Gosport’s Crescent Garden is reborn


by Wendy Osborne


In 1826 Gosport entrepreneur Robert Cruickshank dreamt of creating a profitable new resort, for upper- crust society.


Summer elegance in the Crescent Garden


Flamboyant Royal dips at Brighton made sea-bathing all the rage, inspiring many speculative projects: but Robert believed his


Solent site would be a winner. He christened it “Angleseyville” after the Marquis of Anglesey, whom he invited to be its Patron - and to lay the first stone.


The Marquis was a popular celebrity of the day; brave, handsome, and salted with scandal. Having commanded Wellington’s Cavalry at Waterloo, “By God, Sir, they’ve shot my leg off!” he had also run off with the Iron Duke’s married sister- in-law. His name attracted 10,000 people to the stone-laying.


For a few years Angleseyville prospered. Promising young architect Thomas Owen designed a grand double Crescent in neo-classical style.


Fine villas appeared; Jane Austen’s sailor brother Charles leased one.


Before the Crescent’s second phase could begin, clouds gathered. There was a recession. Then Robert Cruickshank, the driving spirit, died, and the fashionable world lost interest.


An aerial shot of the garden


The ornamental garden spanned the entire double crescent. A narrow D-shape, with a straight gravel terrace walk, where strollers viewed Solent shipping, and the Isle of Wight.One hundred and sixty years later,


the D-shaped space remained, though its elegant iron railings and gates were lopped for munitions in WWII. Room and Bath Houses went in 1951.


The Reading


Old specimen trees were all that was left. Dense overgrown vegetation hid years of accumulated rubbish, and a new row of houses hid the sea. The chairman of Hampshire’s thriving Garden Trust in 1989 was Gilly Drummond. Gilly’s research and enthusiasm united the Trust, and English Heritage, with local and county authorities in a re-generation initiative to reclaim Thomas Owen’s elegant Georgian Angleseyville.


Pondering this one day, Gilly Drummond was invited into our Crescent house for some warming chicken soup. Rarely


Spring in the Crescent Garden


A long-lost historic Hampshire garden has been transformed by a band of enthusiastic volunteers with the help of Hampshire Gardens Trust – and has now won an award. This is their story.


does soup have such consequences! As a long-term Crescent dweller, I was fascinated by Angleseyville: as a painter and a keen gardener I soon shared Gilly’s enthusiasm for Crescent Garden. Given generous help on a steep learning curve by Mavis Batey MBE, Vice-President of the Garden History Society, I was enchanted to learn Regency garden designers were inspired by the New Forest.


Now I had a dream. A recreated Regency garden, serving a whole community, not just a privileged few.


This kind of


dream couldn’t be realised by an individual. So I drew how I thought it could look; sought approval from the Trust; and then shared the vision with the neighbourhood.


“D’you think you’d like this? - Enough to give a Rose bush?”


Seventy people said “Yes!” So Friends of Crescent Garden were sparked into life, nurtured by the Trust and encouraged by Gosport’s Borough Council, still in partnership with around 360 Friends, 19 years later.


The Friends’ achievements are phenomenal. They cleared 200 yards of jungly thicket, brambles, self-seeded bays and hollies, revealing surprising clues to the original ornamental shrubberies. Arbutus bay, portugese laurel, phillyreas and hollies provided the essential backbone of


evergreens, where flowering climbers and shrubs now star in their season, “beguiling the stroller and scenting the air”.


Only plants known in England before 1850 are used: wistaria, honeysuckle and buoyantly rambling roses soar behind oak- leaved hydrangeas, fatsias, Fuchsia magellanica and myrtle, with many others.


Curving beds define the site of the vanished Reading Room, its graceful pillars remembered in tall cypress. Old Rose supports, benches and Reptonian flower baskets were researched, locally made, and largely funded by the Friends. After wide consultation, they decided a small fountain would be the perfect finishing centrepiece.


After three years of grant applications, fund-raising and sheer hard work, the Friends finally achieved this in time for a party held in honour of the Queen’s Golden Jubilee, one of many community celebrations in Crescent Garden.


All the hard work has been rewarded, as Crescent Garden won awards in last yearsSouth East England in Bloom. In the ‘Small Parks’ category the garden was awarded a Gold, and the marks were the highest across the S/E, from Dorset to Kent inclusive.


The Crescent Garden, Crescent Road, Alverstoke, Portsmouth PO12 2DH. Open daily, free admission. Go to the website www.hgt.org.uk and follow the links. Wendy Osborne is a Friend of Crescent Garden, Alverstoke.


Country Gardener 23


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