Garden Visit: Westbrook

Westbrook, both house and garden, is an Arts & Crafts gem in the heart of Surrey. Designed and created from 1899 by Hugh Thackeray Turner as his private residence this was a treasured haven as it is once again today for the present owners who have exquisitely restored and enhanced the Grade II* house and the Grade II gardens.

Thackeray Turner’s work is locally, nationally and internationally significant. An intriguing network of family, friends and colleagues set the scene. He married Mary Elizabeth Powell, a daughter of Thomas Powell, a solicitor and stockbroker in Guildford. After keeping a weekend home in Godalming for several years, they bought a field and built their home with views across open farmland to Charterhouse School. Mary Elizabeth Turner was a talented embroiderer and proactive suffragist and it is therefore no surprise that she was a friend and colleague of Gertrude Jekyll. In 1911 following the Titanic disaster, Hugh Thackeray Turner was commissioned by Godalming Town Council Ladies Committee (comprising Mary Watts, Iona Davey, Margery Horne and Gertrude Jekyll), to design the memorial and cloister for the Jack Phillips Memorial in Godalming. The suffragist and artistic connections of his wife may well have helped him in securing the commission (do follow the link to read more about this fascinating woman). As you will discover, Gertrude Jekyll was closely involved with the gardens at Westbrook and, of course, knew Thackeray Turner himself through the Arts & Crafts movement. Turner was a colleague of William Morris and was appointed the first secretary of The Society for The Protection of Ancient Buildings (SPAB), from 1885-1911. His reputation internationally was cemented through his collaboration with Edwin Lutyens on the design of New Delhi, India's capital city. Turner's expertise in classical architecture and Lutyens' vision resulted in the architectural masterpiece that is the Rashtrapati Bhavan (formerly the Viceroy's House), an iconic symbol of India's architectural heritage.

Gertrude Jekyll described the gardens at Westbrook in 'Gardens for Small Country House' (1912) with a garden plan and planting plans. Evidence strongly suggests that she advised on areas of the planting and supplied plants from her nursey but the layout was almost certainly the design of Hugh Thackeray Turner himself. Gertrude Jekyll describes the garden as having ‘special compartments’ divided by walling of yew hedges. These spaces include: the intimate circular sunk garden, ‘an amphitheatre of summer glory’; the secluded shrubbery, where a ‘tired worker’ can escape to when ‘desiring rest and solitude’; the fruit-tree orchard, which used to be planted in the southwest corner of the garden; the walled rose garden; and the sheltered winter garden with a recessed seat, a ‘veritable sun-trap’. Jekyll writes that the garden’s ‘various subdivisions are linked together in a simple general design. Each section shows some distinct way of making a garden picture and each entices onwards to the next by the charm of mystery and the stimulus of pleasant anticipation of something still better to follow’.

The 1912 garden plan described by Jekyll has formed the backbone for the restoration of the garden and it is as charming and beguiling today as it described, with new planting and compartments added by the present owners allowing the spaces to adapt and grow amidst the original layout.

The garden is not open to the public. This is a rare opportunity to glimpse this special place.

Proceeds to Bridewell Royal Hospital.