Talks 2021

The talk will explain the extraordinary impact John Bowes Morrell (1873-1963) businessman, civic leader, historian and visionary had on the city, and how his astonishing legacy and achievements fundamentally shaped the city we know today.

30th October 2021 : Glennis Whyte “When Earth and Sky Meet”

This new talk takes us behind-the-scenes at National Trust gardens in the York Area; Treasurer’s House, Goddards and Beningbrough Hall.

Caribbean Journey

Wednesday 26th May at 7.30pm on Zoom

Escape from the cold, damp, English Spring and spend an hour enjoying the sunshine of the Caribbean. Rod and Margaret Leonard spent a couple of years sailing around the Caribbean earlier this century before sailing across the Atlantic back to Britain.

This presentation will be on Zoom and will be recorded.

All participants will be muted and you can choose to have your own video on or off.

The Zoom invitation will be sent to everyone on the YANT email list a couple of days beforehand.

Wednesday 21st April 2021 at 7:30pm on Zoom

“Poetry, Prose and Peonies”

Speaker: Peter Mathers

https://petermathers.weebly.com/poetry-prose-and-peonies.html

"Poetry, Prose and Peonies" is an illustrated PowerPoint talk of mainly English gardens which have strong literary connections either by being owned or maintained by famous authors, or whom were famous in other fields but who wrote as a sideline.

For the purposes of your group, you will be interested to know that half of the gardens featured are currently in the care of the National Trust.

Peter Mathers initially caught the public speaking “bug” through a stint working as a trainer whilst being employed by Barclays Bank Trust Company in the 1990’s, and in 2014 passed the Speakers Qualification of the National Association of Flower Arrangement Societies. Apart from a three month stint in Autumn 2012 when he was working in Milton Keynes, he was born, lived and worked in Yorkshire all his life. Currently working in the railway industry, his background prior to that is personal finance and pension planning. Outside interests include travel (sadly curtailed at the moment), art, architecture and design, and theatre. This latter interest led to a small claim to fame in that whilst working behind the bar at a theatre in York he once served Kate O’Mara a tomato juice.

Review - “Poetry, Prose and Peonies” with Peter Mathers

This was a delightful talk, which took us on a journey around some of the most beautiful gardens in Britain with literary links. The journey started at Rydal Mount in the Lake District where William Wordsworth lived from 1813 to his death in 1850. Peter explained that this is a garden to visit in the spring, when there are primroses, hellebores and daffodils to be seen. Wordsworth bought the Rash field next to St Mary’s Church, Rydal and planned to build a house as he thought his landlady was about to withdraw the tenancy of Rydal Mount. His planned new house was never built and he continued to live at Rydal Mount but when his daughter Dora died in 1847 Wordsworth and his family planted hundreds of daffodils as a memorial to Dora. Known as “Dora’s Field” it is now owned by the National Trust.

Peter next showed us the gardens at Abbotsford, home to Sir Walter Scott, in the Scottish borders. This example of a Regency garden has three particular outdoor “rooms”. Firstly there is the South Court designed as the entrance which contains wonderful rose beds. There is the sunken garden, known in Scott’s day as the East Court but now as the Morris garden. In June there are splendid peonies in bloom here. From here the Walled Garden is reached through a stone archway. This was Scott’s kitchen garden and is in use today to produce food for the restaurant. Here there are apple trees, herbs, vegetables and flowering plants.

Nearer to York we were shown wonderful images of Peter’s visit to Shandy Hall, the home of Laurence Sterne, Vicar of Coxwold, and author of Tristram Shandy. Here there is honeysuckle growing up the house and many Cottage garden perennials as well as white roses, poppies and peonies. Peter had an interesting experience with the bullocks in the adjacent field as he stood on the lawn overlooking the Howardian Hills, who when he moved closer were very inquisitive.

Back in York we explored the garden at Middlethorpe Hall and Spa, the York hotel owned by the National Trust. The house, built in 1699 in the William and Mary style, has a walled white garden, rose garden, meadow and lake. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu lived here from 1712 to 1715; diarist and medical pioneer, there are specimen trees still here from her time, including a Cedar al Lebanon.

Travelling south we next visited Stratford upon Avon where William Shakespeare bought “New Place”, then the largest house in the town, in 1597. This was a medieval house built of brick and timber with a courtyard and two hearths. In 1759 it was destroyed by its owner as he was fed up with people knocking on the door. Behind the site of the house there is the Great Garden where there are sculptures based on his plays and the Tudor Knot Garden designed with flowers he would have known and which appear in the plays.

Then we visited Kent on the borders of East Sussex to look at Chartwell (NT) home of Sir Winston Churchill. This Arts and Crafts style house is set in sloping gardens on the South Downs. Churchill used to relax by brick laying and visitors can see the wall he built between 1925-1932. Lady Churchill’s Rose Garden includes the “Churchill Rose” “Rosa Masquerade” which changes from yellow to deep raspberry red.

