Due Grottone

It's been more than a month since I last updated the blog. There seems not to have been the time, and I haven't had the energy despite there having been some things probably as much worth saying as anything else I've posted here. But there it is.

I won't add anything very pious this time. Instead here is a picture of the grotto as completed last week, first victory in my ludicrous campaign to refashion the garden in 18th-century fashion. I should Rococo, I keep saying to myself.

I'm rather pleased with this. It looks pretty much as I envisaged, once I worked out I couldn't construct the whole thing of rubble; instead the main part is brick, with sandstone slabs for the roof and a rubble arch to frame the opening and lend an irregular appearance. Eventually the grass and weeds will re-colonise the soil around (and on top) of the building and it'll look much more natural.

Sadder is the state of the old grotto at Wanstead Park in east London. I was enticed by reports and relatively recent photos of this structure, and we made a journey out East and then traipsed around the remains of the ornamental canals and pools - which takes rather longer than we anticipated. The grotto is just a wreck of its former self, and you can't even get to it. It's fenced off by a high spiked steel fence. Not too long ago it was far more tidy, but now the weeds and brambles fill it.