My wife and I moved to Shrubland in November 1950. This was the start of a very happy period of our lives. My job was in the glasshouses of the market garden department.

A couple of years on the head gardener left and I was given the sole charge of the market garden, the pleasure gardens were to looked after as a seperate unit, this was in the days of Eric’s (Lord de Saumarez ) grandmother.

Soon after the title passed to Eric’s father Victor. When the Hall was to become a Health Clinic the market garden became redundant as the glasshouses were becoming delapidated and a sale was arranged to sell them along with the market garden equipment. This of course left me without a job but I was offered the chance to restore the pleasure gardens to their former glory as they had been badly neglected and needed to be pulled into shape before the opening of the Clinic. This was a job that I enjoyed but I didn’t wan’t to do it long term. Meanwhile the walled garden was being neglected and I suggested to my wife that if we could rent the walled garden we could maybe achieve our secret dream of running our own chrysanthemum nursery. This was an exciting prospect for us when an agreement to rent was reached although my landlord at that time, now Victor ( Lord de Saumarez ) had doubts as to whether we would succeed. To prove all the pundits wrong we were determined to succeed and our venture lasted 41 years uuntil we retired in 1999.

Sandra, who lived in the garage flat when she was a schoolgirl will now know what happened to the Forsdike’s.

Cats and Chrysanthemums

To record my very happy memories of our almost 50 years at Shrubland I wrote an account of our time there. Eric who was now the present ( Lord de Saumarez ) very kindly wrote the foreword for the book which is called ‘Cats & Chrysanthemums’ ISBN 1-898-85-5 available to order at all GOOD bookshops on the print on demand system or from myself at Flat 4, Rosemount, 11 Hamilton Gardens, Felixstowe, IP11 7ET

We were lucky enough to meet many well known people who used to visit us when they came to stay at the clinic. One man in particular, Bryan Izzard, a TV producer used to visit us twice a year, he urged me to write this book, don’t just talk about he said, get on and do it. I lost touch with him before the book was published. Anyone know where he is now?

Mr Brookman and the man who knew all

After reading Janice Whittle’s memories, more names have come to mind.

I remember the Waspe family. Frank worked in the forestry department where a Mr Mackenzie was head forester. Harry Waspe and Bill Smith worked in the market garden when I first went to Shrubland. When I took charge of the market garden I don’t think those two old timers took to kindly to taking orders from a comparative youngster. Ernie Waspe was the village postman, so punctual on his round that you could tell the time by him. About that time there was a Charlie Mayhew who worked with a horse and cart keeping the estate clear of rubbish and who remembers Fred Puncher, the chauffeur. The butler’s name I think was Brookman and the cook whose name for the moment escapes me, she died three or four years ago aged 100. The farm manager around that time was a Mr Geater.

The Sorrel Horse pub opposite the main entrance to the park was a favourite place with the employees of Shrubland, a real spit and sawdust pub as Sandra described it.

Old Tom was the landlord, he was a mine of information, what he didn’t know wasn’t worth knowing. How things have changed over the last 50 Years.

I hope this will jog the memories of some of the people who knew us and the pictures will remind people of what went on within the walled garden

George Forsdike

Update 7th March 2008

I have now remembered the name of the cook, she was a Mrs Horton I have also discovered that Bryan Izzard, the TV Producer who used to visit us when he stayed at the clinic, died on the 27th April 2006.

Click on a photo for a larger version

My mother was Elsie Waspe, the fourth of eight children of Frank and Elizabeth Waspe. She married Albert Bone from Witham in 1936. My grandfather, Frank, was woodman on the Shrubland Estate and my mother went into service at the Hall at 14 years old as a scullery maid. She later worked for the Rector of Coddenham Church (Mr Purcel?) and went to Cressage in Shropshire with the family. My aunt, Joan Stockley, was housekeeper to the de Saumarez family for several years.

My grandparents lived in several different places on the estate. During the war my mother was evacuated to her parents’ home with her two sons (David & Eric) and I was born in the front bedroom of the left hand cottage opposite Rouse’s garage (now gone). Later they moved to Honeymoon Cottages. I lived in London but spent most of my school holidays at my grandparents. I would welcome any information about the Waspe family as I am attempting to trace my family tree. I remember Shrubland as a beautiful place but I had never been inside the Hall until the viewing prior to the Sotherby’s sale in September 2006.

I remember Sandra Roadnight!