The next house and garden was “Smallhythe Place” (NT), home of the actress Ellen Terry. As well as the Tudor Barn Theatre there is a Rose garden, Orchard, a Nuttery, ponds and a cottage garden. We then reached Rye on the river Rother where recent excavations have shown it was originally a port. “Lamb House” (NT), a Georgian house in Rye has been home to several writers. One of Peter Mathers’ favourite writers lived here; E.F. Benson, who wrote the Mapp and Lucia books set here. There is a kitchen garden, a peaceful walled garden and a mulberry tree.

We finished at the beautiful garden at Sissinghurst where there are so many highlights. One of which is the White garden with white irises, white pompom dahlias and the white Japanese anemones loved by both Harold Nicholson and Vita Sackville West who created the garden rooms here. As Vita wrote:

“The man who has planted a garden feels that he has done something for the good of the world”

Catherine Brophy

Wednesday 17th March 2021 at 7:30pm on Zoom

Wentworth Castle and Wentworth Woodhouse:

Georgian rivals united through 21st-century restoration and public access.

Speaker: Dr Patrick Eyres, Editor of the New Arcadian Journal

The family rivalry was both dynastic and political. Until the mid-1740s, the Wentworth Castle dynasty was superior in aristocratic rank and cultural display. It was once the Hanoverian monarchy was securely embedded, that the Whigs at Wentworth Woodhouse began to eclipse their Tory cousins in social status and estate embellishment. We are fortunate that the rivals are being united by the endeavours of charitable trusts to conserve as a public amenity this magnificent legacy of competitive country house building and landscape gardening.

Dr Patrick Eyres is editor of the unique, artist-illustrated New Arcadian Journal , which engages with the cultural politics of designed landscapes. He has published extensively on the Georgian landscapes of the rival Yorkshire Wentworths. He was on the board of the Wentworth Castle Heritage Trust, which was responsible for the restoration of the buildings, gardens and parkland.

Presentation held jointly for YPS (Yorkshire Philosophical Society) and YANT members.

Review - Wentworth Castle and Wentworth Woodhouse: Georgian rivals united through 21st-century restoration and public access.

Dr Patrick Eyres took us on a journey through the rivalry of the two strands of the Strafford/Rockingham family via the landscapes of Wentworth Woodhouse and Wentworth Castle. He showed how this rivalry was, and is, embedded in the monuments strategically placed around the estates, from the Queen Anne Obelisk of 1734 with its unique Jacobite inscription and paean to Strafford, who had been paid by the French government for his Jacobite support, to Keppel’s Column, commissioned in 1773, with its overt criticism of George III and his pursuit of the War of American Independence.

The rivalry began when Thomas Wentworth, of the second creation, was disinherited by his cousin; only to have his fortunes revived and eventually acquiring the title of Earl of Strafford. Thomas headed up the Tory faction of the family, a position he consolidated by his work on the 1713 Treaty of Utrecht and with it the opportunity for greater profiteering through the transatlantic slave trade, echoes of which can still be seen in the Castle gardens. It was Thomas who bought and developed his own house and estate little more than six miles from Wentworth Woodhouse and which he named Wentworth Castle, strategically overlooking his cousin’s estate.

Initially it was the Tories clustered around Queen Anne who gained the ascendance over their Whig cousins and it is notable that this was still the case when the obelisk was erected some twenty years after the Queen’s death. The Strafford branch fought hard to maintain their position and it was intriguing to learn how they used pamphlets profiling their extensive estates to publicise their status and titles and were at time economical with the truth. It was not long, however, before the Whig faction followed suit producing equally ambitious pamphlets so that by the death in 1782 of the second Lord Rockingham, (Charles Watson-Wentworth) of Wentworth Woodhouse, the Whigs had eclipsed the Tories of Wentworth Castle. Their ultimate triumph is probably best exemplified by the stately Rockingham Monument; designed by John Carr in 1790, with statues to Rockingham and his Whig associates, including Edmund Burke, Admiral Viscount Keppel and Charles James Fox.

Dr Eyres vividly illustrated how the estates have been restored through the auspices of the Wentworth Woodhouse Preservation Trust, the Fitzwilliam Wentworth Amenity Trust, the Wentworth Castle Heritage Trust and the National Trust, to showcase their earlier splendour - for example as in the Camellia House - and rediscover vistas across which the dynastic and political rivalry of the two family factions can now clearly be seen side by side in their many monuments, an enduring memorial to family infighting finally reconciled.

Dr Dorothy Nott

Wednesday 20th January,2021 on Zoom

“Stitches in Time” with Glennis Whyte

An illustrated presentation on hand woven and sewn work in historic houses Including carpets, embroidery, tapestry and other needlework.

Sit back and enjoy this talk from the comfort of your armchair or sofa

A Zoom invitation will be sent to all YANT members who have given us an email and we will send further details of how to use Zoom. Details if you would like them from the Chair, who is happy to talk through using Zoom.

We do plan to host the usual Saturday afternoon talks when we can get together in person. N.B. no need to pre-book the Zoom event.

Roger King, Talks Organiser