The 2016 Verney Lecture was held in the Barley Room at the Farnham Maltings on Friday 30th September 2016.

An excellent lecture entitled “From Country House to Viceroy’s House, a journey with Sir Edwin Lutyens OM” was given by Martin Lutyens, great-nephew of Sir Edwin and chairman of the Lutyens Trust, covering Sir Edwin’s early life designing many English country houses through to his perhaps greatest role in designing and building New Delhi.

The Verney Memorial Lecture is an annual lecture in memory of Sir John Verney who in 1968 founded the Farnham Building Preservation Trust.

We applied for planning consent for our proposed alterations for the cottage in July, you can see the details on the Waverley Council Planning website, here and here. We are happy to report our application was successful and that we received permission and listed building consent at the end of August.

On the 8th and 9th September we were pleased to show 60 visitors around the ground floor of the cottage as part of the Farnham Heritage Open Days.

Photo Anne Pullinger

The Trustees’ Report for 2015 was presented at the AGM of the Farnham Trust at the Garden Gallery, Museum of Farnham on Friday 15th July 2016.

Following the formal part of the meeting, Chris Shepheard gave an illustrated talk on the Industrial History of the Farnham Area.

A further update on the Trust’s recent acquisition, Old Yew Tree Cottage in Wrecclesham.

Our appointed architect continues to develop plans for the property and we have held preliminary discussions with the planning authority but, as mentioned before, we cannot submit the formal application until the results of the Bat Survey are known which cannot be carried out before May.

We have also received the results of the Dendrochronological dating survey (the scientific method of dating based on the analysis of patterns of tree rings) which suggests construction occurred in 1551 or soon after.

To quote from the survey report,

“Yew Tree Cottage consists of two parts. The older, to the north-east, now consists of two bays, but originally it continued south-west, probably forming a 3½ bay, central-smokebay house. The original smoke bay and presumed parlour bay have been replaced by a tall parlour wing of two bays. The old part is timber framed, with jowled posts and arched braces in the framing. Unusually, there are full-height intermediate posts. The roof is halfhipped at the surviving end and of clasped-purlin construction with queen struts and straight windbraces.

We know that oak for building was almost always used “green”, (unseasoned, not having been felled and prepared until required), so construction dates can be determined in which we can place considerable confidence.”

This is a brief update on the Trust’s recent acquisition, Old Yew Tree Cottage in Wrecclesham.

We invited three architectural practices to tender for the work of restoring the house, and we have now appointed Stedman Blower, the well known Farnham firm.

The timing for the project is to submit a planning application in May 2016, with an estimated 8 months to carry out the work. We can’t submit the planning application before May because we have to include a bat survey and because bats hibernate, the season for carrying out these surveys is between 1st May and 31st August.

We have also recently taken 8 core samples of Oak from the oldest part of the house for Dendrochronological dating (the scientific method of dating based on the analysis of patterns of tree rings) and are looking forward to receiving the results early in the new year.

The Farnham (Buildings Preservation) Trust is pleased to announce that they completed the purchase in September 2015 of Old Yew Tree Cottage, a Grade II listed building in the Wrecclesham Conservation Area which is thought to one of the oldest buildings in Wrecclesham, possibly late 16th century although there is a reference to a previous dwelling on the site in 1361.

Photo Laurence Knight

Our intention is to make a full record of the construction and history of the building, to renovate the property completely and sympathetically, reflecting its listed status and then sell it again as a private dwelling house.

The house was put on the market last March, after the death of the old lady who had lived there since the 1950s, and very little has been done to it in recent years. It will be an exciting project and a challenging one. We hope to be able to find out more about the age of the building, and may be able to date some of the timbers by means of dendrochronological dating, though it is possible that the timbers are not suitable for this process. The Domestic Buildings Research Group did a limited survey in the 1970s, and they hope that they will be able to add to this during the renovation process.

The Trust’s Board has appointed a Project Group of five members to oversee the project, and we are now in the process of carrying out initial surveys and appointing an architect.

Photos Laurence Knight

One claim to fame of the cottage is that it was the birthplace of Billy Beldham in 1766, an English professional cricketer known as Silver Billy who is widely acknowledged as one of the greatest batsmen of the sport’s underarm era. There are more details here on Wikipedia.

The Trustees’ report for 2014 was presented at the AGM of the Farnham Trust at the Garden Gallery, Museum of Farnham on Friday 19th June 2015.

The Chairman opened his address with the sad news that Bob Parks, a long serving Trustee and supporter of this Trust, had passed away.

This year has been quiet on the projects front but we stand ready to act when a suitable project presents itself.

We were pleased to receive a bequest from the estate of Beryl McKay, due to her love of the buildings of Farnham. The Trust will find an appropriate use for it that she would be pleased with.

We have continued with our bursary to Sam Taylor, woodworker, who is now studying for NVQ level 3 in Wood Occupations.

On the grants front, we have made grants to The Deadwater Valley Trust for Walldown Earthworks, to the Rural life Centre in respect of their original cycle repair workshop and to St Leonards Church at Hartley Mauditt. This is in addition to our promised contribution to the publication of the book about our founder, Sir John Verney.

Our Verney lectures continued with a talk in March on the Eden Project in Cornwall, given by the co-founder architect Jonathan Ball. I was pleased to note that the numbers were up this year and look forward to the year we manage to pack the Great Hall at the Maltings.

After the Chairman’s address, there was a talk by Julian Pooley, the archivist in charge of Public Services at the Surrey History Centre.

“EVERYMAN’S EDEN”
The founding of the Eden Project, an illustrated lecture by
JONATHAN BALL, MBE, AADipl, RIBA
Co-founder of the Eden Project

Millions of people have visited the internationally acclaimed Eden Project in Cornwall, which has been called the Eighth Wonder of the World. It was created by two inspirational people, Tim Smit, the owner of Heligan Gardens, and Cornish architect Jonathan Ball, as a Millennium Project and landmark attraction for Cornwall. They had an extraordinary vision, born in the course of an amazing six-hour conversation in September 1994: to create the largest greenhouses on Planet Earth to tell the story of the great plant hunters, and to create a museum of plant history.

On Friday 27^th March 2015 we had the opportunity to hear from co-founder Jonathan Ball about the eventful six years which led up to the opening of the project, at a lecture entitled “Everyman’s Eden”, held at the Farnham Maltings. The lecture was organised by the Farnham Building Preservation Trust as the second in the trust’s new series of Verney Memorial Lectures.

Jonathan Ball, who describes himself as first and foremost a Cornishman, is a distinguished architect who was appointed MBE for services to architecture in 1992. He was installed as a Bard of the Cornish Gorsedh in 2002, served on the crew of Bude Lifeboat for 25 years and was President of Surf Life Saving Great Britain from 2001 to 2009.

The lecture also included an opportunity to see displays illustrating many of the important conservation projects undertaken by the Farnham Trust in the 47 years since its foundation in 1968.

The Trustees’ report for 2013 was presented at the AGM of the Farnham Trust at the Garden Gallery, Museum of Farnham on Friday 13th July 2014.

On the 21st March, the Trust held the inaugural Verney Memorial Lecture, an annual lecture in memory of Sir John, at the Farnham Maltings.

The lecture, given by Dr. Steven Brindle of English Heritage, was entitled “The Fire and Restoration of Windsor Castle 1992 – 1997” .