A visit to the Cathedral Church of St Michael in Coventry.... by Adèle Geras

Back in early April,  Celia Rees, of this parish, Linda Newbery and I met in Coventry with the express purpose of visiting the Cathedral of St Michael.  We felt  quite triumphant when we got together because we'd been trying to arrange this outing since before the Pandemic.  Something always came up....and we felt at times as though we'd never make it, but at last we succeeded. 

 

I took the photograph below at a station, as I was on my way. I'm afraid I can no longer remember whether it's Nuneaton Station or Coventry and Google won't help me. Whatever....it was on the way to meet Linda and Celia that I saw it and it lifted my spirits in  a way that I felt boded well for the whole day. 

 After meeting up and a bit of mild rejoicing that here we were at last,  we walked along to the Cathedral. Celia, who knows Coventry well and has visited often, led the way and I was delighted to see the sky with its dramatic clouds, reflected on a the walls of a rather impressive modern building.

And of course, Coventry wouldn't be Coventry  without Lady Godiva.

But we were here to visit the Cathedral. I've known about it since childhood and can't understand why it's taken me 60 years to get to see it. I can remember when it was consecrated in 1962. I was still at Roedean School, and we knew all about it. Our Art teachers had kept us up to date as it was being constructed. Its progress mirrored my school life and there were frequent photographs in the press between 1956 and 1962. I was at school from 1955-1962.

The photograph above and the next three photographs that follow  show the ruins of what was left of the Cathedral after it was bombed in November, 1940.  The decision taken to leave the ruins as they were and raise a new Cathedral alongside them was an inspired one. What it means is: anyone who approaches the present day Cathedral, designed by Sir Basil Spence, has to walk through the past....it's a sobering experience and one that ensures that the events of 1940 can never be forgotten. 

But the emphasis everywhere here is on Forgiveness. There are many, many references to it  all over the Cathedral.  All the art is uplifting. Nothing is grim, nothing is forbidding.  Anyone who has visited this place will notice that I didn't photograph the Graham Sutherland tapestry and there's a reason for that. Ever since I first saw a reproduction of it as a schoolchild, I'm afraid I have not liked it at all. I apologise for this....I had hoped that when I saw it in real life, I might change my mind, but alas, I didn't. Readers who would like to see it can find it on Google easily. 

What I loved best in the Cathedral was the West Screen: a wall of glass etched with flying angels. It's known as the Screen of Saints and Angels. This is the work of John Hutton and it's completely beautiful. It truly does give the impression that angels are trapped in the glass. The three photos below give some impression but  you have to see the real thing to get the full effect.

The other highlight of the visit for me was seeing the  Baptistry Window. This photo doesn't do it justice. You need the light. Even postcards of the Window can't convey how beautiful it is. It was designed by John Piper and made by Patrick Reyntiens and there are 195 panes of glass in colours ranging from white to the deepest possible reds and blues. 

But the message of the Cathedral  is reconciliation. Below is the Charred Cross. It's made from two of the medieval roof beams, found in the rubble of the Cathedral when it was bombed.  A Cathedral groundsman called Jock Forbes set up this sign of Christ's suffering instinctively. The beams were bound together and placed first in the Sanctuary of the Ruins. In 1978, it was brought to its present site, inside the Cathedral. The beams were first held in place with medieval roof nails. The original Cross of Nails has become a symbol for peace and reconciliation, recognised all over the world. 

While we were having lunch, we realised that we hadn't been to see the statue of St Michael's victory over the Devil, by Jacob Epstein. This has become the best - known artwork associated with the Cathedral. To me, it says: even with forgiveness, and even with reconciliation, we must also acknowledge the work of the Devil and strive to overcome it. We didn't have the energy to go back so we will  have to visit again. I'm very happy to start planning a second trip.  And I was pleased that I'd found  a St Michael fridge magnet in the gift shop. 

A LOVESOME THING.......by Adèle Geras

Part One

The other day, I visited the Cambridge University Botanic Garden with two old friends from my schooldays. Since coming to live in Cambridge in 2010, I've visited often but not often enough. Every time I go there, I promise myself to be there for longer. To look more carefully at all that's growing there; to examine the marvellous specimens in the glasshouses.  But the truth of the matter is, I generally go there for  lunch or tea with friends, and we end up strolling through the wonderful forty acre site. Situated right in the middle of Cambridge and very close to the station and to many bus routes, it's a real oasis. You go in and immediately you are in a sort of paradise, an enclosed space which takes you into a landscape of trees and water and grass and, according to the time of year, different flowers and shrubs. 

