Author Archives: Tom Turner

Robbie Williams and the Compton Bassett garden design

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Robbie Williams bought this garden, with the adjacent house, for £8.5m in 2009

Robbie Williams bought this garden, with the adjacent house, for £8.5m in 2009

As a solo artist Robbie Williams has  “sold more albums in the UK than any other British solo artist in history and has won more BRIT Awards than any other artist to date”. But I don’t think much of his taste in gardens or architecture. Compton Bassett once belonged to Lord Norman Foster of Thames Bank and was re-worked by the architect Michael Phillips, who specializes in chic hotels. Maybe the interior is comfortable, but what on earth could one use the walled garden for? The landform is amphitheatre-ish but it is designed sort-of-like a renaissance parterre, without the hedges and with wonky geometry. Then one wonders why there is a penguin pool in the bottom left corner and a rotunda overlooking the tennis court. Its a mad world and, as usual, I advise anyone who wants a good garden design to employ a good garden designer. You might ask them to knock-up a quick scheme for the house but I doubt if this will work out very well.

Gardens being made today, for the likes of  Robbie Williams, will be open to the public one day and I would like to offer two words of assistance to those garden historians who will doubtless try to classify the styles in which they were  designed: “Good Luck”.

Useful info for Robbie Williams:

Loampit Vale Redevelopment in Lewisham

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Its ugly and its un-London.

Its ugly and its un-London.


The UK Royal Town Planning Institute (RTPI) was launched in ill-omened year: 1914. But it was founded by idealists and played an honourable role, until another year of destiny: 1947. Effectively, it then split. One portion became an arm of government, forever beholden to the ugliness of local government in the UK. The other portion, which has grown in size, became an arm of the property development industry. The idealists left.

The above image of a ‘regeneration’ proposal in Lewisham, South London, shows the result. There is a lot of patter about sustainability etc but the design is 1930s Corbusian with a sprinkling of rancid green sauce. The developers get a fat profit; the local council gets more tax income; the people get an ugly and badly designed project: 98% of respondents to a consultation were against the proposal. If Steen Eiler Rasmussen, author of London the unique city, could give an opinion he would surely sign it ‘Disappointed, Disgusted and Revolted of Copenhagen’. He believed London unique among world cities because such a high proportion of its residents have their own gardens and do NOT live in flats. Rasmussen also loved London’s parks and would be horrified the social uselessness of the proposed ground level space in Lewisham. The design is context-insensitive to a high degree. Poor old Lewisham. Poor old London. Poor old England.

UK organic farming and government

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Industrial factory farming and organic farming

Industrial factory farming and organic farming: which would rather consume? (left image courtesy farmsanctuary.org)

For reasons of unblinking short-sighted dumb stupidity, the UK government continues to support science-based agri-business  – and to do its best to kill off organic farming. The UK Food Standards Agency (FSA) commissioned a group of researchers to collate the research of other people who had  found that organic beef , for example, has few nutritional advantages over  inorganic beef. If they can’t tell the difference between the two approaches shown above, the fault lies with their researchers and their taste buds. Future government report is expected to prove that haute couture clothing has no medical advantages over bargain basement clothing and expensive perfumes do no more for your sex appeal than cheap perfumes. Then we will have reports to establish that the differences in flying time London to New York, business class and economy class on the same plane are ‘statistically insignificant’  and that Dyson vacuum cleaners are no better than Hoovers.

The  DEFRA blockheads should remember how their friends in government wrecked  the UK’s car producers: they poured in government money to support cheap, shoddy, rust-prone ‘volume’ car producers. In fact, the only hope for a country with expensive land and labour was to concentrate on low-volume high-quality cars. That is why the racing car end of the industry is the only remaining fragment of UK-owned car production. The best long-term policy for UK agriculture is to become a producer of high-quality organic produce with superb animal welfare standards and a glorious reputation. The UK is an island with a very beautiful agricultural landscape. We should become an organic-only food producer, banning all use of GM products. Still trying to ‘beat the world’ one suspects DEFRA of not having noticed that the UK is a group of islands which CAN remain GM-free and which COULD charge a substantial premium for higher quality products. If the UK could also be a low-cost producer, so much the better. But the emphasis should be producing the highest quality food: no factory farming, no GM crops, minimal pesticides, minimal antibiotics, minimal inorganic fertilizers.  Hilary Benn should be kept in a veal cage and fed with the cheapest burgers on the market until he repents and recants – or resigns.

