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Sir Cecil Beaton died in his sleep on 18 January 1980. I was 16 and absolutely distraught. I had made it my mission to meet him, but alas this was not to be. Some months later, however, Christie’s announced that it was selling the contents of his last home, the enchanting Queen Anne doll’s house known as Reddish House in the village of Broadchalke, Wiltshire. Over two days in June, the auctioneers would set up a giant marquee on the lawn; the house would look as though he’d just left it, full of flowers arranged as though by the gardener with whom he had created so much of it, the inspired Jack Smallpiece. I would pay homage to him there, then.
It was my first solo voyage – travelling alone without a parent or friends, that is – which made it a thrilling trip. I journeyed by train from London to Salisbury, armed with some pocket money that my dad had given me, and had booked a hotel by the fast-moving River Avon. It had authentic- looking beams, smelled of damp and came equipped with a Corby trouser press, an arrangement of PG Tips tea bags and a miniature pot of jam. I thought it was all wildly grown-up. Examining the local bus routes, I then found out the best way to reach Broadchalke. It took hours to get to the village, but it was, for me, like entering a dream: Beaton’s house was completely magical. The building’s magisterial façade belied its modest size, with steps leading rather grandly up to a door- way crowned with an ancient bust (too grand to look at you), twin Corinthian pilasters on either side piercing the frontage and, above it all, an oeil-de-boeuf window. A little road ran just in front of it and, past that, Beaton had created a water garden with the River Ebble beyond.
The gardens were as ‘prolific in ideas as the house itself ’, as House & Garden noted in 1962 – and next month a new show at the Garden Museum takes one on an adventure to discover Beaton’s world via all things horticultural. Here at Reddish, Papaver rhoeas grew in a yew-hedged little garden, while roses ‘Félicité et Perpétue’, ‘Queen of Denmark’ and the blowsy white ‘Madame Hardy’, among others, bloomed over the rear, south-facing aspect of the house, tumbling over the formal balustrades Beaton had added. Clematis ‘Nelly Moser’ and ‘Lasurstern’ clambered over the door and walls, alongside yet more Rosa family members, this time ‘Golden Showers’ and ‘Albertine’. Basket-style pots, moved to suit the owner’s tastes, were filled with carnations, snap- dragons, Nicotiana or geraniums. Inside, it was almost as though he’d just stepped out to pluck something from the garden. The only sign that something was amiss were the catalogue numbers that were (discreetly) attached to every bewitching thing.
Beaton moved to Reddish in 1947. At the time he was still ruing his former house, Ashcombe, not far away. For 15 years he had created a magical hideaway there for all the bright young things, until a certain Mr RW Borley, who’d leased it to him for a peppercorn rent, abruptly took it back, completely restored by Beaton. As a result, Ashcombe was ‘a house I shall never cease to regret’. I finally got to discover this entrancing place for myself when Madonna was the châtelaine, and I was dispatched to write about her for Vogue. It was little changed from the 1930s, with its Rex Whistler door and window frames still intact. There was even a Giacometti plaster lamp hanging in the separate and commodious drawing room, although a vast kitchen extension had been added to the main house and a silky white carpet introduced upstairs. It was something to sigh over. But then, two years after it had been torn from him, Beaton discovered Reddish. ‘I am the proud owner of an exquisite country seat,’ he wrote in 1947. ‘It is the beginning of a new interest, and I am thrilled at the prospect’.
‘Cecil Beaton’s Garden Party’ runs at the Garden Museum from 14 May – 21 Sept. For more information, visit gardenmuseum.org.uk
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