The photographs here are my own. I could have taken hundreds more. The Botanic Garden was founded in 1826 by John  Henslow, who was Charles Darwin's mentor and teacher. It's now part of the University and there are many scientists involved in all kind of fascinating experiments in plant science and related fields. It's very user friendly, especially since the café opened a few years back. The food is excellent and it was the first place I noticed which provided a bookshelf full of picture books for its youngest customers. You can sit outside under umbrellas and be surrounded, in the case of  my last visit, by beds of beautiful irises.

  

For someone who loves gardens so much, I have a very lazy relationship with them. I'm happy to walk in them, write about them, photograph them, discuss them, enjoy them in every way. The one thing I'm not prepared to do is work in a garden. I do not like gardening, but I like the results of gardening. My own garden is much better now than it was nine years ago when I moved into my house, and that's not thanks to me but to the local firm which has been looking after it, Atlas Gardens. I'm very grateful to them.

Part Two.

 I visited the RHS Chelsea Flower show with Linda Newbery (a very good hands-on gardener who knows everything about plants of every kind) and Celia Rees, whose garden I haven't seen but who also strikes me as very knowledgeable. I've never been before and by the end of the day I'd walked over 8 kilometres: something I've never done before. It was a day so full of sensations and sights that I'm going to struggle to describe it here. Maybe many of you have visited and know all I'm going to say, but for those who haven't, here are my impressions.

A bit of history first. I had no idea that the RHS was founded by John Wedgwood, son of Josiah Wedgwood in 1804 and that the inaugural meeting of the seven men who were the first members of the new Society took place at Hatchard's bookshop in Piccadilly. The Wedgwood Garden was most beautiful, and had a pavilion next to it full of equally lovely china and delicious-looking teas, like Strawberry and Cucumber.

I was delighted to see that there was a real emphasis throughout on Education. The RHS are very good at spreading the word, through their gardens, the number of shows all over the country that they put on and the way they encourage everyone to live in a greener, more sustainable fashion.

We didn't get to see the D-Day 75 Garden close up. All the tickets for the day we were there had been sold. But its presence at Chelsea is an education in itself. The Chelsea Pensioners paraded while we were there, and there were thousands who saw them and talked about them with their friends and the history passes on...

Below is one of my favourites: an African garden that emphasised the importance of educating girls. The motto Education Changes Everything chalked up on the blackboard is a good one and one that applies everywhere in the world.

The Welcome to Yorkshire Garden won the People's Choice prize and I voted for it. What struck me about Chelsea (and I had to keep asking Linda about it!) was the fact that every one of these small gardens had been created from absolute scratch and that in a matter of weeks an empty wasteland is transformed every year into a gathering of most beautifully-designed gardens. This one had lock gates and water and a cottage and you could have sworn it had been there for hundred of years.

The Japanese garden was my absolute favourite, I think, but I wouldn't have the courage to shower in that building on the left! You can't see it from the photo but it is a shower room...maybe the glass becomes opaque in some magical way when you turn on the taps.

Thematically, wildness was the thing. All the gardens were unkempt and I was delighted to see this and feel much less guilty about my lawn now. I was particularly impressed with this flight of very unkempt steps.

Here is the notice that greets you at the entrance to the Artisan Gardens. It's made of strands of wool and is full of beautiful colours. 

Here are some foxgloves, for no better reason than that they're beautiful. And the bees were having a wonderful time crawling into them.

The Main Pavilion was astonishing. A huge area in the marquee filled with every kind of flower and plant and lots of wonderful vegetables too, some of which seemed surreal in their cleanness and hugeness, like illustrations from a children's book. 

There were notices all over the show and this was my favourite and I am putting it here because I love the way it's expressed. That last line has the force of poetry. Also, it's true.

Sibylle Kreutzberger - a life in gardening, by Linda Newbery (guest)

Mention Sissinghurst to anyone remotely interested in gardening and the name Vita Sackville-West will come to mind. Visitors admiring the White Garden, the Nuttery, the Lime Walk and other famous Sissinghurst features may not realise, though, how much this world-renowned garden owes to two other significant plantswomen, Sibylle Kreutzberger and Pamela Schwerdt, joint head gardeners there from 1959 to 1990.