I first visited Shrubland Hall in 1987 when I was in desperate need of true relaxation and de-stressing. I had no idea what to expect, having booked sight unseen. The word clinic had connotations of plastic and Formica – a ‘clinical’ atmosphere. What a surprise greeted me after driving up that wonderful drive and having the door opened onto that wonderful staircase. My stay then and in subsequent years was magical. Wonderful staff and treatments, lack of pretention (not having to get dressed up or do anything-wonderful!) Twenty years later I am looking for that magic again, but I doubt whether it can be replicated. If you know of anywhere, please let me know!

I worked at Shrublands for 29 years in the treatment rooms. I joined the staff straight after finishing my training as a beauty therapist and by the time the Clinic closed I was running the Treatment Rooms and arranging the guests treatment schedules . I really did enjoy my job but I have to say I love my life now. I don’t work as such anymore , I help Sara Szczepanski with her Detox weekends and I look after my husband Michaels accounts (Michael used to teach the exercises at Shrublands and now has his own studio teaching Pilates within the Gilmour Pipers practice in Ipswich.)

I think the thing I miss most is all the people both guests and staff. We are lucky enough to keep up with several members of staff and Michael has some of the guests still coming to his studio .

I hope this site is really successful so we will all be able to keep in touch with each others news .

Contributed on 1st September 2008

My years at Shrubland Park

In late 1938 my father Sidney Bowler (a professional Wisley-trained gardener) secured a position as head gardener at Shrubland Park in Suffolk.
Although in later life he had equally prestigious positions at Luton Hoo, Castle Hill, and Winfield House in Regents Park, I think he always considered this his most rewarding job.
In the sometimes complex hierarchy of the large private estate the Head Gardener was considered equal to the Head Butler in status, but below him in actual prestige, and at the age of 36 my dad was still considered a trifle young for such a position.
I was aged four and a half when we moved into the garden house with dad, mum and two Sisters, Mary and Joan.

My dad headed a staff of (from memory) 10, there would have been a foreman-under –glass, a kitchen garden foreman and a pleasure ground foreman, and the remaining staff would move between departments as required.
Each morning it was my dad’s responsibility to take the day’s produce up to the “Big house”, vegetables, and fruit and, when the owners were in residence—flowers.
He and the cook would then discuss the next day’s menu and requirements.
It was his proud boast that he supplied new potatoes on Christmas day, (there were a few left for us as well!)

The kitchen gardens ran like a well oiled machine, there were hot-houses, warm ones, and cool ones, one had nothing but grapevines, another just melons, all warmed from large coke-fired boilers which never went out, summer or winter.

As the garden round the “Big house” was very formally landscaped I don’t recall that there were herbaceous borders as such, but the parkland being very extensive needed constant attention and tree management, I believe there was separate staff members for this.

In May 1939 I was five, so I started School at Barham, just at the end of a very long drive, almost opposite the Barham Lodge gate, my mother took me there every morning on the carrier of her bicycle, and collected me in the afternoon, people like us didn’t have cars then, but my dad bought an old BSA motor-cycle with a two seater sidecar, and managed to knock down a petrol pump at Rouse’s garage on the Norwich road on his first day out!.

Sometimes on summer evenings we would all walk down to the Sorrel Horse Inn, and us kids would sit outside on the wooden benches and eat the large biscuits that in those days were sold in pubs before bags of crisps replaced them.

Every summer before the war Lord and Lady de Saumarez organised a grand Fête,
The gardens were opened to the general public, and, on the enormous terrace at the rear of the house, from which the grand stone staircase descended, a highland pipe band would march up and down, wearing full ceremonial uniform despite the heat of the midsummer’s day.
In the evening there were fairy lights, music and dancing on the terrace, I remember my friend Frankie (Mayhew) and I thought it all a bit sissy, but then we were quite young!

In September 1939 my family went to Eastbourne for a holiday, and when we were at Eastbourne station to catch the train back to London we saw hundreds of evacuees disembarking from the train from London, war had been declared on the 3rd.

Back in Suffolk dad joined the home guard at Barham, every window in our house was taped up and blackout curtains installed, the “phoney war” had started.

In January 1940 a new sister arrived during a very cold night, named Margaret, we were now five.
Summer came at last and the battle of Britain was raging in the south-east, but we saw little of it where we were, except for a German bomber going over trailing smoke,
We watched it disappear over the treetops, but never knew what happened.
Lord and Lady de Saumarez often entertained groups of tired RAF pilots on short leave from the battle, a little rest, relaxation and a good meal, one of these groups included Douglas Bader, and probably other well known pilots as well, they all looked incredibly young.

