My Family Home….’Dutch Gardens’….
Part One….
Matilda based on my Beautiful mother…
The Reports of My Family’s Demise are Greatly Misquoted!
I am writing this blog a bit prematurely, in fact it was not a story I would have under normal circumstances put on my site, but I feel my hand has been somewhat forced; by a newspaper article that went viral… About a poor old eccentric pensioner who tried to turn his drab bungalow into a Venetian Palace. You should know I am rolling my eyes right now! So here, I am going to “modify” the true tale to fit my sites demographic! The reality of my childhood is somewhat more complicated and resembles something of a black farce! I will tell that story another time… Here .. I feel the need to defend myself, my mother and brother who have once again been written out of our own history that was so ‘endemic’ to all our lives. I should point out that neither my mother or brother, have any part in this post it is strictly from my point of view … But I want to put the story of Dutch Gardens - ‘straight’ it is part of who I am and I refuse to be simply anaesthetised from the equation that is/was my life!
“Just because a picture happens to be erotic, does not make it pornographic”
Abigail’s Party by Mike Leigh
I was alerted by a family member to an article that appeared in a national paper about the house I grew up in, by the time I read the feature… It had gone viral.. ”How I turned my £13,500 bungalow in Staines into a £4 million Venetian Palace” … At first … I was shocked by the article.. I mean I know the story well .. And I never thought the old boy would sell the place as it is central to his life, his existence, nothing else matters to him apart from that house – Dutch Gardens, he has given up and lost everything to build this monument to himself… Some would rename it – The Hammer House of Horrors, particularly if you happen to be one of the neighbours! As he has been building there for the last 50 years relentlessly.. The man at the centre of this spin is Mr Trevor Wynne-Jones, how do I know him? .. He is my father… Although for various reasons we are very much estranged.. But that is another much more complex story..
“If you knew the power of the dark side .. I am your father… “
Star Wars – Darth Vader
Here is the original article which is very good by Fred Redwood for the Telegraph … I think his comment … A first class fake! Speaks volumes!
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/property/luxury/turned-13500-bungalow-staines-4million-venetian-palace/
So let me tell you a bit about the current Dutch Gardens, which as the article suggests is as far away from Italy particularly in terms of a Venice location … It is stuck in between two large towns called Staines and Slough, that is not a particularly inviting start. Granted there is water at the property more than is required at times and the River Thames runs on the other side of the road, but it is not quite the same as Venice and you rarely see a Gondola! However this so called Venetian Palace, built by a self-obsessed megalomaniac, does indeed have its own versions of Tintern Abbey, Rapunzel’s Tower and Dutch Architecture, the Gothic windows which are newly sited next to French style doors, suits of armour and paintings copied from the old masters in oils in the style of fresco’s on the walls; not to forget to mention the hideous commissioned ill proportioned copies of paintings of monumental battles with Trevor sitting at the helm… I cannot tell you how funny I find these paintings.. Everyone that worked for Trevor is in these paintings including family members, even though some requested not to be in the pictures, that made no difference to Trevor you either bend to his will or you were fired! .. If you look at them it is obvious who is in Trevor’s favour and who is not.. I should point out that I am not in any of the paintings as I am Trevor’s least favourite and he had long since air brushed me out of his life!
The current decoration and design of Dutch Gardens is eclectic to say the least, whatever takes Trevor’s fancy he builds, whatever he wants he does.. Simple.. Trevor’s every whim is indulged, he has been building at this development continuously since he purchased it in the late 1960’s.. Trevor’s passion for knocking things down and rebuilding is legendary he gets bored of things/people and so just moves on to the next thing/person… Don’t get me wrong, Trevor has an ability to see and recreate architecture, but he spins from one design to another and thus creates a mishmash of designs all fighting for their place against each other… Losing any sense of style or cohesion and more often than not he will push these design conceptions to their limit so that it no longer works. Most things became a parody of themselves.
As a teenager teetering on my high stilettos, swearing under my breath as I tried to make it unscathed to the front door without falling or shredding the leather from my shoes on the London cobbles that Trevor had laid with such undulations and gaps between as to make the cobbles impossible to walk on … Really the only thing that was lacking in this particular phase of his design creation of the Dickensian London cobble streets was his impression of Dick van Dijk singing ‘Me ol Bamboo’ as he tap dances down the walkways chasing after Mary Poppins!
