The Dell

Robin working in the Dell, 1960

View from the Potting Shed, 1970

The Dell in Spring

With June planting

Gale damage, 1962

View from early Dell towards the house

Twig armchair

Fire clay armchair

White pumphead and planting, 1989

Structures in the Dell, 1972

The inspiration for this part of the garden was a friend’s woodland garden that “we sometimes visit on a sunny, Sunday morning.” 

In 'The Story of York Gate' Sybil says "In 1960 Robin said he would like to extend the garden, taking a loop into the field, which would have the stream running through it.   This we call the Dell. Robin's Dell. It has certainly made an attractive woodland garden."  She goes on to report that "In 1962 we had the Great Gale. I remember my husband getting out of bed that morning, going on to the landing and saying, Good heavens the ash is down. A 60ft Ash had blown down right across Robins Dell. Surprisingly it only damaged one mountain ash, but it took weeks to saw up and clear away" 

Robin described the Dell as being at first,”  a poor affair – minute in scale and overgrown in its planting  - but the tall silver birch and the mountain ash do bring the lowest part of the garden to a necessary full stop.” 

“Hidden amid the trees is the first of a small collection of garden seats.  This one is made of fire-clay, a substantial arm chair in the form of tree trunks and branches……. Further on is a cast-iron seat of the fairly common twig pattern; this is very small for two, so it is called a ‘love-seat’, but it is monumentally uncomfortable to sit on!  “

“If you turn as you enter the Dell, and look up toward the house, you see a splendid example of a ‘made-up’ vista: take any one of its components away , mentally , and the method becomes clear.  Nearby is an incense cedar, now called Calocedrus decurrens.  This may prove to be an embarrassment in time, as it is not only the noblest of columnar conifers, but also one of the tallest in maturity.  Originally, two were planted ….. but it was not a good idea, and one died and the other is misplaced. Also nearby is Cunninghamia lanceolate, one of those tree relics from prehistory, with foliage rather like that of a refined monkey puzzle.  Although said to be tender it has survived so far; it may in time become too big and disturb the vista.”

Newly planted Nut Walk, 1964

Sybil in the Nut Walk

Nut Walk in 1967

Robin's pencil sketches of the Folly, 1969

The Folly under construction, 1970

Floor of the Folly, 1971

Folly and planting, 1979

Building of the Root House

The Root House nearing completion

On the north side of the Dell is the Nut Walk, forming a border between it and Sybil’s garden. Robin wrote:

“I had never seen a nut walk and had always imagined a tunnel of trained trees, reminiscent of the clipped or pleached allees that surround parterres, or like the laburnum tunnel at Bodnant, but here on a smaller scale.  So I planted my twenty four filberts either side of the three foot wide path, trained the leaders to a single cordon up bamboo canes and the side branches horizontally , also on canes……The filberts grew quickly and the path was arched over in five years……The walk is edged and underplanted  with giant snowdrops, Galanthus  S. Arnott.  I bought three bulbs, at the enormous price of three shillings and sixpence each ; … but from those three bulbs a thousand or more had been propagated.  The snowdrop is many times the size of the common Galanthus nivalis and seems superior in every way.  In mild seasons the blooms open in early January, last six or eight weeks and look splendid with the soft yellow or the hazel catkins.”

Near the entrance to the nut walk is The Folly.

 “The inappropriate name was originally applied to a singularly unsightly three-bay storage place, built of breeze block and concrete with a corrugated asbestos roof, that once occupied this site, built at my mother’s instigation to hold peat, soil and the like.  It was christened ‘The Folly’ and the name has stuck to the later structure which replaced it.”

The Folly is “hexagonal in shape, with a six-sided conical roof supported on six substantial rustic trunks and the roof is made of cedar wood shingles.”

At the centre of the paving is a segmental millstone that Robin acquired from a farm at Thorpe , between Leeds and Wakefield.  After asking the farmer if they had any old millstones, he was directed to the farm-yard where he found several segments of a millstone under rubble.  He eventually realised that these segments made up two millstones.  Put together, “one millstone is slightly larger than the other, with eight segments springing from a centre stone, which is in one piece.  In the smaller one, it is in four pieces. The segments were originally held in place by a heavy iron band running round the edge.”

The rose-pink setts surrounding the millstones were also laid by Robin, who found them to be “among the most pleasing of all paving materials.”

“I particularly wanted setts here and they proved very difficult to get hold of.  Local authorities  seemed very loth to part with them, and it was only when I found a builder’s merchant who had been forced to take over a large number in settlement of a bad debt that I was able to obtain any. By good fortune, they were just the colour I wanted.  The effect is more successful that I had hoped and seems to have something faintly Roman about it.”

After Robin’s death, Sybil wrote about a project that she had nurtured for several years.  She wrote:

“One thing I have long wanted is a root house.  In my scrap book, I have examples of a few, but it took me many years to decide where I could place such a feature, in a garden already crammed. Then one day I thought it could go in the corner of the Dell.  It has always been a rather uninteresting corner, so I got my surveyor down and we decided it was quite feasible. Eventually, we got five grubbed up trees (I think they were larches) and upturned them into the holes, to support the roof.  I wanted it thatched, but decided it needed more “rustic charm”, so heather has been used instead of straw, and the roof is crowned by a bustle of heather.” 

The root house was Sybil’s last project and the landscaping around it (thinning of trees to increase the light and planting of primroses and ferns) was never completed. The structure was removed after her death as it had become unsafe.