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Alnwick has a fascinating history, historically the

home of the storied Percy family, and cinematically
the home of Harry Potter and Blackadder.
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BELINDA BEATON

Water, Water
Everywhere …
The English passion for gardens, parks, and fountains has taken
countless forms over the centuries. Monarchs, nobles, and
industrialists created pleasure gardens reflecting their vision of a
tiny utopian world – as did farmers, trade unionists, and social
reformers. The changing times have seen these green oases
evolve, sometimes fading away, only to be reborn under a new
vision. Recently, two grand water gardens opened. One was the
eagerly awaited memorial to Diana, Princess of Wales, the other
the first phase of a huge project at Alnwick Castle. While
each ostensibly was to reawaken a landscaping tradition that
had been somewhat dormant in Britain, one is a brilliant success,
the other a sad folly.

I
N JANUARY , an exhibition of Raphael’s work
closed at the National Gallery in London. While
it met with critical success, there seemed to be
some urgency in the institution’s celebration of
the artist. Particularly conspicuous was the newly acquired Madonna
of the Pinks, a small painting measuring eleven by nine inches. While
it had hung in the gallery for over a decade, never had it been part of
the permanent collection. Two years ago, its owner, the Duke of
Northumberland, decided to sell it. Even though the National Gallery
had relatively recently played a pivotal role in the painting’s authenti-
cation, it was not offered first refusal. When it became known that
California’s J. Paul Getty Museum had offered £29 million for it, a con-
certed effort was orchestrated to keep the painting in England. As the

BELINDA BEATON is a Canadian living in Oxford, England.

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National Gallery did not have the resources in its acquisition budget to
rival the Getty’s bid, a campaign that played on English amour propre
was launched. Amidst nationalist appeals and fears that the work
would be “lost to the country,” Cambridge academic Dr Jonathan
Conlin patiently explained to the media that the painting was not “an
asylum seeker” that would perish if transferred to an American insti-
tution. In the end the Heritage Lottery Fund provided £11.5 million,
more than it ever had for a painting. The National Art Collection Fund
contributed £10.5 million, and the American Friends of the National
Gallery £400,000. Private benefactors made up the balance. The
Madonna of the Pinks remained in England and, after tax, the twelfth
Duke of Northumberland pocketed £22 million.
There was a feeling in many quarters that Northumberland’s sud-
den compulsion to sell the Raphael stemmed from a desire to help
fund his wife’s pet project, a public garden at Alnwick Castle. His suc-
cession to the title had been unexpected when his elder brother, the
eleventh duke, died in 1995. In short order the new duke and duchess
conceived the “Eden of the North,” a venture that will leave their mark
ineradicably on the duchy.

A
LNWICK (pronounced Anik) sits nestled amongst
the hills of Northumbria, the border region in
northeast England. After Windsor, it is the
largest operating Norman castle in Britain.
Where Windsor is grey and towers over the town, Alnwick is a golden
brown and exudes a more intimate feeling. It has been the seat of the
Percy family for 700 years. Through the Middle Ages the Percys were
earls at the centre of royal intrigue and power brokering. The most
famous was Harry “Hotspur” Percy, characterized by Shakespeare in
Henry IV, Part I. He was but one example of the family’s ingrained mil-
itary service. Four centuries later, the Honourable Henry Percy hur-
ried to London after the battle of Waterloo with two captured French
eagle standards and the news of Napoleon’s final defeat.
Alnwick has evolved with the Percys’ changing circumstances and
reflects the varied fortunes and interests of its inheritors. In the sev-
enteenth century, the eleventh earl, who collected art, patronized Sir
Anthony Van Dyke, and hung his commissions in the castle’s public
rooms. In the eighteenth century, the female heir and her husband
were elevated in the peerage with the titles of Duke and Duchess of
Northumberland. They retained Lancelot “Capability” Brown, the

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renowned landscape gardener of the age, to create a park to the north

of the castle walls. When the well-travelled fourth duke retired after a
naval career in the nineteenth century, he restored the castle and
redecorated its interior. In the interests of creating warmer ceilings
and altering its medieval character, he established a special wood-
working studio on the estate; there an Italian master carver super-
vised the design and production of elaborate panels. The fourth duke
also filled the castle with his collections of continental art and archae-
ological artefacts, and he modernized the kitchens. At this time, the
domestic plot of land within the bailey was transformed into an
immense Italianate flower garden.
The decline of the aristocracy in the twentieth century has dimin-
ished much of the inherent allure of owning Britain’s castles and great

