OUT AND ABOUT

This month we’re off to Worcestershire to the Walled Gardens of Croome Court. Once sadly neglected they have now been lovingly restored, revealing treasures old and new

Chris and Karen Cronin, who have worked hard to restore the Walled Gardens

Croome Court, which is now in the care of the National Trust

C hris and Karen Cronin didn’t set out to own a walled kitchen garden. Having found success in the music industry, the couple wanted to do what some of their rock’n’roll friends had done – find themselves a place in the country with space for a swimming pool. As it turned out, their new garden had different plans.

The Croome Court estate the Walled Gardens are a part of has always been important, starting life in the 1500s as the seat of the Earls of Coventry. With the Malvern Hills and beautiful Severn Valley as a backdrop, the surrounding estate was Capability Brown’s first full landscape design.

Once covering 22,000 acres, this was one of the biggest private estates in the UK, with parts stretching as far as the neighbouring estate of Blenheim Palace. Even today Croome still covers an impressive 800 acres.

Croome Court, which along with the wider estate is now in the care of the National Trust, has had a varied past since being sold by the Croome Estate Trust in 1948. It became a boys’ school and in 1979 Beatles’ guitarist George Harrison purchased it for the Hare Khrishna movement which had its headquarters there until 1984, when it was purchased by a developer.

“We bought the Walled Gardens in 2000 and at that time they had been derelict for half a century and were in an appalling state,” said Chris. “The site was fragmented. The National Trust owned the landscape and a developer had bought the mansion and about 30 acres of the inner part of the estate, including the Walled Gardens and Gardener’s Cottage. Shortly after, he put it back on the market and we just happened to be in the right place at the right time.

“There was planning permission to convert the Gardener’s Cottage into a seven-bedroom house with swimming pool and garage, and that was our dream. We were not gardeners – had we been we might have run a mile,” Chris said with a grin. But although Chris may not have been a gardener when he first set eyes on Croome he is a skilled engineer, so when it came to planning and renovation he had all the necessary talents. As he put it: “This is my world. I design stage sets, and this is like a big stage set. That’s how I think of it anyway.”

The restored Gardener’s Cottage from the site of the Orchard House

The Earl’s Gate and Earl’s Walk as seen through the beautiful Moongate

THE WALLED GARDENS

Chris’s skills were to prove essential as it would transpire what he and Karen had purchased was the largest existing example of a Georgian walled kitchen garden, with many important historical features just waiting to be revealed. “The Gardener’s Cottage was uninhabitable. With no services, windows or doors, we had to start from scratch. The garden was just a field, but we started to uncover structures and details we didn’t know existed. You couldn’t even see what was left of the glasshouses – they were completely overgrown with brambles.