The Flâneuse recently attended the Garden Museum Literary Festival, the annual celebration of gardens and books organised by London’s Garden Museum. It blossoms at a different venue each year, and in 2025 it was held at Iford Manor, near Bradford upon Avon in Wiltshire, where stands this exceedingly pretty summerhouse.
It was built in the eighteenth century, but renovated and moved to a new location after Iford Manor was bought by the architect and garden designer Harold Peto in 1899. The simple interior needs nothing more than a good book and a pot of coffee to make it quite perfect.
Speaking of which, the lovely village of Corsham was only a few miles from the festival, and it has excellent coffee shops as well as a great independent bookshop. The Flâneuse picked up the new book by an author she greatly admires – Jenny Uglow. Her latest work is A Year with Gilbert White: the First Great Nature Writer, and White’s charming hermitage, as temporarily inhabited by his brother, is featured.
Of course the main attraction in the village was Corsham Court, where the many beauties include this Bath House. The perfect little building was originally built by Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown in the 1760s, with further gothic ornament added by John Nash around the turn of the eighteenth century.
Back at the festival, the excellent speakers included Cath Kidston, who sold her chain of shops and is now producing a range of perfumed goods inspired by her collection of scented geraniums. Coincidentally, as the Flâneuse travelled to the festival she received the newsletter of the Faringdon Tower Trust containing a pelargonium pronouncement. The trust cares for the tower built by Lord Faringdon in Berkshire (although it is now in Oxfordshire) in 1935. The newsletter announced that the acclaimed nursery Fibrex has created Faringdon Folly, a pelargonium in the same vibrant pink that Lord Berners dyed his pigeons. It will be available in 2026.
The Flâneuse is taking a break and will be back with a folly story in two weeks. The plan is to relax – which brings us nicely back to Iford Manor, and this verdant spot where one can sit back with a cuppa after a busy day.
Thank you for reading.
