Buildings & Gardens

The Garden Plans

In 1892, the chair of the Garden Committee, Blanche Athena Clough decided to start planning the gardens. The College engaged James Backhouse & Son of York, and their plan is shown below (although Newnham Walk still continued past Sidgwick to Grange Rd at that point, the College was negotiating with the City to have it closed as a right of way, and replaced by a new road, Sidgwick Avenue, to the north of the College).

The garden was created more or less to this plan, although of course it continued to evolve.

Following Henry Sidgwick's death, thoughts turned to a memorial for him. In 1906 Alfred H Powell was engaged to redesign the garden, along Arts and Crafts movement lines, and he produced the new plan shown below (North is at the bottom! The Kennedy building was just being completed: work had not yet started on Peile Hall, however)..

Paths were all to be straightened and vistas realigned; the sunken pool in front of Sidgwick Hall was dedicated as a memorial to Henry Sidgwick, with a carved inscription by Eric Gill: "The daughters of this house to those that shall come after them commend the filial remembrance of Henry Sidgwick"

In 1911, the College asked Gertrude Jekyll to prepare a plan for the gardens. The plan for the area in front of Peile is shown below (once again, North is to the bottom of the page). A central feature of the plan was the two summerhouses, to have been designed by Lutyens.  Although this plan was not put into effect (it is not clear exactly why not), the College did adopt Jekyll's idea of herbaceous borders.

(more to come...)

To read further

• Jane Brown, The Making of the Gardens, Newnham College Cambridge, 1988.