| Date | 6 December 2013 |
|---|---|
| Source | Slough Observer |
| Reference | VP-0058 |
| Volume | Views of the Past |
| Collection | Views of the Past |
Transcript
House destroyed by blaze
AS one ventures up Berry Hill towards Taplow, one passes a driveway leading to a house known as Berry Hill now a rather desirable block of modern flats.
This was once the site of an earlier house known as Berry Hill House. The Lower lodge to this original house still exists on the corner of the Bath Road and Berry Hill.
It was once the residence of Earl of Kilmorey and was partly designed by Sir John Soane.
Around 1859, John Noble, a leading varnish manufacturer commissioned Robert Marnock, a famous Scottish garden designer, to ‘beautify’ his garden at Berry Hill at Taplow. Marnock invited James Pulham Junior to help with the construction.
Pulham was famous for creating artificial rocks from heaps of old bricks and rubble covered in cement and transforming them into pieces of what could appear at first glance to be natural stone.
This artificial stone was later to known as Pulhamite.
The work at Berry Hill commenced in 1859 and finished in 1862 and consisted of creating waterfalls, a ford across a lake, cliffs and a cave to hide the view of the local gasworks and also included a rock-built boathouse.
The gardens also had specimen trees such as pines, magnolias and conifers planted around rockeries, some of which were 12 or 13 feet high, planted with ferns.
There were also sunken ferneries within the grounds.
Berry Hill House passed through a number of owners from the 1870s to the late 1940s when it was converted into a hotel and country club.
The house was sadly gutted in a serious fire during the 1970s.
A few years later a new block of flats was erected on its site. Over the years the remains of Marnock and Pulham’s work has become somewhat obscured in the overgrowth. Some of this rock work does remain and is described in the 1994 Buckinghamshire volume, of the Buildings of England series, by Sir Nikolaus Pevsner: ‘Its waterfalls, 20ft high jet d’eau and small shrubs and rock plants have, alas, gone, but the artificial cliff – built to screen the view of the gasworks – and cave are still there.’
A further example of Pulham’s work can be found in the great rockery in Grenfell Park, in central Maidenhead.
This is sadly, once again in an overgrown state.
STUNNING LOCATION: Below, Berry Hill House and its lake circa 1948. Left, the remains of an overgrown Pulham Stone entrance to a sunken fernery.
Images