Sometime during that year a light aircraft crashed into a tree right in front of the “Big house”, soon the place was swarming with RAF rescue vehicles, we boys were not allowed anywhere near, so again, to this day I don’t know what happened to the crew.

One morning we woke up to see hundreds of soldiers putting up tents in the parkland, The Border regiment had arrived (I think it was the Borders, but I may be wrong),
And we had to get used to sharing Shrubland Park with the army; they were mostly young men first time away from home.
A shooting and hand- grenade range was established in “The Dentlings”, and we lads used to go and pick up bits of shrapnel and cartridge cases when there was no firing.

That Christmas my mother baked a mince pie for every single soldier, and served tea and coffee as well, plus some extras provided by the men’s mess, in a long room in a building behind our house. (I don’t remember what the building was, but I remember that evening), my mother received a lovely letter of thanks from the C/O, I only wish it had survived. (google-earth shows the house and that building still there!)

Due to military call-up, staff levels diminished gradually, both in and out of “the big house”, and I think in the end just caretaking staff remained.
And so in early 1942 my dad’s job came to an end, and we were forced to leave this idyllic place and move to a rented house in Debden Green, where dad found a job at Castle Camps airfield, this was quite a low point in our lives, but things eventually got better!

Contributions

Sandra Chapman - 2nd September 2008
Peters’ memories stirred up one or two of mine.I knew about the plane crash, someone gave my Father a ring made out of the perspex windscreen from the wreck. I don’t know what happened to it.
I remember too sitting outside the Sorrel Horse eating those big white biscuits and drinking Vimto. We had a dog which my Father used to shut in a shed opposite the bench we sat on whilst we were there, this dog had a tendency to bite the tyres of cars or bicycles, so was quite a menace. I too went to Barham school,there were about 20 pupils, aged from 5 to 11, and only one teacher. In spite of its limitations, I managed to pass my 11+ there.
I remember the walk to the lodge and main road.It was exactly a mile from our house. When I was about 14 my Father bought me a car that had broken down and been left at the pub (he paid £2.10s for it, it was a Morris 8, series E), he replaced the broken clutch, and I used to drive round the Estate on it, being private property I didn’t need a licence, and there wasn’t much other traffic to hit, so no insurance either. I eventually sold it to a friend for £10 – and they sold it onto an American serviceman based at Bentwaters, and it was eventually shipped to the U.S.A.

(alias Sir Roderic Llewellyn, Bt).

Contributed on 26th January 2009

I remember so well staying at Shrubland – no ‘s’ – when I was about five when the house was lived in by my grandparents. There was swimming in the round pond at the bottom of the 100 steps under Nanny’s watchful eye (Nanny will be 100 this June) and Coggins, the butler, much in evidence in his tail coat. Coggins laughed very easily. My grandfather used to tell funny stories in the dining room and Coggins, in the middle of serving, had to go behind the leather screen in order to subdue his giggles.

My grandparents used to live at broke hall during the summer and Saumarez Park in Guernsey during the winter. Apart from Broke Hall on the Orwell, my grandfather also inherited Livermere Park (now demolished), Nacton and other properties. These estates came into the family via my great grandmother, Jane Broke, who married the 4th Lord de Saumarez. My grandfather bought an enormous house in Grosvenor Square in the early 1930′s for about £8,000 for a 55 year lease so that my mother and my Aunt Vicky could do the debutante season. That end of Grosvenor was flattened during WW11 and I well remember as a little boy seeing the huge spiral staircase stopping short of the vanished ballroom. My grandparents moved to South Africa in the 60′s because of my grandfather’s poor health. He had to have a wounded arm amputated, and his stomach was full of shrapnel, injuries from trench warfare during WW1.

During the War (WW 11) my mother used to have a boyfriend in the Canadian Air force (called Stan, I think) stationed nearby. They arranged a rendezvous one summer’s day. As my mother waved a white handkerchief from the tower he flew around far too low blowing kisses. Unfortunately his plane, that he had ‘borrowed’ without permission from his commander, crashed into one of the Cedars of Lebanon close to the house. Estate workers (the few that were left) rushed out with saucepans, etc, to catch the precious drips of petrol. Stan was killed on a mission shortly after wards. I own a silk handkerchief he gave to my mother, with North Africa printed on one side, and the Mediterranean on the other.

I also well remember my mother telling me of how, during WW11, my mother (then a WREN lorry driver in Portsmouth) was made by my grandmother to weed the garden before breakfast when she was on leave at home! During the war they used to mow the lawns with the help of Suffolk Punch horses pulling an antequated mowing device, with their hooves wrapped in leather, because petrol was so difficult to acquire.
Also I remember her telling me of how she and her sister, my aunt Vicky (the late The Hon. Mrs Llewellen Palmer) used to work regularly in the soup kitchens in a tent in the drive of the Sorrel Horse pub at the bottom of the main drive.

