RESTORED TO GRANDEUR
Perched high against a rugged ravine, a renovated glasshouse is home once more to a collection of delicate ferns
Hillside home for ferns
In a remote spot in the wild Argyll landscape sits a unique building. Tucked away in a steep, south-west-facing gully on the Cowal peninsula, all that can be seen of it from below is the south wall that dominates the narrow ravine. From above, it appears like a casket, clinging to the cliff side. This is the Benmore Fernery, built in 1874 at the height of a Victorian fern craze. In its heyday, it would have been filled with plants from as far away as Australia and the Americas. These plants of warm temperate regions would not survive a British winter without protection. Then, paths wound through the greenery, stairs led to higher levels and water trickled through a grotto. Built at the behest of Scottish businessman James Duncan, owner of the Benmore Estate, the fernery was regarded as a fashionable addition to estates and gardens at this period. Sadly, Duncan lost his fortune and the fernery went into decline, lying derelict for nearly 100 years. It was already in a neglected state when the Benmore Estate became an annexe of the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh (RBGE) in 1928. By the year 2000, it was a ruin. The thick rubble walls remained largely intact, but an interior arch over the entrance had become dangerous and had been taken down. All that was left of the roof were a few distorted iron hoops still in place on the buttresses. The internal landscape was exposed to the elements, including an annual rainfall of 80-120in (200-300cm). Broken wooden frames from the glazed panels lay rotting on the fernery floor. The fern collection had long since disappeared. Paths and
steps were buried in a profusion of vegetation, largely native ferns and bryophytes that flourished in the shady interior, sheltered from westerly winds. But the fernery was not without its champions. As early as 1992, its significance had been recognised when it was given listed building status, Category B, by Historic Scotland, now Historic Environment Scotland. This described it as “a rare survival of this type of building [which, although] ruinous, retains its walls and internal features”. In 2005, the RBGE commissioned a feasibility report for its restoration. Garden staff, working with the architect Mike Thornley, cleared the floor space in what was almost an archaeological dig. They uncovered the pathways, steps and old piping for the heating vents. One challenge was the roof structure with its skeletal hoops and broken glazing frames. Nothing was left of the lantern, a narrow structure that stretched between the small ornamental triangles, or gablets, at the top of the two curved gables. This made it impossible to determine what it looked like or to be sure of its function. A meeting between the architect and experts from Historic Scotland was critical in getting agreement for restoration using modern materials, rather than conservation of the original roof structure. Support from the Heritage Lottery Funding, the Younger Benmore Trust, set up by previous owner H G Younger together with garden friends and members, allowed the renovation to go ahead. Two years of hard work followed. Today, the fernery stands approximately 54ft (16.5m) high and 33ft (10m) wide. The south gable from the door step to the top of the vent ridge reaches 36ft (11m) in height and the north elevation approximately 21ft (6.5m). It was officially opened in September 2009, 135 years after James Duncan proudly took visitors round the elegant glasshouse.
Developing an estate
That first owner was a chemist, philanthropist and patron of the arts. Born in Springburn, near Glasgow, the son of a successful bookseller, James Duncan joined a sugar broking business in Greenock, on the Firth of Clyde. While involving himself in all aspects of the industry, he also studied chemistry. Inventing and patenting a unique method of sugar refining enabled him to establish his own businesses, first in Greenock and then in Silvertown, London, where he amassed great riches. He was a devout and philanthropic man, concerned for both the physical and spiritual welfare of his workers and their families. A great benefactor, by the 1860s, he was donating £20,000 a year, amounting to 20 per cent of his income, to charitable causes. In 1870, he bought the 12,500 acre Benmore Estate, to develop as his country seat. He was attracted to the peninsula setting, as it looked south towards Greenock, where he made his fortune. Over the next decade, he invested in the estate, first draining and ploughing land for farming, and planting more than six million trees on the “moorish wastes”. He developed the walled garden and extensive glasshouses, and employed Glasgow architect David Thomson to extend the main house and build a stable block and accommodation in the baronial style. In 1879, he built a large picture gallery to house his extensive collections of fine art, ranging from old masters and Raeburn’s portrait of Walter Scott to contemporary works by the French Impressionists, including Renoir’s The Bay of Naples.
