Gertrude Jekyll Plans Refound

Rachel Marsh, conservator at the SHC working on the garden plan. Kind permission Surrey History Centre.

Thanks to Surrey Gardens Trust, two long-lost drawings by famous garden designer Gertrude Jekyll (1843-1932), have been rediscovered and gifted to the Surrey History Centre.

Dating from 1914, the two items relate to her design and planting plans for a garden enveloping the then newly designed and built Warren Hurst in Ashtead. After painstaking conservation, they were recently put on display after being donated by Gill Thompson and her brother Peter, whose parents Billy and Audrey Thompson owned Warren Hurst – and the Jekyll plans – from 1971 to 1991.

The plans had been passed down through successive occupants of the house but had been mislaid. Lady Dorothy Stewart, who lived in the other half of the divided house, rediscovered the plans and returned them to Gill. Gill alerted Surrey Gardens Trust and when the research team saw the plans, we soon realised that they were rare survivals and should be preserved.

The first plan (above) is a rough trace of the commissioned Jekyll garden plan. Unusually, Jekyll produced three versions of the garden plan and all survive. There has been some debate as to which version was implemented (and to what extent) and the trace concludes that it was the third version.  The document is dated February 1914 when work to execute the garden scheme was in progress. The trace was created by the onsite architect, Percy Leeds, to help him communicate with Jekyll.

 

The second plan (below) is a rough copy drawn in pencil of the planting plan for the enclosed garden room to the west of the house. It is in Jekyll’s hand and a comment on the trace garden plan indicates that this was provided to the architect for his reference on site.

Jekyll’s work at Warren Hurst is already well documented and we are fortunate to have knowledge of many of Jekyll’s drawings, correspondence and photographs through the Reef Point Collection at the Environmental Design Archive, University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley). In particular, the drawings and documents in that collection relating to gardens in Surrey have been digitally colour copied and can be accessed online here.

This acquisition is thanks to the efforts of Gill and Peter Thompson, Sandra Pullen, Lady Dorothy Stewart, SGT Chair Sarah Dickinson along with Julian Pooley and Rachel Marsh, both at Surrey History Centre.

Find out more about this amazing rediscovery in Surrey Gardens Trust’s most recent newsletter on their website.