For members of the family, Shrubland lost its soul once it had been turned into a clinic although, as patients, we all marvelled at its beauty. My brother David was recently buried next to my mother in the family plot close to Coddenham church. There, there is a large pink, rough-hewn column of pink granite that my grandmother had imported from Sweden (she was Swedish) for a very sad reason. My Uncle Philip had died after slipping off a rope he was climbing upside down while still at Eton and my grandmother erected this stone in his memory. He is buried there with my mother and several other members of the family. So, we will always be at Shrubland in spirit, and that is a very nice feeling.

I used to visit Shrubland Park as a young boy in the 50s. My Grandfather was born in one of the row of cottages. His father used to work on the estate, I do not know as what but I used to go there for holidays with my grandparents and remember the water pump outside the cottages and the lovely peace. I used to lie in bed and hear the wood pigeons calling and to this day (I am 60 now) every time I hear a wood pigeon I think of there. I to remember sitting outside the Sorrel Horse with my bottle of Vimto and a packet of crisps. My grandfather and I used to play cricket in the park and I remember the wooden roundhouse that I think at the time was rented to two doctors. At the back of the cottages there were some conifers and the smell when they were damp stays with me to this day. Another thing that takes me back. I remember visiting there a few years ago and the cottages I think had been knocked into one, but still looked the same outside. I loved it there and was my introduction to the beauty of the countryside and all its life. I think I will have to find somewhere I can get Vimto again. I now live in Devon.

I accidentally discovered today that Shrubland Park had been sold, and I was so saddened by the news. I lived on the estate from about 1953 until 1962. My Father worked there as Maintenance Engineer, and was very much involved in transforming the Hall into the Clinic which it became. I remember often “babysitting” Louisa and the boys when they were about 2-3yrs old, impossible to believe they are now 50, and to discover that Louisa had died.

I noticed that the farewell party had assembled at the Sorrell Horse – in my time a “spit and sawdust” local frequented mainly by farm labourers but also by the cartoonist, Giles, who was a friend of my father. When we first moved to Shrubland, there was an out building behind the stable block where we lived, called the Studio, and it was full of paintings which I believe were done by the old Lords sister ( the old Lord lived in South Africa). There was also a skating rink there too! Now all long gone. At that time too, there was an old horse at the farm, related to the famous Foxhunter. I wonder if anyone remembers that. I also recall the time when a tractor was brought into the orchard to pull down some old trees, and it practically disappeared down a hole, which turned out to be an ice house that everyone had forgotten about.

There used to be a doctor who lived in the Russian Lodge – he was a Consutant at Ipswich Hospital I used to baby-sit for him too! What happened to the Forsdykes who had the Kitchen Gardens for so long, and the Goodings who practically ran the Hall? So many memories, and now it’s all gone.

When I left Shrubland, it was to train as a nurse, and when I went to say goodbye to “Madam” as she liked to be called, she offered me a job on the completion of my training in the clinic if I wanted it. However, things don’t always pan out as you expect them to, and other horizons opened up so of course it never happened. My father though, continued to work there until his death in 1968.

Sandra Chapman (nee Roadknight)

The view from the main hall at Shrubland Hall down towards the garden, also known as the One Hundred Steps, taken in 1978

Shrubland Hall conservatory

Shrubland Hall conservatory, taken from a postcard published when the clinic first opened in the 1960s

Sandra Chapman, and Vanda Wright's mother Mary

Sandra Chapman, and Vanda Wright‘s mother Mary

Sandra Chapman in the courtyard at Shrubland Hall

A pre world war one (1909) postcard of Shrubland Hall

I am really pleased that this website is available and there is a facility to talk about dear Shrublands. How I miss the gardens, the house, the sheep and the beautiful trees! I miss a lot of the staff and guests too.

I have been lucky in that I have been able to join forces with Shrublands staff and create the “Osalo Detox Health Retreats”. These small residential stays are our version of what worked so well for so many people and for so many years at Shrubland Hall.
Osalo is also found in Ipswich, a beautiful clinic especially for colon hydrotherapy, “Circaroma” organic skin care products and organic face and body treatments.

I hope this website flourishes and lots of ex Shrublanders, both staff and guests/patients will get in touch with one another to share fond memories and past experiences.

More about Sara’s new business www.osalo.co.uk