“Toad talked big about all he was going to do in the days to come”
Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame
The property was purchased for £12,500, in 1968, by my young Nouveau Riche parents, they saw it as a massive stepping stone to improve on their lives and make a new base for their family, but most importantly to fulfill their dreams. And why not! They were up and coming and my mother was certainly nubile, they were taking on and embracing a new world of opulence on a scale that they had never experienced before. Prior to the purchase of Dutch Gardens, we lived in a two bedroom second floor flat in a house in Finchley, North West London. This was certainly a change in circumstances for us all.
When I first set eyes on Dutch Garden as a young child; yes it was a pretty dowdy pebble dash bungalow but it was surrounded by overgrown gardens that reminded me of the film Secret Garden, it was all very exciting and to me the house was enormous, full of dark corridors and rooms that smelt of rotting damp; it reminded me of the Alfred Hitchcock film Psycho; I speak retrospectively here as I had not at that time yet seen the film, my parents were ‘way out there’ but not that far, well not at that time anyway!! Dutch Gardens was owned by two old ladies…. I had no idea we were going to live in this place … I just saw it as another old house that my parents were looking at, it seemed to me, at the time that we spent an inordinate amount of time viewing old musty houses and having tea on the lawns with strange people, this particular tea party was not much different than the others except we had tea and sandwiches in the old ladies small sitting room.. Having got bored of the adult conversation … I was let out of the rickety old French windows into the gardens to explore on my own… My elder brother had been recently exiled off to a boarding school and so I was somewhat bereft and had to make my own entertainment…This I have never had a problem with!
The bungalow was set in the middle of the plot and there was endless paving stone walkways to follow through the rambling gardens. Eventually I came to the corner of the garden were there was an old wooden gate covered in cobwebs, it was clear that it had not been opened in many years, I peeked through the wooden key hole and there appeared to be a gravelled drive on the other side and a few houses. This drive was actually the back entrance to the property that had not been used in many years, but all was about to change and this little drive way was about to be subject to relentless building delivery lorries that would cause great controversy including punch-ups between irate neighbours and workmen, not least on one occasion a neighbour pouring boiling fat over a delivery lorry engine, which inevitable, started yet another punch up… All in a normal day at Dutch Gardens and the pattern of how we lived our lives.
After peeking through the old door, I forged my way between the perimeter fence and a thick high hedge and followed the route for a while until I could not stand being whipped in the face with any more sticky spider’s webs so I made a break for it under a hole in the hedge back into the main part of the garden. Utopia!! I came across a large collection of animal pens and even better a horse stable, every child’s dream even though all the huts and cages were empty. I could now hear my parents calling for my return, I chose to ignore their polite calls, I was not to be removed from my investigations! After a few more calls of my name,they seemed to be getting closer, I decided to continue on my quest and move forward along another path around the other side of the house away from them, I picked up speed in order to make sure that I saw as much of this property as possible, I was now running toward the most beautiful purple flowering tree with enormous tendrils dangling down the intertwining branches. In the middle of this beautiful creature was an arch and I made my way through it to find myself back at the front of the house.. I now know that this magnificent specimen was a very old and impressive Wisteria, which was kept in the gardens until the gardener over watered it one year and it died of those injuries.
“We all go a little mad sometimes..”
Psycho by Alfred Hitchcock
So, my bourgeoisie parents, having purchase their new property, went on a frenzy of major renovation. They knocked down and rebuilt most parts of the property within pretty much the same footprint of the original building but on a grander scale. They were creating their perfect dream home. And why not? The ‘new’ Dutch Gardens was in the style of a 1970 – 1980 Spanish Hacienda. I mean there is a theme going on here! How many other countries architectural influences can we include in this property? The old bungalow had an enormous ‘lounge’ situated next to the small sitting room that we had had tea in with the old ladies. The large lounge had a shiny polished wooden floor, which my brother and I made the most of before it was demolished, by sliding up and down on the floor boards, before we complained of being covered in splinters… This large lounge and its small sister the sitting room next door was kept and modernised fully, with floor to ceiling panelled windows and shag pile carpets and the ubiquitous 1970 style purpose built bar in the corner of the room… Which was slightly unusual as my parents did not really drink at the time although later Trevor became rather partial to a nice warm ‘little hock’ … Or even the odd bottle of ‘Blue Nun’ …
Beautiful photograph taken by my brother Laurie T Wynne-Jones, in the good old fashion way. My mother sitting on the edge of the pond holding my cat Dizzy.
