'A Paradise of Pollen and Paint': The Story of Benton End - Chrstopher Woodward

A Friends of Kenwood Sunday lecture given by Christopher Woodward.
Benton End is a Tudor manor house and walled garden on the outskirts of Hadleigh, Suffolk, which from 1940 until the 1970s was the East Anglian School of Painting and Drawing, founded by the artists Cedric Morris and Arthur Lett-Haines (known as ‘Lett’). 17-year-old Lucian Freud was the first pupil, and a teenage Maggi Hambling one of the last.
Cedric Morris is of national significance as both a painter and a horticulturalist. In 1930 he and Lett threw an ‘End of the World Party’ in Fitzrovia, and moved to Suffolk to make a garden. In the 1950s and 60s Benton End was as influential a garden as Sissinghurst, and for its students, represented freedom, and wildness, and a different way of life. ‘A paradise of pollen and paint’, wrote Ronald Blythe ‘with a dangerous whiff of garlic’. The Garden Museum has been majority gifted Benton End by a charitable trust and has begun work to renew the garden.
Christopher Woodward is Director of the Garden Museum. He is the author of In Ruins (2001) and was a Trustee of the Heritage Lottery Fund (2007-13).
Introduction music: The Salley Gardens published by Benjamin Britten in 1943, with words by WB Yeats. This version performed by Mark Milhofer & Marco Scolastra.
Produced by Friends of Kenwood
www.friendsofkenwood.org.uk
‪@friendsofkenwood7574‬

[@sallycarlsson3710]

This lecture and presentation of Benton End is a very pleasant end to my evening. Grateful thanks, Friends of Kenwood and Mr. Woodward.