The Bothy at Burderop. Or the Bothy at Burderop estate to be more precise. The bothy and the walled garden once comprised part of the Burderop Manor estate – but were sold as a separate entity some years ago.
Now, if you’ve been paying any attention at all to my literary output of the last few years, you’ll know that the publisher’s brief with Swindon in 50 Buildings didn’t allow me to write any words about anything in the wider borough. So I’ve used this Swindon in 50 More Buildings series to make some small redress to that position. Thus, on the Oxford side of Swindon, in Highworth, I’ve done St Michael’s and All the Angels (greedy!!). And the Old Post Office. And on the Wroughton/Wilts side of town we’ve got Pavey’s Mill in Wroughton and now this bothy. Having never come across a bothy and with the work that Jules and Mark are doing in the walled garden being so fantastic, I felt it deserved a place in this series.
In the walled garden that once belonged to Burderop Manor, the bothy is going to make an unusual and terrific home. A simply delightful couple, Jules Gilleland and Mark Wheeler, are converting it into a dwelling for themselves and their family. Within this wonderful walled garden it will from part of a wonderful enterprise. See more about the bothy gardens and the couple’s plans for it here: https://swindonian.me/2024/08/30/introducing-bothy-gardens/
2024 – The bothy at burderop walled garden undergoing restoration
What is a bothy?
You may well ask. It’s a good question to which there’s more than one answer – but both relate to a place of shelter.
So, in the first instance a bothy comprises a basic shelter often found in remote mountainous areas. They’re there to provide shelter to anyone out roaming caught short by the unpredictable and dangerous weather of such areas. Then in the second, and this relates to our building, a bothy describes basic accommodation often used for gardeners or other workers without the status of the head gardener. He’d have a home of his own elsewhere on the estate.
The Burderop bothy
Grade II listed, and derelict for well over two decades, this stone bothy dates back to the 1730s. It’s now undergoing sympathetic restoration by Jules and Mark.
Jules outside the bothyWell-worn bothy stepsAn ancient stone wallBothy interior
The main focus of this post is of course the bothy. But the walled garden is so incredible I can’t leave without showing a few photos of it. Bear in mind that it’s all a work in progress.
View of garden with Burderop House in backgroundWrought iron gate – isn’t it splendid?
Thomas Calley
Plaque in one of the walls in the walled garden bearing the initials TC – Thomas Calley
For a time, the Burderop estate bore the name, Okebourne Chace. Here the Calley family lived for over two centuries. In 1649, William Calley served as High Sheriff of Wiltshire. Then, in 1807, Thomas Calley held the title.
Thomas marred Elizabeth Keck, daughter of Anthony James Keck of Stoughton Grange. The pair had a son, James Calley. He sold the estate to John Parkinson, who held it as trustee for the Duke of Wellington.
Also owned by Thomas Calley and his wife, were the estates of Broad Hinton and Salthrop House. 1860, saw the second Duke of Wellington sell them to Anthony MS Maskelyne of Bassett Down.
Given the official title Burderop Manor in the 1300s, the house came to Hyde Abbey as a religious building. But it returned to the king in the 1500s who then gave it to Sir John Bridges.
It’s believed that Elizabeth I visited the manor house in 1592. Now, she visited Lydiard House so this may well be true. Anyway, in 1619 a wealthy silk and cloth merchant by the name of William Calley bought it.
The manor house then stayed within the family until 1977 when engineering company Halcrow bought it. They left the site in 2018 when developers City and Country obtained planning permission to erect 57 executive homes.
Malmesbury Town Council has signed an official friendship agreement with the Ukrainian city of Cherkasy. Its aim to cement a growing relationship of support and mutual respect.
Malmesbury mayor, Cllr Phil Exton, signed the formal agreement in an online ceremony at the Town Hall on August 23. That being the eve of Ukrainian Independence Day. Signing it with him was Cherkasy mayor Anatoli Bondarenko.
Witnessing the event were special guest including:
Deputy Lieutenant of Wiltshire Angus Macpherson MBE
Cllr Gavin Grant, Malmesbury Stands With Ukraine support group convenor
Julia Bowen Malmesbury & District Twinning Association chair
Reverend Oliver Ross of Malmesbury Abbey and …
… Great Somerford residents Natasha and Brendon Ball. Natasha comes from Cherkasy and was translator for the ceremony. Both are active members of the support group.
Malmesbury Links to Ukraine City – Pictured (seated, left to right) Reverend Oliver Ross, Deputy Lieutenant of Wiltshire Angus Macpherson MBE, Malmesbury mayor Cllr Phil Exton and Malmesbury town clerk Claire Mann.
A bond formed
Thus we’re delighted to create a more formal friendship agreement with this city community.