Like all houses built near the River Thames, the building regulations stated that the property had to be elevatedfour foot above ground level, to prevent flooding … This afforded an enormous amount of interesting opportunities for me when I looked down before the floor boards were laid, I would see large rats down there dead and alive. Very exciting when you are young, at the time I had not developed enough other hobbies to keep me occupied!
The rebuild took just over three years and we would travel backward and forward from our flat in London, to this large house set in three quarters of an acre of land in the country. We never once slept there overnight as back then the commute was largely without the traffic troubles that it suffers today so the journeys were easy. Whilst I was at Dutch Gardens I spent most of my time playing by myself in the large garden mostly in the water sprinkler that my mother had brought to the house to entertain me. On occasions the workmen played with me, throwing me in the air when no-one was checking on them and I ate more than my fair share of egg sandwiches sitting in the old horse stables in the garden.
When I got too wet and cold I was despatched by my mother to change in the old pantry which was small and three steps down from the level of the main house, ignoring the rules about the water table and potential flooding! This room contained shelves with chicken net fronted cupboards in which there were old empty jam jars with their lids in neat piles and other empty dusty containers relics of a life lead before we purchased the premises, the jam jars were repatriated to my paternal grandmother who was an avid jam maker. In the restyle this small room was converted into the boiler room, were I was again despatched some years later to do my ceramic enamelling on an electric kiln, with the washing hanging over my head. Considering the electric fired kiln issue and that I was only ten, by today’s standard there seems to be a health and safety issue here... But that was never a consideration for my parents.. I was out of sight and therefore out mind! But it worked for me … Nothing was normal in my life…
While the house was under reconstruction, one of the places that I was not allowed to go near was two very large barrels in the corner of the garden, behind the garage… My name is Natalie and therefore I am naturally inquisitive and rarely to be put off the scent, particularly if I was asked not to look…I had to look … Obviously!! ..Of course I was going to inspect the barrels when no one was there to tell me off… I realised as I got a closer to the barrels, not least because of the smell… That they were the workmen’s toilets… It occurs to me now that perhaps the budget could not stretch to a Portaloo? Quite disgusting!
“It was as though the world had had a fresh coat of paint, and every heart acquired a store of illusions that made the burden of life less hard to bear.”
Clochemerle by Gabriel Chevallier
As the house transformed in the very early years, and when my brother was occasional released from his new school, we would play together on what was a building site. Once, we were allowed to go upstairs into what was to become my parents’ bedroom. We were told that we were only to stand on the joists as the floor boards had not yet been laidand the plasterboard of the ceiling below would not be strong enough to take our weight. My brother being oldersprinted across the joists to investigate the rooms. I attempted to keep up, my only problem was that I could not span the joists as easily, being much smaller. Having negotiated yet another joist, without falling through, I glanced up and thought that my brother had stepped on the ceiling boards, brilliant I thought and immediately did the same. It was instant, the ceiling gave away with the most almighty crack and I descended through it, hearing my mother scream from below as she fled not knowing what was happening… I landed cross legged on the floor and looked up to see my brother’s face peeking through the hole I had left above, it was brilliant…. Despite the trouble I was in.… This accident created yet another explosive tantrum from Trevor, not because I might have been hurt, but because I had damaged the ceiling.. Trevor was and is the most incredible tantrum thrower on a spectacular level… To see his temper tantrums is to behold.. A man who is out of control in his rage! Quite terrifying at times, albeit we were used to it… I come from a long line of over-reactors!