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houses. The scions not only have the responsibilities of proprietor-

ship, but also of finding the funds for financially crippling inheritance
taxes. Maintenance of such properties has always been dependent on
large domestic staffs, and labour is now not only much more expen-
sive, but also far less willing to assume such definably subservient
posts. Opening the properties as private museums and leisure
grounds for the paying public remains the most obvious income-
generating option. As examples of cultural achievement, their archi-
tecture and accumulated contents remain impressive, yet many
residences convey a sense of stasis. While they are places that explain
the past, few remain centres of contemporary arts patronage or tech-
nical innovation.
Custodianship of Alnwick has brought its own particular challenges.
After World War I, it was no longer possible to maintain the nine-
teenth-century flower gardens and conservatories. While these were
converted to temporary vegetable plots during the Second World War,
the glasshouses were later torn down, and the garden was turned into
a forest nursery. The inadvertent result of this retrenchment was that
all the grounds were more in keeping with the medieval character of
the castle’s exterior, thus giving Alnwick an unexpected means of gen-
erating revenue. It has proved to be an impressive cinematic location.
Films shot on its grounds include Becket, Mary Queen of Scots, Robin
Hood: Prince of Thieves, and Elizabeth. Recently, it provided the per-
fect ambiance for much of Hogwarts in the Harry Potter saga, and this
has greatly enhanced its standing as a tourist destination.
The Northumberlands were understandably concerned about the
decline of agriculture in northern England and the area’s relatively
high unemployment. In 1996, at a time when “regeneration” projects
were receiving government grants, the twelfth duchess swiftly con-
ceived a plan to make the castle more of a going concern than a source
of nostalgia. It was decided that the site of the castle’s defunct flower
gardens would be reconceived as a showcase for the best of modern
horticulture. In her research, the duchess, a gentle woman who claims
to have been born with a spade in her hand, consulted landscape
architects and visited famous gardens across Europe.
Gardens offering a profusion of flora have not been novel in a land
where the Gulf Stream supplies such a fecund climate. Obtaining and
cultivating plants from around the globe has provided another form of
collecting – one that in many instances has demanded more effort
and upkeep than the accumulation and preservation of art. The sev-
enteenth century saw the arrival of new varieties such as the apricot

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and the lilac, both from Algiers. In the eighteenth century, there was a
fivefold increase in the number of botanic products introduced into
England. The royal gardens at Kew acted as a living register of plants
brought from the New World. Horticulture became the science with
the broadest social appeal because the middle classes were able to
join in acclimatizing new plant varieties. Head gardeners achieved
greater status in aristocratic households. This abundance of plants,
combined with new engineering techniques, resulted in a golden age
of landscaping.
In terms of providing continuous inspiration, Chatsworth in
Derbyshire was possibly the most prominent ongoing aristocratic gar-
dening project. In the seventeenth century, its proprietor, the first
Duke of Devonshire, employed the country’s leading gardening tal-
ent to create a formal garden on the grand scale. An architect designed
a classical pavilion for the hill behind the house, and a French engi-
neer built a set of broad formal steps descending from it, over which
ran a cascade of water. The fourth duke engaged Capability Brown,
the doyen of eighteenth-century English landscaping, who could
transplant mature trees so that the picturesque parks he created for
his patrons looked as if they had been cleared and cultivated decades
previously. In the nineteenth century, Joseph Paxton further trans-
formed the grounds for the extravagant sixth duke. While Paxton is
best remembered for his huge glasshouses and for designing the
Crystal Palace in 1851, his lasting achievement has proved to be
Chatsworth’s grounds. There he created a pinetum where hundreds of
species of pine trees introduced from North America were labelled.
The mazes from earlier eras were maintained, and topiary was cut in
architectonic shapes to provide square areas enclosed by hedges –
similar to roofless rooms. In other areas, Paxton introduced romantic
rockeries and rills that, while theatrical, did not belie the fact that they
were not works of nature. The tsar of Russia’s 1845 visit inspired the
creation of the Emperor Fountain, a huge jet of water on a site aligned

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with a wing of the house. Chatsworth acted as a horticultural acad-

emy, attracting visitors who drew inspiration from its diverse land-
scaping schemes and purchased Paxton’s handbooks. Sadly, in the
twentieth century it proved impossible to maintain its 105-acre
garden on the same scale. Yet even without its former extensive
flowerbeds and famous glasshouses, Chatsworth’s grounds have with-
stood the test of time and have endured as a beautiful environment.
The Alnwick garden will be substantially smaller than Chatsworth’s.
Forty acres have been designated for it, some of which will be a park-
ing lot. The land, valued at £9 million, has been sold by the Duchy of
Northumberland and placed in a charitable trust, allowing it to qualify
for public grants. The total cost of the project is budgeted at £42 mil-
lion. Like many aristocratic manors, it includes the characteristic rose
garden. Recently its “tree house,” a restaurant with the capacity to seat
300, was opened. While it may have Canadian cedars and Siberian
larchwood surrounding it, the £3 million structure is hardly a tribute
to patrician elegance or Arcadian repose. It resembles a cross between
a Tolkienesque palace for hobbits and what some misguided British
architect might have conceived as a rustic northern Canadian cottage.
What distinguishes “the Eden of the North” is that at its centre is the
most remarkable water garden that has been built in Britain in over a
century.

