Broadway Manor Cottages

My casual interest in gardening grew after obtaining an RHS Certificate in Horticulture which then led me to a qualification in Garden Design in 2005. During my studies I studied many great British garden designers including Alfred Parsons, Gertrude Jekyll (who was famous for her herbaceous borders and greatly influenced by the Arts & Crafts Movement), Sir Geoffrey Jellicoe, landscaper Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown and Rosemary Verey to name a few. I was also fortunate to visit many of the gardens which were originally designed by these great designers, many of which are located in the Cotswolds. I now live in the picturesque village of Broadway in the North Cotswolds which was also home to Alfred Parsons in the late 19th century.

Alfred William Parsons, English landscape painter, watercolourist and illustrator was born on 2nd December 1847 in Laverton near Frome, Somerset. Alfred was the second of seventeen children of Dr Joshua Parsons and Letitia Harriet Parsons (née Williams). His father was a doctor with a keen interest in growing alpines which no doubt sparked Alfred’s early interest in plants and gardening.

Although Parsons started work in 1865 as a clerk in the Post Office after 2 years he left to pursue studies at the Kensington School of Art. Parsons went on to become well known as a fine botanical painter, engraver and painter of English rural landscapes exhibiting at various galleries including the Royal Academy (1887), the Grosvenor and the New Gallery.

Whilst living in London, Parsons shared his home with Edwin Austin Abbey and they painted alongside each other in adjacent studios. It is through his friendship with Abbey and Francis Davis Millet (Frank and Elizabeth Millet named their youngest son John Alfred Parsons Millet after both Parsons and John Singer Sargent) that Parsons moved to Broadway becoming a member of the Broadway Colony of artists in residence in Broadway in the late 1880s. Parsons also met Henry Harper through the Broadway Colony which led to him illustrating several editions of Harper’s New Monthly Magazine (Harper’s Magazine). Parsons also worked with his good friend Abbey on illustrations of Robert Herrick’s poems and supplied illustrations for Henry James’ essays on Broadway. 

Parsons’  fine watercolours for botanist Ellen Ann Willmott and illustrations for William Robinson, author of The Wild Garden, encouraged Parsons interest and passion in garden design. Parsons had always been an avid gardener and horticulturist and was once a judge at the Chelsea flower show.  Parsons went on to design several great gardens including Great Chalfield Manor, an Arts and Crafts garden near Melksham, Wightwick Manor near Wolverhampton and Lamb House, Rye, home of Henry James from 1898 to 1916. Parsons also designed several gardens in Broadway including Court Farm, home of Mary Anderson (de Navarro), Broadway Court with its wonderful yew topiary, Bell Farm home of the pianist and composer Miss Maud Valerie White and eventually his own at Luggershill.

Parsons became President of the Society of Painters in Water Colour in 1905 and full RA in 1911 on the acceptance of his diploma work, the oil painting Orange Lilies, which Parsons probably painted in his back garden at Luggershill.

Parsons died at Luggershill, Broadway, Worcestershire, on 16th January 1920.

©Extracts from Essays by DJTW Designs 2005

Broadway Manor Cottages - self catering Cotswold holiday cottages in the grounds of a Cotswold Manor House, Broadway, the Cotswolds.

The Broadway Arts Festival in June 2010 will celebrate Sargent’s world-famous painting, Broadway’s artistic heritage and the village’s link with a number of artists, writers and musicians. The Lygon family, who were bestowed the title of Earl Beauchamp in 1815, were one of the many families in Broadway’s past who were responsible for creating its rich and diverse artistic heritage. Indeed, it was thanks to the generosity and foresight of Frederick Lygon, 6th Earl Beauchamp that helped the guild of craftsmen move from London to the north Cotswolds, where the ideals of the Arts and Crafts Movement were nurtured and practised. Many of Broadway’s houses and gardens were consequently built or altered during this time, incorporating the ideals of this movement by embracing nature and craftsmanship and avoiding modern technology.