On another occasion early one morning… My brother and I came across one of the many motorised diggers that were used in the landscaping of the gardens. My mother is the most wonderful landscape designer as you can see from what is left of the gardens in the newspaper articles. As luck would have it some kind person had left the keys in the ignition, so my brother decided that we should take it for a spin … I eagerly clambered into the back of the digger … As my brother took the driver’s seat.. We were having great fun doing a tour of the garden at speed, enjoying the moment then my brother came up with the ingenious idea of driving the digger up one of the large mounds of sand and building gravel, obviously to add a bit of extra excitement and danger to the fun! It was going quite well until the sand gave way under the pressure and weight of the vehicle and it flipped over sending me flying into the air out of harm’s way but trapping my brother underneath… You know those moments as a child when you hope that if you shut your eyes tightly for a second or two, that when you open them again very quickly all would be back to normal and the damage you had just created would have gone away.. This was one of those moments.. But it was not to be the digger was definitely upside down and we were in trouble! My brother then emerged with a bloody nose from under the digger, but otherwise unscathed, as he got to his feet, he let out any number of swear words to illustrate his feelings on the matter… Which secretly I was very impressed by, I saw this as being the height of growing up!…. However there was no way we could rectify this problem and I can assure you that this evoked yet another ’Mount Vesuvius’ explosive tantrum from Trevor .. Perhaps fair under the circumstances! To some degrees ..
“Anyone for a bit of Denis Roussos?”
Abigail’s Party by Mike Leigh
When we finally moved in to Dutch Gardens in the early 1970’s, I had assumed we were going to live in a tent in the dining room as to me the house was so big, the dining room was about the size of our flat in London therefore a perfect fit, and I could not conceive in my mind that we would need all this extra space, apart from to play in … It came as a surprise that I had my own room, predictably painted in a revolting shade of pink, a colour I would never have chosen, then or now! … But this was my parents dream not mine… Mostly the house was finished, their Pantile Spanish Hacienda dream house was about to take wings, it was really quite “on trend” at the time, believe it or not, as my mother was involved with the design there was cohesion and a trendy flow to the house… Venice was “still” a long way off and there were no medieval suits of armour anywhere, and most importantly we lived above ground… Not in the subterranean dungeons that you see in some of the pictures in the article..
The outside rendered walls were painted white with floor to ceiling panelled windows in every room, some walls were just windows, all very on trend … It had 3 inch high white shag pile carpets in the big lounge and my parents’ bedroom, so trendy was my mother that there were shag pile carpets in their bathroom and that carpet went up the walls! .. As Austin Powers would say, Shagadelic …. Yeah Baby!!
This carpet however, later became the bane of my family’s life when I took up sewing and continually dropped pins on the floor … Never to be seen again until someone stepped on them with bare feet.. Mostly my brother was afflicted with this torture, usually on one of his exeats from school, on one occasion the pin had embedded itself so deeply into his heel, that Trevor was forced to remove it with plyers and I was banned from doing any further sewing in any areas that were carpeted.. Of course I ignored this command, as no one was ever there to inforce this new and in my view largely irrelevant rule. However the shag pile caught me out too, on one of many occasions when I sneaked into my mother’s dressing room to paint my toe nails with her red polish.. When I swapped feet to paint the other foot, I did not notice that I was wiping the polish from the first foot all over the carpet…When I saw the mess I had made of the white carpet, I came up with the genius idea of trimming the carpet with my mother’s nail scissors to hide the damage except I got caught in the act by my mother! Not so Groovy Baby!!
“Oh lovely” she says “Cos Laurence likes a drop of wine, actually. Oh it’s Beaujolais.. Fantastic! .. Won’t be a sec, I’ll just pop it in the fridge”
Abigail’s Party by Mike Leigh
My mother, a traditional follower of fashion, saw my father at this stage in their relationship more as a Roger Moore than an Austin Powers, which when I think about it is quite sweet as he is only half the size of Roger and does not really have the same physique? It must have been love as she would dress Trevor in Roger’esque style Safari suits, with the same comb over hair style, albeit Trevor’s hair was sparser… Trevor would wear this suit with his self-styled pocket watch and chain which sort of spoilt the look! My mother’s style and costumes became the stuff of magazine articles, whatever you saw in Vogue or Tatler … You would see on my mum .. A stunningly beautiful woman, with her own agenda… Most importantly they were enjoying being the ‘it’ people of Dutch Gardens and so they should have been they had worked hard to get where they were… Every weekend they would be designing the garden or a part of the house or visiting country homes or stately gardens… This was their life and Dutch Gardens was at the centre of it…
All the mod trends of the moment were applied and added to the design, including avocado suites in the bathrooms, including bidets, which were never used, well not for their actual purpose … I found them a source of great entertainment.. The sprinklers in the bottom of the pans were so powerful that they would water the whole room, subsequently I was banned from using them! As it would drench the carpets in the bathrooms… Can you imagine carpets in a bathroom now …. Yuck … All the tapsand faucets were gold plated, which very quickly discoloured and corrodedcovering the metalwith unsightly lime spots, which ultimately made them hard to use…
In the morning room next to the corridor kitchen was a glass circular dining table supported by tripod chrome legs and matching black leather chairs, which were lethal if you leaned too far back as they would slide on the tiled black and white floor sending the sitter flying … There was a lurid pink wall, and the very height of modern ‘chic’ was the 3D handmade wall paper of different sized pebble protrusions all painted in white.. My parents understandably would go mad when my young cousins came to stay and delighted in punching and squashing the protrudingpebbles… It was my job, with the aid of a screw, to pull theegg box pebbles back into shape, then the permanent on site staff would come in and repaint and fill the damage … It was also my job to repaint the chips in black and white floor tiles in the morning room, the damage being caused by the movement of thechrome chairs legs rubbing backward and forward over the surface of the tiles.