Note Hilary Benn became Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs DEFRA in June 2007 and spoke in favour of what the UK press calls Frankenstein Foods (ie genetically modified GM foods) in August 2009. Never mind the science: look at the business opportunity!


Glastonbury Tor as a sacred landscape

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Glastonbury Tor Sacred Landscape

Glastonbury Tor Sacred Landscape

Glastonbury Tor is a sacred place, in the same region (the Somerset Levels) as the oldest engineered road in north Europe, the Sweet Track (tree-ring dating establishes the construction date at 3806 BCE). Physically, Glastonbury Tor resembles Silbury Hill. My  view (see evidence below) is that it has been a sacred site since Neolithic times. European Christianity grew in opposition to paganism, banning garden luxury and felling sacred trees, but was willing to take advantage of the sacred sites and to use them as sites for church building. We can therefore see some connection with the animism of Central Asia and the custom of building temples on hills and mountains.

The National Trust conservation statement for Glastonbury Tor summarizes what is known of Glastonbury Tor’s history as follows:

1.2. RESEARCH AND CURRENT UNDERSTANDING OF THE SITE
Later Neolithic 2900-2200BC, flint and stone artefacts found from this period. later Bronze Age 1400-600BC. Very little known about this period. Romano-British 43AD-410AD. Prehistoric and Roman finds- early and late Roman pottery.
Dark Age centred on 600 AD, timber building, evidence of metal workings, substantial metal working, Roman Samian pot shards.
Late Saxon-early Medieval 600-1066 AD, monastic settlement, possible wooden church.
Medieval 1066-1485 AD, two or more successive stone churches on summit. Priest’s house and other buildings on shoulder.
Tudor 1485-1603. Very little known about this period.
Stuart 1603-1714. Very little known about this period.
Hanover 1714-1901, rebuilding of the tower in 1848. The 1821 rates map and 1844 tithe map show Tor field (the lower enclosed fields?) were used for arable crops well into the 19th century. St Michaels Tower restored.
1933 National Trust acquires Tor field with St Michaels Tower.
1948 further restoration works on the St Michaels Tower.

Cerne Abbas Giant, Oliver Cromwell and assisted suicide

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Cerne Abbas GiantLong viewed as a Celtic or Roman god, a very disappointing 1973 theory (by John Hutchins)  sees the giant as a political cartoon cut on the instructions of Denzil Holles in the 1640s to represent Oliver Cromwell. Denzil Holles hated Cromwell but I admire him and, if the history is correct, would see the Cerne Abbas cartoon as that of a man who felt that only the excercise of force could restore the virility of English democracy.

A Populus opinion poll ( for The Times in July 2009) found ‘overwhelming public support’ ( from 74% of those questioned)  for a change in the law to allow medically assisted suicide for terminally ill patients. Since the UK parliament continues to oppose the measure, I think we need a new Cromwell to explain to MPs that their job is to carry forward the will of the people. He or she could use make two quotations from Oliver Cromwell:

“I beseech you in the bowels of Christ think it possible you may be mistaken.”

“You have been sat too long here for any good you have been doing. Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of god, go!.”

If the reminders do not achieve the necessary result, MP’s should be clubbed – for the crime of not respecting the known wishes of the electorate.

PS as a god-fearing man, Cromwell is likely to have opposed assisted suicide. Since many of its members are elderly, one might assume the National Trust, which cares for the Cerne Abbas Giant, to be in favour of the measure.


Reconstituted stone garden ornament

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Reconstituted stone garden ornaments develop a patina which depends on where they are placed

Reconstituted stone garden ornaments develop a patina which depends on where they are placed

Most of the ‘concrete ornaments’ in garden stores are vile, some more reminiscent of a stained WC pan than of a stone garden ornament. But there are some notable exceptions and the best quality products we know of are made by Chilstone. The company explains that each ornament ‘is handmade in reconstituted stone by a special process, developed over our long history to ensure a finished texture virtually indistinghishable from natural stone’. They specialize in making accurate copies of antique originals. Mosses and lichens grow well on the products and the species which flourish depend entirely on the local environmental conditions (shade, sun, moisture etc) so that they become INDISTINGHISHABLE from natural stone ornaments. The ingredients are crushed stone and a binder – with no use of the sand or aggregate normally used in making concrete. The ornaments are not very cheap but they are very good, so that many Chilstone items have been sold at Sotheby’s for many times their original retail price. You can think of them as an investment!

Reconstituted stone: freshly cast (left) and in the early stages of developing a patina (right)

Reconstituted stone: freshly cast (left) and in the early stages of developing a patina (right)