During the early 1880s, William Morris, one of the key figures in this movement, adopted Broadway Tower as his holiday retreat together with his friends Edward Burne-Jones and Dante Rossetti. It is because of Morris’s views and vision that the watercolourist and garden designer Alfred Parsons first visited Broadway along with his American journalist friend Lawrence Dutton. The short walk from the Tower, down Fish Hill to the sleepy village of Broadway with its broad high street lined with honey-coloured limestone houses and cottages with the 16th century Lygon Arms Inn at its centre, was all it took to entice them to live in Broadway and thus a colony of artists, the Broadway Colony, soon followed suit.

Writers and poets were also drawn to the village during this time. Henry James, E V Lucas and Edmund Gosse were captured by the spirit of Broadway and its ‘glimpse’ of old England and felt that here they had discovered Shakespeare’s true country. They were, in fact, benefitting from the consequences of the agricultural and industrial revolutions, when labourers left the countryside seeking better work in the towns. This, coupled with the new London to Worcester railway bypassing the village, resulted in Broadway for this short time being blissfully quiet and empty. It was this reason that enabled Francis Millet and his family to rent the empty Farnham House on the village green where, in 1885, his friend John Singer Sargent, having fled Paris following the scandal and condemnation of Madame X (portrait of Mme Pierre Gautreau née Virginie Avegno), is thought to have started to paint his iconic work Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose. The work was completed during the summer of 1886 in the grounds of nearby Russell House, where the adjacent medieval Abbot’s Grange had also been converted into artist studios.

The lure of Shakespeare also brought many thespians to Broadway, with one notable actress Mary Anderson, the first American actress to play Rosalind at Stratford-upon-Avon, being so taken by the village that she and her husband Antonio de Navarro bought Court Farm and made Broadway their home. Their celebrity status brought many more artistic types to Broadway and with composer Maude Valerie White living next door in Bell Farm, intimate concerts and great composing were hence encouraged at the top end of the High Street. Edward Elgar, another Worcestershire great also found its quiet cottages and meadows most inspirational.

Being just a short distance away from Stanway House, Sudeley Castle, Snowshill Manor, Sezincote, Hidcote Manor, Kiftsgate Court and Madresfield Court (ancestral home for several centuries of the Lygon family) Broadway can boast many more interesting stories enlightening us of its creative past: from Sir Gordon Russell learning and plying his trade, Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, Edmund Gosse and Edwin Blashfield enjoying games of tennis at Russell House, Evelyn Waugh enjoying The Lygon Arms, Sir JM Barrie’s cricket team, the Allahakberries, playing cricket against Mary Anderson de Navarro’s team of artists on the village green, JMW Turner sketching en route to Evesham and German prisoners of war painting delightful pictures of Broadway on old bits of wood. It is clear that Broadway’s artistic path has been well trodden, inspiring many a visitor along the way.

The Broadway Colony of artists will all be commemorated in the 2010 Broadway Arts Festival, along with Sargent’s friend and illustrator Frederick Barnard, whose daughters, Dorothy and Polly are the girls dressed in white smocks seen in Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose lighting Japanese lanterns with tapers at dusk. Fred Barnard and his family also made Broadway their summer retreat during the 1880s.

During the 2010 Festival the exhibition of paintings, sculpture and letters to be held at Trinity House will include a number of works by Sargent generously loaned from public and private collections including, courtesy of Tate Britain two preparatory sketches of Dorothy and Polly Barnard the models for Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose. The exhibition will also include three watercolour drawings on loan from the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery.

The 2010 Festival will also feature plays (including an original play by Hugh Brewster, Canadian author who has studied Sargent, telling the story behind the iconic painting), musical concerts, a flower festival, an Open Art Competition, an arts and crafts exhibition by the Gloucestershire Guild of Craftsmen and many other community based events.

Henry James, an American writer who settled in England and was a frequent visitor to the Cotswolds, described Broadway in 1889 as a “very old English village, lying among its meadows and hedges, in the very heart of the country, in the hollow of the green hills of Worcestershire” and that “much of the land about it are in short the perfection of the old English rural tradition”.

Broadway still delights the visitor. The geese on The Green that James went on to describe may be missing but the village’s ‘broad way’ lined with its red horse chestnut trees and honey-coloured Cotswold limestone buildings, many dating back to the 16th century with some parts of The Lygon Arms appearing to date back to the 14th century, still does not fail to charm visitors to this most picturesque English village.