Sir Freddie's Folly

I visited the Gibberd Garden on the outskirts of Harlow, as it was open for Snowdrop Sunday. I'm not into visiting gardens and I'm not that keen on snowdrops en masse, especially since they seem to have become a spectator sport. I'm more pleased to see our indigenous dog's mercury in spring than a clump of snowdrops. However, the weather has been horrid and I'd got nothing better to tog, so thought I'd give it a whirl.

I wore my kneepads and took a bin bag so that I could prostrate myself and shoot Sir Frederick Gibberd's folly and the flowers from ground level.

"Harlow’s master planner … is always full of surprises … and perhaps his biggest surprise yet is resting in a green glade in the architect’s rambling country garden on the edge of town … between the trees and bushes now rise two high pillars reminiscent of the glory of Rome. The noble columns flanked by four urns were saved from destruction by the demolition men and now form a “folly”…. It took a week to get the tons of masonry down to Harlow—and a whole day for the procession of three lorries and a crane to make their way down narrow Marsh Lane which leads to his home … it took another five days and three men to put them up … Sir Frederick: “I have made a special glade to take them which I shall plant with cypress trees…. There is a mound of earth in Temple Fields where Harlow had its Roman temple. You could say I have put it up again in my garden.” (1975)

I'm very familiar with the Romano British temple site in Harlow because I helped my son research it for a Latin project at school. Sir Fred reconstructed Coutt's Bank in The Strand and salvaged the acanthus leaf topped columns and urns from there.

Today's poem is from Holy Sonnets VII by John Donne. http://www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/donne/holysonnet7.php

Bit fire and brimstone and bible-bashing for my my taste. Not surprising as Donne was a man of the cloth, famous for his brilliant, passionate sermons. I'd sooner read of his 'adventures', "O my America!" ;)