Cllr Exton said: ‘Our bond with Ukraine in general and Cherkasy in particular has grown since the war began two and a half years ago. Thus we’re delighted to create a more formal friendship agreement with this city community.
It’s our hope to strengthen those ties and offer support to our friends in Cherkasy as they continue to deal with the terrible effects of this illegal war.’
Malmesbury has shown itself to be supportive of Ukraine since the Russian invasion. There’s been two midsummer festivals and festive services in Malmesbury Abbey. Further the town has fundraised through cake sales and quizzes. And have donated more than £20,000 to support the city’s main hospital.
Mayor Anatoli Bondarenko said: ‘Such support is more than words. It’s concrete actions that inspire and unite. Especially today, when Ukraine fights not only for its freedom, but for the freedom of all Europe.
Following the official signing, on Ukraine’s Independence Day (August 24) a civic reception took place at Malmesbury Town Hall. All to show continued to support to Cherkasy and all Ukrainian people.
Malmesbury local support group invites all local hosts and Ukrainian guests to join its Facebook group Malmesbury Stands With Ukraine to keep in touch with local events.
Cherkasy
Cherkasy is a city of around 260,000 people which sits around 120 miles south of the capital of Kyiv. It’s on the banks of the Dnieper River and its history dates back to around 1200 -but could be further.
The Dementia Bus run by training2care visited Swindon’s civic offices this week. So I popped there to check it out and to have a chat and see what it’s about.
The Dementia Bus
In the simplest of terms, visitors to the bus get a ticket to ride into the minds of those living with dementia. The bus is a simulator.
The training2care website explains the point of this worldwide method with scientific and medical provenance. It gives a person with a healthy brain an insight into what dementia might be like. It allows delegates to enter the world of the person. And then, further, to understand the simple changes they can make to their practice and environment to improve the lives of those living with dementia.
The bus – well buses (there are twelve of them – travel the country to places of work and business. To fund it , Home Instead sell tickets to the ‘delegates’ attending the sessions on the bus.
From what I saw of it, it appears to be an excellent and …vital … offering.
The origins of the process
One Professor PK Breville invented this process of insight 25 years ago, in the USA. It’s owned by a body called Second Wind Dreams. Training2Care are the UK partners and pioneers of it in this country.
Research by Ulster university has proven the virtual dementia tour to change practice within 95% of delegates. Further it improves knowledge in 97% of delegates and improves outcomes for 100% of clients.
Over 200,000 people in the UK take the benchmark dementia tour per year. It’s now been commissioned by:
18 NHS trusts
4 HSE trusts
Care homes
Nursing homes
Police and prisons
Ambulance services
Universities and colleges
Councils
CCGs
CQC
Electricity and water companies
About dementia
The Alzheimer’s Research Society tell us that dementia is not a disease in itself. Rather dementia is a word used to describe a group of symptoms that occur when brain cells no longer work as they should. This failure happens within specific areas of the brain. And that can affect how one thinks, remembers and communicates.
The all-too-familiar Alzheimer’s disease is the most common cause of dementia. But there are other types. And it’s possible to have more than one type of dementia at a time. For instance, Alzheimer’s is sometimes seen with vascular dementia or dementia with Lewy bodies. You might hear this called ‘mixed dementia’.
The Alzheimer’s research website features nine different types of dementia. But there may be as many over 139.
Having written about Desmond Morris way back and featured the sculpture of Diana Dors in my series about the West Swindon sculpture walk, I figured I ought to do a small piece with a bit of focus on Swindon’s very own screen siren herself – as opposed to the sculpture of her. The reason I mention Desmond Morris here is that, in their youth, they were close friends for a while.
I’m the kind of girl that things naturally happen to. When they don’t, I give them a push’.
Now I’ve been in Swindon for thirty+ years. Yet I’ve still not quite got used to the fact of living in the birthplace of someone so familiar to me from films and TV viewed during my childhood. Who knew that, back in Whitwell and watching Miss Dors in the TV sitcom Queenie’s Castle, I’d one day live in the town of her birth? Ditto with XTC for that matter. And Gilbert O’Sullivan – whose LPs I still have. And Rick Davies of Supertramp fame. Anyone else detecting a theme here?
Diana Dors Swindon Siren – sculpture of Diana in West Swindon
A blue plaque above the Dors
Back in January of 2017, the Swindon Heritage folks installed a blue plaque on 61/62 Kent Road in Old Town. The address had, as the Haven Nursing Home, served as the birthplace of the infant Diana.
Now, I’ve had a few surreal experiences during my years in Swindon. But the sight of a metonymy for the American dream, a candy pink Cadillac, on an Old Town street has to be up there.