The pair became friends while training at Waterperry Horticultural School in Oxfordshire towards the end of the war, under the tutorship of another notable woman gardener, Beatrix Havergal, who was principal there. Having done some gardening work at her boarding school, Sibylle had been thinking of enrolling for a horticultural diploma at Studley when a family friend enthused about Miss Havergal. Waterperry was not at that time open to the public, but Beatrix Havergal occasionally gave demonstrations on topics such as pruning and how to make the best of a kitchen garden. For Sibylle, one of the attractions was that the clothes list for the course included two pairs of gumboots and a mackintosh - not a cap and gown, as at Studley: “It sounded like my kind of place.”

Beatrix Havergal at Waterperry, photographed by Cecil Beaton

In the late forties, with rationing still in force, growing fruit and vegetables at home was still important and the emphasis at Waterperry was on practicalities and produce, students there learning mainly through experience. Fruit and vegetables, as well as feeding the residents, were sold weekly at Oxford’s Covered Market. Fruit bushes and trees were sold in their thousands, packaged in straw and sent by road and rail. After completing her diploma, Sibylle stayed on, by request, for another eighteen months in the small scale vegetable department. After briefly working at Reading University in the Agricultural Botany department and then at an alpine nursery, she returned to Waterperry to do some lecturing to students and to run the Herbaceous Nursery.

By 1959, she and Pamela Schwerdt, who had stayed on as teacher during Sibylle's absence, were planning a project together. Feeling that life at Waterperry was “like being at school forever”, they aimed to establish their own nursery, but with no money or land their first challenge was to find a suitable and affordable site. They placed an advertisement in The Times personal column, asking if anyone might lease or lend them a plot of two acres or so. At the same time Pam wrote to Vita Sackville-West, who was at that time the Observer’s gardening correspondent. Vita replied suggesting that they try Wye College, in Kent, also mentioning that she needed a head gardener for Sissinghurst. Pam said firmly that there were two of them, and Vita invited them to visit.

Vita Sackville-West, painted in 1918 by William Strang

As it wasn’t what they were looking for, Pam and Sibylle didn’t immediately jump at the chance; in fact Sibylle says now that she wasn’t sure who was interviewing who. But replies to their Times advertisement hadn’t produced any suitable offers, and they decided to accept. Vita, Sibylle says, was ‘rather tickled’ by the idea of employing two young women at a time when female gardeners were rare. Sibylle recalls that in those early days visitors would stare at them in astonishment.

They lived on site in a cottage opposite the oasthouses and worked immensely long hours, returning to the garden or to paperwork after their evening meal. The garden was labour-intensive, on heavy Wealden clay where all the digging and cultivation was done by hand; there were no machines other than mowers. Later, these were supplemented by a small tractor, electric sprayers and hedge-cutters. The appointment of Pam and Sibylle brought the number of gardeners up to six; as time went by these were generally college-trained, and among those beginning their careers at Sissinghurst were several who went on to become head gardeners at National Trust properties.

Sibylle at work

Pam and Sibylle rarely took days off, their weekends being taken up with glasshouse duties and displaying plants for sale outside the gate. For this they used a yellow cart painted with pictures of Sissinghurst, formerly pulled by the resident donkey, Abdul. Fish boxes, painted yellow to match the cart, were used as staging for a pyramid of plants arranged to tempt visitors.

At the time they took up their employment, Vita Sackville-West (known to Sibylle and Pam as Lady Nicholson) was 67, and in variable health. She was often in the tower room she used for writing: “even the family weren’t allowed in there.” Thursdays would be “Observer day”, when she would shut herself away to write her gardening column. It’s rather unfair, Sibylle considers, that Vita generally receives sole credit for Sissinghurst. In the early days her husband Harold was fully involved with the planning; though at home only at weekends he attended RHS shows in London, bought plants and contributed ideas. He and Vita wrote letters to each other every day to discuss progress and planting.

The garden had already been open to the public for twenty years, but in a low-key way – from dawn to dusk, visitors could put their shilling in an honesty box. Vita’s style of gardening was romantic and blowsy but not aimed at providing interest throughout the season, and like many gardens Sissinghurst’s main period of flowering was in late spring and early summer, with not much of interest after July. Among the changes made by Pam and Sibylle was the extension of interest well into late summer and autumn, through the use of later-flowering perennials not hardy in this country but treated here as annuals and biennials: diascias, argyranthemum, penstemons and tender salvias. Besides that, the ever-increasing numbers of visitors – especially after Vita’s death and the taking over of the garden by National Trust – imposed its own pressures. Paths were subject to heavy wear and lawns damaged by tramping feet. Measures taken included the placing of prickly plants at the junctions of paths, to deter visitors from cutting corners and walking on the beds.

