The Creation of the Garden
When Lord Fairhaven came to Anglesey Abbey in 1926 he found the house surrounded by the reasonably compact garden that had been laid out by the Rev. Hailstone in the 1860s.
The trees planted by Hailstone still frame the principal views of the house.
Apart from this the land was given over to pasture and was more or less lacking in any sort of design or distinction.
The four years after 1926 were largely occupied by the refurbishment of the house and Lord Fairhaven did not make Anglesey his principal residence until 1930.
It is from that year that the garden began to develop and its beginning was marked with the raising of an urn at the end of what was then the Daffodil Walk - now Jubilee Avenue - to commemorate the 800th Anniversary of the founding of the Priory.
The creation of the Wrestlers Lawn from a rambling and broken down farmyard was also an early project.
The other elements of the garden followed with some rapidity and were in many instances instigated by some significant anniversary.
Lord Fairhaven may have taken his cue from the precedent given by the line of Lombardy Poplars that until recently flanked the river, planted in 1887 to celebrate Victoria's Golden Jubilee.
It was mirrored by another line of poplars planted on the northern boundary by Lord Fairhaven in 1935 to mark the Silver Jubilee of King George V and Queen Mary.
In the same year the landscaping of the Quarry Pool (the remains of Victorian excavations for fossil fuel) was undertaken.
1937 and the Coronation of King George Vi provided the incentive for the largest of the geometrical plantings at Anglesey, the Coronation Avenue; eight rows of planes and chestnuts marched in orderly progress over a distance of half a mile from the South Glade to the western boundary of the garden and in 1939 were extended into the adjacent field to terminate in a block of Lombardy Poplars.
A cross axis terminating in two circular glades was part of the 1937 planting and in the same year the double avenue of Limes was planted to link the Quarry Pool with the planting round the house.
The Herbaceous Garden was also laid out at this time but its plan was dramatically transformed in 1952 at the beginning of another period of extensive development in the garden.
The Temple Lawn with its island plantings and central circle of Corinthian Columns round the sculpture of David was laid out in 1953 to commemorate the Coronation.
At the same time the Emperors Walk was created as another dramatic axis on the eastern boundary with diagonal plantings of Larches and Norway Spruce and a continuous beech hedge a quarter of a mile long.
Throughout this period Lord Fairhaven collected outstanding examples of garden sculpture from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and these provide an essential foil to the various plantings.
There can be no doubt that Lord Fairhaven's was the creative spirit behind this unusual landscape but he was ably assisted by Major Vernon Daniell whose own garden at Moulton Hall, near Newmarket, was renowned for its beauty.
Major Daniell provided the essential technical back-up for Lord Fairhaven's flights of imagination.
Lord Fairhaven was also advised by like-minded friends, among them Lanning Roper who, before he died in 1983, also helped the National Trust with the management of the garden.
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