The house was full of Casa Pupo items, there was at the time a shop in London which my parents frequented, the house was stuffed with their lamps, vases, object ‘dart including metal bird cages and waist height china wild cats and snow leopards, all dotted around the house, which after parties would need to be washed down as my young cousin insisted on feeding them with cake.. In the wooden panelled dining room, which looked a bit like a set from the programme Columbo, one of Trevor’s favourite TV series at the time. In the room there was a black and white synthetic floor with inlaid black dots, it was synthetic because my mother having seen a TV programme had investigated into getting a special treatment for the floor, which involved coating the floor with a substance that would allow it to be used on occasions as an ice skating ring! This was in the period when my mother had visions of turning me into a top British ice-skater.. My grandmother had been billeted into knitting me a red ice-skating dress, which was hideous and stretched when it got wet because I kept falling over! I was forced to take weekly skating lessons, which I was extremely bad at and hated particularly as it was not my idea in the first place! … Thankfully eventually my mother gave up on this plan and turned to other ideas and formulas to plan out my future! And there is another story!
On the top of the black and white floor was a large Casa Pupo vivid green and white fringed rug, placed on top of this was the massive wooden candy twist refectory table, purchased from Harrods, which was now fast becoming their new ‘go to’ corner shop… Trevor was making money by the bucket load… My ever more wealthy parents, were making their mark on the world and Dutch Gardens was at the heart of their lives? Good luck to them I say ..
“That is the last time I play the Tart for You – Jerry” Margot – The Good Life
Later in Dutch Gardens design progress we had a full time architect who had an office attached to the garage, my mother worked closely with him whilst the never ending gardens and house works continued, changed and progressed. My parent’s lives were beginning to take different routes but Dutch Gardens continued to be their great love and perhaps the only thing that now cemented their fracturing relationship. The landscaping was now on the most epic level, with diggers and machinery excavating / creating more waterfalls and ponds, into which, my mother was introducing Koi Carp shipped in from aboard at great cost. To my delight all had to be named!
One day a selection of mature trees was delivered to the end of the road because the lorry could not make it down the road as the trees were too tall and where knocking the overhead cables out, Dinky the gardener was dispatched to collect them, however my mother negated to advise him that they were full size and he turned up with a wheel barrow instead of the fork lift truck!
Everything was on full scale.. Bling! They never stopped working on the place, it was relentless, and the hammering, drilling, digging and sawing continued; the gangs of workmen, the endless changes went on and on. My parent’s design styles were beginning to rupture and they no longer saw eye to eye, on most things. And the neighbours hated us with a passion.. At this stage it had been over eighteen years of continuous building works .. Little did the neighbours know … There were many, many, more years of building to come… Which continues to go on to this day….
Trevor was sighted in two divorce cases, by neighbours due to the stress of them permanently living next to a building site. One weekend we were barricaded into the house by the neighbours who in their frustration erected concrete bollards to blockade the delivery entrance to the house. Undeterred but furious Trevor ripped them out and threw them back into the neighbours gardens, another quiet Sunday Lunch!… But to me it was all just normal …. Sort of … On the surface at least!
See Part 2 …..