C
ONCEIVED as the showcase, the Grand Cascade
has been built into the slope of a hill. Its struc-
ture is faced with the region’s pinkish Darney
stone. A broad scalloped central pool runs
halfway down the centre of the hill, below which is a series of steps.
Each minute 7,260 gallons of water tumble down over the stone body.
There are also 120 separate jets of water, some of which are arched
and change direction – several of them just missing visitors who
amble across the fenced walkway in the centre. The design does not
allow entry into the weirs and rills. Footpaths running up each side of
the hill have trellises that are already vine-covered. There are arbours
with benches where one can enjoy the individual fountains that are
interspersed on each side of the ascent. The experience of strolling up
through greenery to a symphony of resounding water and taking in
the contrast between the spectacle of the central structure and the
secluded spaces in its peripheries evokes a sense of wonder in the
engineering of such an aquatic display. The landscape architects,

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In contrast to the achievement at Alnwick, the interactive memorial to

Princess Diana has succeeded mostly in injuring its intended playmates.

Wirtz International of Belgium, included a computerized system that

times sequences and varies water pressure, and a cistern in the hill
recycles the water. Arriving at the top, the visitor enters “the orna-
mental garden,” a walled area filled with a variety of flowers. The
duchess, clearly an acute hostess, has provided some miniature plas-
tic trucks so that those little visitors who have no interest in horticul-
ture can play at the base of the hill.
Even if it did initially cause havoc with the town’s water pressure
when it opened in 2002, the Grand Cascade is a great success. All it
needs is a parterre at its base to complete Alnwick’s revitalization as one
of Britain’s most distinguished gardens. The quality of the larger pro-
ject may be undermined by the fact that, rather than developing by
accretion over several decades, its conception as a tourist attraction
demands that the rest of the landscaping must at the outset provide a
series of populist attractions. The “tree house” has met with a muted
critical reception since its inauguration in January. A maze made of
bamboo, a visitor centre, and a “poison garden” composed of plants
that can kill (presumably the horticultural equivalent of chamber of hor-
rors) have also opened. Other projects are planned that, within three
years, will fill the area at the base of the hill. These may spoil the view of
the fountains that meets the visitor upon entering. Whatever the poten-
tial shortcomings, there is a dynamic quality in the Alnwick garden and
its programs that makes it a continuing source of public interest.

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I
N C O N T R A S T , the water garden created as a
memorial to Diana, Princess of Wales, which
opened in London’s Hyde Park in July 2004, has
been switched off twice because it has proven
to be a safety hazard. In May, after four months surrounded by a
safety barrier, it reopened. Its architect, the American Kathryn
Gustafson, had carefully observed the genus loci of the site, a
slope near the Serpentine Lake, and contrived an oval ring, sup-
posedly because it was a maternal shape that would provide a
space for “reaching out and letting in.” Her quoted musings on
the complex themes that the minimalist design would inspire
were projections worthy of those who had felt that they “really
knew” Diana.
While the land was donated, the fountain cost the charity estab-
lished in Diana’s memory £3.6 million. The memorial opened a year
behind schedule and half a million pounds over budget. Made of grey
stone granite and measuring 80 metres by 50 metres, it resembles a
round trough designed for running water that has been built into the
contours of the slope. No shrubbery was planted surrounding it, nor
in the lawn at its centre. The impression of many who have visited is
that this looks like “an open drain.”
With small scalloped steps at intervals, and narrow stone walk-
ways over the currents at two points, children and adults were
to be encouraged to climb in and play. When accidents happened,
Gustafson lamely suggested that the public needed to be instructed in
the use of water gardens. Security guards were necessary to supervise
the visitors. Drainage engineers were retained to correct the overflow
problem, but only time will tell if they have been successful.
Whether bereft of its splashing water currents or fully functioning,
the memorial to the Princess of Wales has little aesthetic merit. In fact,
it sits as something of an eyesore in one of London’s more prominent
public spaces. After a suitable period, the costs of destroying it could
well be justified. In contrast, the Duke of Northumberland’s sale of a
family Raphael has not proved to be for a lost cause. The people of
Northumbria have embraced the Grand Cascade, not only as a com-
ponent in regional regeneration, but also because it is a true cultural
achievement. Q
Q

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