But Sibylle and Pam were doing far more than simply maintaining the work done by Vita. Their dedication, flair and skill were rewarded by the Royal Horticultural Society in 1980 when they were made Associates of Honour, and in 2006 they were given the society's highest honour, the Victoria Medal. “I can’t think what we did to deserve it,” Sibylle says now. Others disagree. The designer, plantsman and writer Dan Pearson is among those who give them a large part of the credit for Sissinghurst’s enduring status as an iconic garden:

“When the National Trust took over in 1967, five years after Vita’s death, an inevitable tightening up eventually saw the garden reach extraordinary horticultural heights in the hands of Pam Schwerdt and Sibylle Kreutzberger who worked with Vita from 1959 until she died, but went on to make the garden their own during their 30 year tenure as joint head gardeners. Pam and Sibylle’s prowess with plants was a large part of what brought visitors to Sissinghurst in their droves in the 1970’s and ’80’s, securing its place as one of the most influential gardens in the world.” (Dig Delve, Dan Pearson’s weekly blog.)

Sibylle (left) and Pam in their own Gloucestershire garden

In 1990 Pam and Sibylle left Sissinghurst to buy a home and make a garden of their own, settling near Stow-on-the-Wold in a new wing of a 17th century farmhouse with a three-quarter acre plot that had been a field. Pam died in 2009, and the house and garden were sold to appreciative new owners who welcome visitors under the National Gardens Scheme. Still fit and active at 87, Sibylle now lives in an Oxfordshire retirement village where most of the residents are unaware of her achievements and the high regard in which she’s held in the gardening world. They may, however, see her wielding a spade and fork in the community plot where she grows flowers and herbs.

The current head gardener at Sissinghurst, Troy Scott-Smith, has embarked with the National Trust – and Dan Pearson as consultant - on a project to revitalize (or reVita-lise) the garden from its present formality to something more like Vita’s vision. It is, Dan Pearson writes, “a means of recapturing the potent sense of place that Vita Sackville-West celebrated in her writing … a garden inextricably linked to the buildings it surrounded and, in turn, the Kentish farmland and countryside that swept up to its walls.” Sibylle was invited to an initial meeting, and as she’s the only person to have worked directly with Vita Sackville-West her contribution must have been invaluable. 

When I asked Sibylle what had been most satisfying about her work at Sissinghurst, I expected her to refer to a particularly impressive planting or the opportunity to make her mark on a world-famous garden. Her reply was far simpler:

“I like being outside by myself. And I like digging.”

Linda Newbery is the author of  Set in Stone, The Shell House, Lob and many other titles. The Key to Flambards will be published in October.

Ravilious & Co. The Pattern of Friendship: English Artist Designers 1922 - 1942 - Celia Rees

Eric Ravilious - The Greenhouse:Cyclemen and Tomatoes

This beautifully curated exhibition at Compton Verney Museum and Art Gallery chronicles the collaborations and significant relationships, personal and professional, between Eric Ravilious (1903 – 1942) and various other artist-designers: friends, mentors, wives, lovers. The group included Paul Nash, John Nash, Enid Marx, Barnett Freedman, Eileen ‘Tirzah’ Garwood, Thomas Hennell, Douglas Percy Bliss, Peggy Angus, Helen Binyon, Diana Low and Edward Bawden. Many of them were at the Royal College of Art in the 1920s, a group of exceptional students that Paul Nash termed 'an outbreak of talent'. It's good to see the work of so many women artists exhibited here and given equal space to their male compatriots.The exhibition brings together nearly 500 works (many rarely shown). The paintings, prints, drawings, engravings, books, ceramics, wallpapers, and textiles highlight significant moments in the artists’ lives and work and also demonstrate the deep influence this group of artists had on British Art and their profound impact on Art and Design in the 1930s and 1940s and beyond. A previous exhibition at Compton Verney Britain in the Fifties - Design and Aspiration served to demonstrate just how pervasive their influence was. 