Pink cadillac owned by Diana Dors
Shepperton Studios gave the car to Diana and it once bore the registration DD200. It’s now owned by Mendip Cars and is available to hire. Just imagine driving around in the Hollywood sunshine in such a car… *sigh*
Immortalized in bronze
It goes without saying that Diana is immortalized on celluloid and in hundreds – nay thousands – of photographs. But she’s immortalized in bronze too. The Swindon collection has in its possession a bronze bust of Diana, sculpted by artist Enid Mitchell. But that’s not all.
One of the sculptures on the West Swindon sculpture walk is a fittingly larger-than-life bronze edifice of the larger-than-life character that was Diana. Entitled ‘Diana Dors – Film Star’, the statue depicts her in a slinky evening gown with fur stole, as she appeared when she starred in the 1956 crime drama, Yield to the Night.The work of artist Jon Clinch, it stands outside the cinema complex at Shaw Ridge. In 1991, David Putnam and Diana’s son, Jason Dors-Lake, performed the unveiling. See the image above.
A literary alter-ego
Anyone familiar with Jasper Fforde’s Thursday Next novels will know that R Diana has another identity there as Lola Vavoom. Although even larger-than-life than the actual sculpture and in a different location, Lola Vavoom, in Fforde’s 7 Wonders of Swindon, is at once recognisable as Diana Dors.
But … who was Diana?
As we’ve seen, Diana entered the world at the Haven Nursing Home, on Kent Road, on the 23rd October 1931 the only child of Mary and Albert Fluck.
A difficult delivery, late in life, that almost killed both mother and baby, determined Diana’s mother to give her daughter everything she herself had yearned for. And the opportunity to do everything she herself had dreamed of. Thus, she heaped upon Diana clothes, toys and dance lessons. And private education.
When the time came for the young Diana to go to school, her mother went against her husband’s wishes and sent her to a small private school called Selwood House. It’s no surprise that Diana would write the names of film stars in the margins of her text books rather than concentrating on her studies. It’s reported that her father raged over her lacklustre school reports but her mother always defended her.
Diana grew up fast – in every sense. By the time she turned twelve, she looked and acted much older than her age. There’s no doubt that the hours she spent studying actresses on screen and then emulating them had quite some influence on her early maturity.
Of her physical appearance, Diana said: ‘The figure was fabulous, but my face was never much, little eyes and lips like rubber tyres, I did well because I was the first and only British blonde bombshell.’
Diana desired no less than to go to the USA and Hollywood and to stake her place in film history. Her first step to achieving that ambition came when, aged 13, she achieved a good placing in a local beauty contest. That led to her being offered a role in a drama group.
The Rank organisation
The age of fifteen saw Diana sign a contract with the famous Rank organisation. Whereupon she joined J. Arthur Rank’s ‘Charm School’ for young actors. Subsequently she appeared in many of their films. Other famous names to emerge from Rank’s Charm School include Petula Clark, Claire Bloom and Christopher Lee.
Although Diana disliked the Charm School she got more publicity than many thanks to her willingness to be photographed in glamour shots and attending premieres. Shrewd as well as talented then.
An August 1947 article cited her nickname as ‘The Body’.
Said Diana: ‘I was the first home-grown sex symbol, rather like Britain’s naughty seaside postcards. When Marilyn Monroe’s first film, the Asphalt Jungle, played here, a columnist actually wrote “How much like our Diana Dors she is.”.’
From Fluck to Dors
When it came to the signing of contracts, in agreement with her father and from a suggestion by her mother, she changed her contractual name to Dors. That being the maiden name of her maternal grandmother. Dors later said of the name change:
‘They asked me to change my name. I suppose they were afraid that if my real name, Diana Fluck, was in lights and one of the lights blew ….’
Despite and because of, the arguable handicap of her looks and physique, Diana Dors enjoyed a long career in films and TV. One in which she demonstrated, in no uncertain terms, that she was far from being a dumb blonde and that she could actually ACT. Indeed, as the piece about her on the Swindon heritage blue plaques website states:
‘She was more than a woman who exuded her sexy side, she was a fine actress as her films showed. As the 1960s turned into the 1970s, she began to play more mature roles with an effectiveness that was hard to match. Films such as Craze (1974), Swedish Wildcats (1972), The Amorous Milkman (1975) and Three for All (1975) helped fill out her resume.’
There’s no question that Diana fulfilled her youthful desire to have her name blaze bright in Hollywood’s lights.
In 1985, not long after filming Steaming, Diana received a cancer diagnosis. The siren of Swindon died, aged fifty-two, on May 4th, in Windsor, Berkshire. And the nation lost a unique piece of its culture.
Introducing Bothy Gardens. A couple’s vision to re-create a modern version of a walled garden and a Grade II* listed Bothy on the outskirts of Swindon is taking shape. Jules Gilleland and Mark Wheeler, AKA ‘The Plant Hunter’, are investing their savings and lives into a horitcultaral enterprise. They’re turning a forgotten Georgian walled garden and its historic bothy, into a vibrant haven of creativity, nature, and heritage.
