Bedgebury

Having first advertised a renewed interest in the Pinetum at Bedgebury at reference 1, back in November last year, we have finally made it made it back there. Having, some years ago now, made it to the adventure playground which has been set up to the south of the Pinetum proper. Mountain bikes, swinging on ropes and all that sort of thing.

For us, M25 anticlockwise, followed by heading southeast down the A21. Taking in what looked like a garden bridge on the way, but not thinking to have noted the location cannot now track it down. We thought it perhaps a facility to enable badgers and hedgehogs to cross from one part of a nature reserve to another, otherwise separated by a dual carriageway road. Something to be checked out on our next visit.

Then just before we turned in the Pinetum, we noticed a serious chain link fence, topped by angled barbed wire, running along the other side of the road. Was it some defence facility which had been blotted out of our map? Answer no. A trusty explained that actually it was a large free range chicken farm operated by Fridays. People that, according to Bing, prompt lots of coverage in Kent media - stuff like 'Opposition forming to Fridays' 192,000 chicken farm proposal for Chainhurst' - but which it took Google to actually turn up at reference 4. A serious egg operation which is diversifying into other stuff for caterers. Maybe the big fence also happens to keep animal rights types out, along with the foxes the fence was given planning permission for.

On into the car park where we were charged £14 for the day. Charging which appeared to work by reading our car's registration plate on exit. So it was lucky that on this occasion I actually remembered what it said on our plate, something for which I usually have to rely on BH, absent at the crucial moment. Plenty of people about, a lot of them in full Lycra and crash hat regalia - but fortunately for us they were mainly headed for the adventure playground side of things.

Quick refreshment in the large visitor and then on into the Pinetum, starting with Redwood Avenue. Home to a lot of coastal redwoods - some of them snapped above - and a lot of rather smaller Wellingtonia, possibly planted in the wake of the storm of 1987.

Picnic lunch on a bench in the sun, between the road that forms the boundary between Bedgebury Park and Bedgebury Pinetum and the small lake to the south. Fed a few ducks which came to visit with some thinly sliced carrot, which they seemed to gobble up quite happily, before paddling off to a more promising looking group of picnic'ers on the other side of the lake.

From there onto the giant double hedge of leylandii, snapped above, with the lake down and away to the left. A proper hedge. Another snap to be found at reference 1 and yet another under Wellingtonia 65. On the way I was rather impressed by the way the foresters had managed a nice mix of natural and formal, garden and wild. All of which seemed very relaxed compared to Wisley, although at something less than a square kilometre very much of a size.

Inside, I decided that I had been there before, or somewhere very like.

More of the same. Shoulder of BH sneaking in left.

A young Wellingtonia, not scored. And not very straight if this telephone is to be believed.

Apparently something to do with Gruffaloes. Less irritating than what passes for outdoor art at Wisley and Hampton Court.

Plenty of other stuff of interest, including, for example, a clump of araucaria and the interesting foliage of the Spanish Fir snapped above. See also reference 5.

And a clump of '63' registration plates in the car park on exit. The brain must process such matters in two stages as I got a lift from it thinking I had finally come across a No.36, before stage two kicked in and worked out that the two digits were in the wrong order. See, for example, reference 6.

On exit, headed north, rather than straight back to the main road, which gave us a view of Bedgebury Park, with a substantial spire erected on top of some outbuilding, out back. Presumably onetime owners of the park had been responsible for getting the Pinetum going, before it became a National Treasure in 1925 or so.

As luck would have it, Epsom Library had copies of the two Kent Pevsner's in a back room and I was able to look up Bedgebury Park, nearly all of which is snapped above. We learn that the spire is something to do with the stables, not the crowning glory of some private chapel. Considering that the place is a bit of a hotch-potch, Pevsner is very polite by his exacting standards, often inclined to be unpleasantly rude about buildings he does not like.

It also seems that the Beresford Hopes did a lot of work on the nearby church of Kilndown, something to be visited on the next occasion. While the younger BH was a noted ecclesiologist, who went on to help with the church in Margaret Street, recently discovered and noticed at reference 7. For ecclesiologists see reference 8. Seemingly mixed up with the Cambridge Camden Society, whose books I have often come across - and never looked at - second hand.

A snap from an early number of the house magazine, digitised from Harvard Library by Google. The curious may be pleased to know that a flying pue is just that, a flying pew, otherwise a first floor gallery providing seating, away from servants and smelly working folk. From all of which I learn that pews were a very hot topic in the middle of the nineteenth century. See, for example, reference 9, the work of one John Mason Neale, Warden of Sackville College. This last being an almshouse in Sussex, not a college on the fringes of Oxbridge at all, as I had at first thought. That is to say a proper warden, à la Barchester Trollope. I don't suppose these people would approve at all of the sort of thing noticed at references 10.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2021/11/a-mullin.html.

Reference 2: https://www.forestryengland.uk/bedgebury.

Reference 3: https://bedgebury.arboretumexplorer.org/taxon-3099.aspx. A handy feature to search the pinetum for particular sorts of trees. From which I learn that we only managed to take in a modest fraction of the Wellingtonia on offer - some of which have already been noticed under the search key given below.

Reference 4: http://www.fridays.co.uk/.

Reference 5: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abies_pinsapo.

Reference 6: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2021/12/fake-138.html.

Reference 7: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2021/10/a-new-church.html.

Reference 8: http://ecclsoc.org/resources/publications/. A site which sometimes fails to fire up.

Reference 9: http://anglicanhistory.org/neale/pues.html.

Reference 10a: http://psmv2.blogspot.com/2015/09/project-proust-1.html.

Reference 10b: https://psmv3.blogspot.com/2016/04/pew.html.

Reference 11: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telegram_(software). A social media product which I came across in the margins of this post which is responsible for a lot that is bad as well as providing a widely used social media service. Run by a couple of Russians who wanted to get out from under Putin, who went on to build this curiously organised product, perhaps driven by a desire to be out of reach of governments which might want to exercise some control.

Group search key: bbe.