5. Bowling Green Lawn

Narrator:

In 1914, Bowles wrote:

Voice of Bowles:

I have never felt disgust for variegated foliage evinced by so many good gardeners and in many cases I warmly admire it.

SFX: Sound of children playing games/laughter

Narrator:

At the far end of the lawn there are two large beds of variegated plants that Bowles referred to as “Tom Tiddlers Ground”. – He named them after an old children’s game – Tom Tiddler. The aim of the game was for a child to defend a patch of ground, which was supposed to be where he kept a store of gold and silver.

In these two beds Bowles applied a loose theme to his planting – with golden leaved plants to one side, silver leaves in the middle and purple leaved plants on the other side. The larch tree – or Larix Decidua - at the edge of the bed was planted in 1985 to replace an earlier one, which was thought to have grown here for around 280 years.

History of the Bowling Green Lawn

Narrator: 

This lawn is named after Bowling Green House -– a large Elizabethan building that stood here until the early 19th century. The path here is where the drive was located that ran up to the original house from the road. Bowling Green House was home to Bowles’s 18th century ancestors, the Garnaults. - It is possible that the house took its name from a bowling green that existed here in the days when the Royal Palace of Elsinge stood nearby - in the grounds of what is now Forty Hall. The palace was demolished in the mid-17th century. Recently, excavations and surveys were carried out to pinpoint the exact position of Bowling Green House on the lawn, but they only revealed bits of debris and bricks – nothing to give a real sense of the fine building that once stood here.

In 1799, on the day Anne Garnault married the print seller and publisher Henry Carrington Bowles, she planted a swamp cypress at the eastern end of the lawn. It grew to be 80 feet tall, before it blew down in the great storm of 1987.