Bothy gardens are located on the edge of the Burderop estate outside Chiseldon, near Swindon.
Greenhouses
Flood plant beds and …
… nurseries for rare plants, including orchids, a garden library, and an atelier/classroom. After years of meticulous planning and waiting, this ambitious vision is now taking shape. It’s been a long journey for the couple who bought the site in 2021.
Dream location
‘This site is our dream location for our lives together,’ Jules said. ‘Mark is the mastermind behind the plants. He’s an award-winning horticulturist with a reputation that precedes him. As for me, I’m an established designer with a huge passion for art and design. That includes painting and creating spaces for learning. The Bothy Gardens will combine our lives and passions alongside a wholesale plant business.’
The bothy is a building that forms part of Bothy Gardens. The term comes from the Georgian and Victorian eras. Back then, such buildings, usually attached to a walled garden, were the humble homes of so-called ‘Bothy Boys’. They worked, often in poor conditions, to maintain and look after the greenhouses, gardens and grounds of stately homes. They were servants and didn’t have the status of the head gardener. He’d direct their daily tasks and would have had his own property within any estate.
In this case, the bothy fell out of use for many years. When Jules and Mark purchased the property, it had lain abandoned for over 20 years. The bothy will become their dream home. And the surrounding gardens will undergo restoration to their former glory.
The Victorian greenhouse sat marked for demolition. It was on the brink of collapse, tangled in vines and brambles, with a pair of unruly fig trees bursting through the shattered glass. But, where others saw ruin, Jules and Mark saw potential. As we speak, the greenhouse is being restored. It’s destined to become both Jules’s creative studio and a sanctuary for propagating rare orchids. But that’s merely the beginning.
To get to this point where we can now start to plan the future of Bothy Gardens has required so much hard work,’ Jules said.
Introducing Bothy Gardens – Jules and Mark
Emotional investment in introducing bothy gardens
We’ve put our hearts and souls into this project,’ Jules said. ‘And we’re committed to preserving the heritage of this place while infusing it with new life. We want to share Bothy Gardens with others who share our love for gardening, art and the simple joys of nature.’
Mark already has an established plant nursery in North London but has always dreamed of owning a walled garden. He’s well known in the gardening world for his encyclopaedic knowledge and love of plants. In particular, rare breeds/species, such as:
Schefflera Rhododendrifolia (Umbrella tree),
Ruscus Hypoglossum (spineless butcher’s broom) and …
Salvia Oxyphora (Fuzzy Bolivian Sage)
Vision
My vision for Bothy Gardens extends beyond restoring a historic space. It’s also about creating something unique. A living legacy of rare and extraordinary plants,’ Mark explained.
‘I’ve spent years collecting and cultivating plants that are often overlooked or forgotten. Here, within the walls of this garden, I see an opportunity to build something that will outlive us. A sanctuary where rare species can thrive and have future generations appreciate them.
It’s about more than a business. It’s about preserving and sharing the beauty and diversity of the plant world with like-minded enthusiasts. I want Bothy Gardens to be a place where people come to learn and find inspiration. And to leave with a deeper appreciation for the natural world.’
Jules is an accomplished designer who’s been running her company, Turtlewings, from Brussels, Belgium, for many years. With a background in design she has a passion for creating spaces that inspire wonder and well-being. In 2014, she founded Think with Things after winning the Open Education Challenge. That earned her a spot as one of the top seven EdTech companies in Europe. Now, Jules is thrilled to bring both Think with Things and her design studio, Turtlewings, to Wiltshire.
Jules Gilleland in the Bothy Gardens on the Burderop Estate, Chiseldon
Wonderful Wiltshire
The couple, who met over six years ago in Brussels, are eager to contribute to Wiltshire’s creative and cultural scene.
‘I adore the English countryside,’ Jules shared with a smile. ‘It takes me back to the farmlands of Iowa where I grew up. But unlike Iowa, you have these little villages and every turn reveals a scene straight out of a postcard. After 24 years in the bustling city of Brussels, I’m more than ready to reconnect with my roots and live in the countryside. I want to cultivate a space that blends English charm with the traditions of Iowan country living. Like my mother and grandmothers did.’
In the spirit of community, Jules and Mark recently opened Bothy Gardens to volunteers for four days a month. That came after many locals expressed an interest in discovering more and learning from the couple after following the Bothy Gardens blog and Instagram feed. Jules posts often about their work and journey so far.
By the spring of next year, she hopes to be running her first art & garden classes on the site for small groups. To find out more about the volunteering opportunities and to register an interest in upcoming classes, visit https://www.bothygardens.com/