Building the fernery
A fernery would have been an obvious addition. Access was from the south-west, up the steep gully on a winding path lined on each side with white quartz stones. This reached a platform at the foot of the huge south gable. The building had a rectangular design with solid walls of rubble and lime mortar. These were intimately connected to the steep landscape, such that the long wall on the east side was formed largely of the cliff itself. At the top of each rounded gable was a small gablet. This probably supported a lantern running along the ridge, the length of the building, to aid ventilation. The arched roof was constructed of glazed, wood-framed panels on semicircular iron trusses, supported by buttresses with substantial capping stones. A small door at the base of the high south-west facing gable wall faced a stone arch over the entrance passage. Winding steps on either side led up to the middle level. Here was a large bed for the fern plantings that extended over the archway. Opposite was a quartz-lined grotto with trickling water, again with steps on either side to reach the third and highest level of the fernery. Visitors followed neat paths and steps that formed an intricate figure-of-eight pattern among the ferns. The high interior walls had built-in cantilevered stones to provide
“I come from haunts of coot and hern, I make a sudden sally And sparkle out among the fern, To bicker down a valley.” Alfred Lord Tennyson, ‘The Brook’
ledges for the planting of epiphytic or epilithic ferns. The former, also known as air plants, take their physical support, but not nutrients, from other plants or objects. The latter grow on the surface of rocks. An adjacent lean-to building housed a coal-fired boiler that provided hot air through a series of underground pipes venting into the fernery at all levels. Ferns grown toward the southern, lower end of the fernery would have lain permanently in deep shade. The upper level, however, would have received direct sunlight, at least in the summer months. This was designed for sun-loving plants, such as the small South African tree fern, Cyathea dregei. In his selection of ferns, Duncan sought the advice of the director of Kew Gardens, Sir Joseph Hooker, a fern expert. Unfortunately, there were no written or visual records of the fernery in its prime, nor photographic archives or reports of the species under cultivation. They would certainly have included tree ferns from Australia and New Zealand. Duncan, who never married, had intended to leave the estate as public recreation grounds. However, he lost his fortune in the 1880s following the introduction of a German sugar bounty, a government subsidy to Germany’s producers of sugar beet. In 1889, the estate was sold to H J Younger, an Edinburgh brewer. It remained in the family until 1928, when it was left to the nation by his son, H G Younger. Little is known of the subsequent history of the fernery. It is unlikely that the boiler was kept alight under the new ownership, and the exotic collection of ferns would have soon succumbed to the cold winters.
Restoration work
More than a century later, the restoration of the fernery began. Some trees above the building were removed by garden staff and a base made at the bottom of the gully for the works to proceed. Materials were first delivered by road to the site, then raised to the level of the fernery by crane. The walls were cleaned, restored or rebuilt using traditional methods with lime mortar. The capping stones on the buttresses were replaced where necessary. The entrance arch was reconstructed and the grotto restored to reveal decorative white stone, while the steps were rebuilt. A new barrel-shaped glazed roof, with a climate-control lantern, was built using modern methods and materials. Once building work was largely complete, the crane was employed to deliver gravels and composts to the fernery so the planting could begin. Many of the ferns introduced to the restored fernery were grown from spores at RBGE, with 75 per cent being of known wild provenance. All were from temperate or warm temperate regions, with many from the southern hemisphere. They included species native to the Juan Fernandez Islands, Tristan da Cunha, South Africa, New Zealand and Tasmania. Many were rare in the wild and in need of conservation protection.
The larger tree ferns were transplanted from other sites within the RBGE gardens. Transported to the top of the gully, they were individually placed on an improvised sledge to be manoeuvred down the slope to the fernery. The garden staff created a gently winding path between beds of ferns from the valley floor up to the centrally placed wooden door in the south wall of the fernery. This gave immediate access to the dark vaulted entrance porch, where dappled light trickled in from either side. The steep stone steps were revealed, curving upwards on each side through a profusion of fern fronds to reach the broad middle level. Columnar trunks of tree ferns, dicksonia and cyathea species were densely underplanted with blechnums, thyrsopteris and todea, and filmy ferns Trichomanes speciosum, Killarney fern, and Leptopteris hymenophylloides, placed within the ornamental grotto beside the dark pool. The cantilevered stones on the walls supported creeping polypods, while the damp, exposed cliff face provided a natural habitat for cascading woodwardia. Finally, the epic work of restoration was completed and the fernery reopened. Once again, people could walk round and admire a collection of beautiful ferns as James Duncan had originally intended all those years ago.