Enid Marx moquette design for London Underground

Eric Ravilious - Wedgwood Pottery Mug

Ravilious and his friends, with their teacher and mentor John Nash, believed that an artist could turn his or her hand to anything and their mission was to bring Art out of the Fine Art Gallery and into the lives of ordinary people through applied design. Quite apart from this lofty ambition, an artist had to earn a living. It made sense, therefore, to seek design work from various sources. The group were very successful. Their patterning, pastel colours and precision of line, their distinctive style of wood and copper engraving and lithography evoke a particular time so exactly that it has become that time. For us, it is the essence of nostalgia but in the 1930s and 40s, it was cutting edge modern. Their influence extended well into the 1950s and 1960s. Through applied design, their work became all pervasive, even ubiquitous. It could be seen at railway and tube stations, on advertising  hoardings and film posters, the walls of people's homes, the fabrics they wore, the furniture they sat on, the plates they ate from, the magazines and books that they read as they travelled, even the seating of their underground train. 

Eric Ravilious - Child's Handkerchief

Wisden - Eric Ravilous 

Eric Ravilious - The Windstorm 1931

Enid Marx - paper design

Everyman Books - Ravilious cover design

Edward Bawden - book cover

Their work is particularly powerfully present in book design. The Bookshop installation in the exhibition demonstrates the wide and far reaching influence these artists had on book production. Their hand can be seen everywhere: in covers and cover design, bookplates, endpapers, lettering, bordering and illustrations. Instantly recognisable, even if we cannot name the artist, and fiercely nostalgic. As my writer friend and companion Linda Newbery pointed out, we grew up with them. Art work so timeless and unequalled that it is still being used today.  

Edward Bawden - Film Poster

It is impossible to do justice to such a wide-ranging and comprehensive exhibition here. These artists concerned themselves with far more than art and design. They were committed to enhancing the lives of ordinary working people, bringing beauty and culture to them, rather than confining it to an art gallery. Many of the artists contributed original lithographs to the School Prints, a scheme designed to bring art into every classroom in the country and a whole section of the exhibition is devoted to the Morley Murals created by Eric Ravilious and Edward Bawden to adorn the walls of the canteen of Waterloo's Morley College for Working Men and Women. Sadly, their work was lost during the war. A grainy, black and white film and their sketches and drawings show us what a loss that was. 

The emphasis is not just on design, there are plenty of paintings on display. Principally those of Ravilious and Bawden, perhaps the best known of the group, but also their friends and associates. The paintings of Eric Ravilious are distinctive and hugely evocative. One can almost smell the tomatoes in The Greenhouse:Cyclemen and Tomatoes, the painting on the poster for the exhibition. Through his unique painting style, his use of pattern, texture, his palette of muted greens, greys and browns he made the landscape of Sussex, 'his own country', as particular and individual as Suerat's Paris or Van Gogh's Provence. To us, his paintings seem nostalgic, pastoral records of a lost rural past. But this is deceptive. This is no rural idyll. A Steam train puffs through the timeless landscape of the Downs. The same view is seen from the interior of a railway carriage, perhaps in the same train that is steaming past. 

Eric Ravilious - Westbury Horse 

Eric Ravilious - Train Landscape

A roller stands in the foreground of the cold, stark beauty of a winter landscape. A reminder that an agricultural labourer would be working in that cold all day.

Eric Ravilious - Downs in Winter

 

Eric Ravilious Hurricane in Flight

Eric Ravilious - Drift Boat

The Second World War cut across all their lives. Like their mentors, the Nash brothers, Ravilious and Bawden became War Artists. The patchwork of the British countryside was now viewed from the inside of a plane. A south coast beach is covered in snarls of barbed wire, the sea cut off from the land by coastal defences. Eric Ravilious was assigned to the Admiralty. In 1940 he was posted to Norway and swapped his muted greens and browns for the blues, whites, greys and black of the Arctic seas.  

H.M.S. Glorious

In 1942, he requested a transfer to the RAF. On 28 August he flew to Iceland to join a base outside Reykjavik. The day he arrived a Hudson aircraft had failed to return from a patrol. The next morning, three planes were despatched to search for the missing plane. Ravilious opted to join one of the crews. His plane failed to return. The log book recording him as missing is on display here, his name poignantly mis-spelt.  Four days later he was declared lost in action. One of the brightest talents in British Art had disappeared into the sea.

Celia Rees

www.celiarees.com

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