So where to? Titchwell? Trish suggested Dunwich Heath and Minsmere but I suddenly had a thought and suggested Cliveden (I've never been) actually I had realised I could finally add to the church list!!
This blog was meant to be Cliveden and the church as a taster but this is just the church.....
This is church cottage!
805 St Giles, Stoke Poges.
The churchyard is where Thomas Gray wrote his "Elegy written in a country churchyard".
And I can understand why the churchyard is one of the finest I've seen...
We had spotted a sign to the memorial garden......
I expected a bit of grass in a small walled plot but ......... WOW!!
Stolen from the Stoke Poges Parish Council website
The Memorial Gardens have been designed and maintained in a fashion for which there is no building, structures or monuments of any kind likely to remind one of a cemetery.
The parkland landscape which originally formed part of Stoke Park was laid out by Capability Brown and Repton. Much of the area survived until 1909 when the opening of the golf course occurred.
Sir Noel Mobbs, Lord of the Manor of Stoke Poges, acquired the twenty acres of land to the south of the church in order to preserve the tranquil and rural setting of St. Giles church, made famous by Gray’s poem ‘Elegy in a Country Church’ and to have the land as a Memorial Garden, to be a ‘living memorial to the dead and of solace to the bereaved’.
The Memorial Gardens were designed by Edward White, a partner of Milner, White and Son, a leading landscape architect firm of the day. The Gardens were to contain no buildings nor monuments as in a cemetery, but were designed on a generous scale as a complete garden with small gardens and family plots. It was felt that the general appearance of the Gardens should offer satisfactory unity. There were and continues to be in excess of 500 individual family gated gardens. The gardens were refurbishment in October 2001 with the contract focusing on the main structure and the formal parts of the Gardens, including replanting using the limited plants used by Edward White in his gardens.
There seem to be a number of small gardens for individual families....
Some people..... LOL Trish!!
The gardens were LOVELY !! I've been to many gardens attached to historic houses that were nowhere near as good.
Honestly what a great place to be remembered! All credit to Stokes Poges Parish council for such a lovely place.
Back to the church
YES YES I know I never took a photo of Gray's tomb....... But here is a memorial in the adjacent field
And on to Cliveden of which more tomorrow......
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