Duffryn Gardens
http://www.communitywalk.com/duffryn_a_digital_meditation_on_place/map/1636752
"Whether we scrutinize our conundrums on analyst’s couches or contemplate them outdoors, the underlying dilemma is the same. This is aptly identified by the Zen Riddle: “When you seek it, you cannot find it.” Contemplative environments support contemplation by distracting/disorienting our focus from the “it” we seek so “it” can find us.
These places draw attention away from “it” by exposing us to unfamiliar, multi-sensorial phenomena. When we are in these places, we can open ourselves to perceive hummingbirds, quivering Aspen leaves, waterfalls, etc. that surprise and allure us into sensing awe and wonderment. Arguably, Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu’s assertion that “from wonder into wonder existence opens” best explains what occurs during this initial stage of contemplation. Artist and pioneer of the Light and Space Movement, Robert Irwin, describes what results from this contemplation as “perceiving yourself in the process of perceiving.”
Later, as a way of bringing contemplation to an end, observers may reweave their new experiences into the habitual ways they have perceived their existence. This enlarged perspective provides meaning and may give invaluable insights into unresolved issues and what to do about them".
Vince Healy http://www.asla.org/ppn/Article.aspx?id=28560
1 Buildings and gardens
Contemplation means "to admire something and think about it." The word contemplation comes from the Latin word contemplatio. Its root is also that of the Latin word templum, a piece of ground consecrated for the taking of auspices, or a building for worship, derived either from the Proto-Indo-European base *tem- "to cut", and so a "place reserved or cut out" or from the Proto-Indo-European base *temp- "to stretch", and thus referring to a cleared space in front of an altar. The Latin word contemplatio was used to translate the Greek word θεωρία (theoria). In a religious sense, contemplation is usually a type of prayer or meditation.
In the first years of the 20th century, John Cory, a prominant South Wales coal baron, commissioned Thomas Mawson, who was the pre-eminent garden designer of the time, to create the masterplan for the gardens of his new-build mansion at Duffryn. A blueprint was agreed in 1903-04 and work to transform the broad valley of a small stream to the south of the house was commenced in 1906. In Welsh, Dyffryn means a flat valley with a stream between hills, which perfectly describes the topography that Mawson had to work with.
The Cory's 52 roomed house had been built shortly after John had purchased the 2,000 acre estate in 1891 that was to be a secluded family home but within close proximity to the Welsh coal metropolis of Cardiff. John Cory had engaged the architect Edward Augustine Lansdowne to remodel the 18th century Duffryn House in 1893-4. Landsdowne had been chosen as one of a pair of architects to design Newport Town Hall in 1882. In 1889 he had been runner up in a competition to design the Cory's Butetown business headquarters in the Cardiff docklands. He had worked extensively for chapels and school authorities in Monmouthshire. and Duffryn is his only known domestic commission.
Actually, Mawson had also made a connection with Newport in 1891 as winner of a competition to design and construct Belle Vue Park . This was the town's first public park and his appointment had been approved by Lord Tredegar, the donor of land for the park. It was Mawson's first success in an open design competition and it may be that the Duffryn commission a decade later came on Landsdowne's recommendation. Belle Vue has many features typical of the hard landscaping of a Victorian public park, i.e. conservatories, a pavilion, bandstand and rockeries. The integration of hard landscaping with planting schemes for Belle View was carried over into Mawson's plans for Duffryn, which were expressed in seventeen diverse themed 'garden rooms'.
2 The Cory Family
John Cory of Duffryn was born, at Bideford, Devon, the eldest of Richard Cory's five sons by Sarah, daughter of John Woollacott, both of Bideford. Richard (1790-1882), was one of many people who flocked to Cardiff hoping to partake of a share of the wealth created from the rapidly expanding South Wales Coalfield. After trading for many years with Cardiff in coasters, Richard Cory settled in the town about 1831, opening a ship-chandler's store, to which he soon added a ship-broking business. Around 1835 he began exporting coal, first as agent and later on his own account. In 1844 his two eldest sons, John (b. 1828) and Richard (b. 1830), joined him in the business, which was then carried on under the name of Richard Cory & Sons, and from 1859, when their father retired, as Cory Brothers.
The firm's shipping and coal-exporting business steadily increased, and the universal demand for South Wales first rate anthrocite steam coal for navigation led John Cory to conceive the idea of creating a network of foreign depots in all parts of the world, one of the earliest being established at Port Said on the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869. At the time of his death the firm had in all about eighty such depots on the shipping routes to India, China, South Africa, and South America. About 1868 the firm had acquired its first South Wales colliery, that of Pentre, Rhondda, to which others, in the same valley, and in the Ogmore and Neath valleys, were from time to time added. Large interests in collieries were also acquired elsewhere and big investements made in railway rolling stock.
A year after his father's death In 1883, John Cory became associated with other Rhondda coal-owners in the promotion of the Barry dock and railway as an alternative to Cardiff, in which he afterwards held a large interest, and became vice-chairman of its company. In 1888 Cory's firm was converted into a limited company, but its entire control remained in the hands of members of the family, his three sons Herbert Beynon, Clifford John and Reginald Radcliffe becoming directors, with John Cory himself chairman of the board. At this time, John Cory is described as having properties at Duffryn, which he purchased in 1891, and Porthkerry House, near Barry. The latter had been built about 1830 overlooking a small gap in the coastal cliffs by Edward Romilly. The Romillys owned the land, which is now Porthkerry Country Park. John Cory also posessed a residence at 4 Park Crescent, Portland Place, London.
His two eldest sons set up their own estates. His first born, Clifford John, acquired Llantarnam Abbey and his second sone, Herbert Beynon became established at Druidstone, St Mellons, between Newport and Cardiff. John also had a daughter, Florence Margaret. On the death of their father the Duffryn estate was left to Reginald who lived there with his sister. It was Reginald who continued to develop the gardens at Duffryn as a plantsman and amateur botanist until he married in 1930. He died in 1933 leaving Duffryn to Florence Margaret, who died unmarried in 1936 age 79 and the estate was sold out of the family.
Then followed a chequered and uneventful history of the house and gardens until a 50 year lease was taken on the property by the National Trust in 2013 in rcognition of its importance in the history of British gardening.
The above timeline offers two educational temporal windows linking culture with place; one based on the lives and times of three generations of the South Wales Cory's, focusing on their 45 year involvement with Duffryn; Another window opens in 1997, when the Vale of Glamorgan Council purchased the freehold whilst securing a £3.25 million grant for restoration works. This marked the initiation of a programme of public access and education. From 2013 this ambitious programme has been the responsibility of the National Trust.
These two periods are described repectively as 'Land for class' and 'Land for commons' . They mark a shift from the late Victorian and Edwardian accumulation of land by individuals using the profits from the unfettered mass marketing of natural resources to the gathering of land into public ownership to be held in trust as a national resource to sustain Earth's biodiversity. These two temporal windows highlight respectively the activities of the second generation of the Duffryn Corys, which took place at the peak of the age of British economic imperialism, and the more recent international acceptance of living sustainably and population control as the two pillars of future global economic development.
John Cory of Duffryn (1828-1910): a short biography
Thomas Mawson: 'Life Gardens and Landscapes'
Design for Newport Town Hall E.A. Lansdowne (1882)
Wyndham Park: Plans for a Garden City
Imagination in Place (Spademarks)
Partnership between Vale of Glamorgan Council and National Trust