fact I'll still argue that there's no clear understanding of how we approach plant-based historic gardens now that that's the subject of my PhD. So at this time the purpose of the gardens we've seen in two ways. One is that it reflects the plants and flowers that Marich used in his patterns and secondly that extended visitor experience offered extra space to manage visitor flow and the crowd in the house. So using the gardens to show how Marich took his inspiration from the natural world is valuable and their examples of the gardens acting as inspiration for his designs. For example Mae Marich describes how her father watched through the windows of black birds stole strawberries from strawberry plants leading to one of his most popular iconic designs, the strawberry bee and William never allowed the birds to be driven off and made comments that there were always more birds than strawberries in the garden. So while he was evidently inspired by the natural world around him the source of his unique pattern combinations and the layering of botanical images and designs are often considered to come from another source. He used old herbals for his plant drawings including this one to Gerald's herbal this is from how Marich used the copy. And old copies of which show from the previous page the visible fruit of the next page was a paper so thin you can see better, too different, you've got the arbuchus and you go on the inside and then on the other and this is how we believe you make it it's a layering of patterns which made this design so unique and interesting. So, but this is his populist legacy and it's a really valid part of expression in the gardens. So Colvin and Marich's plan for the garden began by reinstating the layouts of sub-divisions using bit gordon and serving maps and the EHU's 1890 drawing reintroducing the gardenerings that we've just seen when we went round. Here's an overhead image which I think stands out from here is the amount of mould that there is now in the garden. It's quite significant. So the front garden in the restoration follows the frontest piece from use of nowhere and as the most famous image of the garden it's reinstated what's essential to the expectations of the visitor and their relationship with the garden. And Fafnir, too, was reinstated with much agonising areas designed as a very long paper trade of debate over its final shape quite fascinating debate and they had experts from the National Trust who came in and I've heard lots of descriptions about what we ended up with and some people say it's a slug with a network of computers. I need you to decide exactly what to do. So, and at this time the kitchen garden now magically becomes the lawn garden and this change represents the most significant departure from Morris's garden and is a good example of the compromises that exist in heritage gardens. Converting the kitchen garden to a lawn creates space for visitors which was the requirement of the restoration and secondly the cost of maintenance of what was the kitchen garden could be prohibitive out of the sustainability of the property. The orchard which was more easily reinstated without any knowledge of the original varieties there is some conjecture but heritage varieties that predate the Morris's were chosen for this. And finally we move on to the mulberry garden which while it maintains the ornamental value of the original there isn't an attempt to capture the space as it was instead opting for polite orders which are attractive to guests but if we're looking for the presence of Morris then we're lacking that key introductory phrase of superabundance. The large displays of tulip bulbs that are here are popular with guests but are perhaps what Morris would describe as as to colouring the garden flowers on mass, on mighty strong colour and if not usually great caution are very destructive to pleasure in gardening on the whole I think the best and safest plan is to mix up your flowers and more of the resublate masses of colour in combination. I love statement side it because I think they show us just what keen eye he views the garden. It's an artist's perspective of colour and texture and shape and it brings his sensibilities as an artist and a pattern designer to the garden and the meadow is not really stated and the loss of the alms is really significant to the space it's meaning. So where does this leave us now the gardens of William Morris are definitely underrepresented and hopefully are presented while they might be considered important not only from the point of view of his contribution to garden style and design which through his advocates has distinguished as William Robinson and Gertrw Gicol were exported around the world but also how his gardens can show us something of how he lived and how his ideals and how he proposed that we might live and for how there is the poetry and the inspiration behind his thinking not only artistically as we've seen in his art and pattern design but also his philosophical thinking through new somewhere and his lectures and the growing significance of the gardens are hopefully becoming clearer as also we're coming more to understand as highlighted in a recent paper by Caroline Lucas MP that Morris is one of the forefars of the environmental movement. Now the great thing for Morris is that the guardianship of the Society of Antica provides a safe confidence in the garden's future protection and interpretation and also Red House has now managed by the National Trust in the gardens likely to have some form of restoration on that sort of garden. I'll leave you with this image of William in Ripoh's in the meadow which is my favourite image from the archive. Thank you.