Tower and Town, July 2016

  (view the full edition)

Lloren House

Joyce's father was William Whant, who lived at 9, Figgins Lane, one of the cottages for staff at Lloran house. "He was the main gardener with an assistant, Mr Akers. The garden ran down to the river between Figgins Lane and the Ivy House Hotel. Behind the house, home to the Dr's Maurice, there were lawns and flower beds. There was a greenhouse with grapes, a filbert nut walk and a kitchen garden supplying most of the vegetables for the house. Fruit trees and raspberries grew against Figgins Lane wall. They kept chickens and ducks. Near the river was a summer house and a wilderness area where trees grew wild. A wooden bridge crossed the river to the public allotments, now replaced by the houses and gardens on the North side of George Lane."

Nick Maurice picks up the story, telling us that "Dr Walter Maurice and his wife Caroline, my grandfather and grandmother who lived at Lloran House, soon to be occupied by Rick Stein, introduced the first catalpa tree to England from the Far East which still flourishes in the garden of the 'Lower Lloran' house built by their sons Dr Tim and Dr Dick after the death of Dr Walter, when clearly Lloran house was too large for his widowed grandmother.

"'Marlborough Granny', to be distinguished from Cornish maternal grandmother 'Bude Granny', was a very keen gardener and her herbaceous borders were magnificent, as was the 'nut walk' in which red squirrels were to be found and which led you to the river where we canoed, tickled trout and paddled about as young children and watched birds' nests as the fledgling thrushes and blackbirds grew and took off.

"Then over the wooden bridge to Ducks Meadow, which was a lovely meadow full of wild flowers with a large pond in the middle, occupied by ducks, although the meadow was named after the Duck family of toy shop fame and Jimmy Duck, onetime Mayor of Marlborough."

A postscript - in the courtyard behind Lloran House is now a new development of town houses - Old Lion Court - whose occupants can still enjoy two of the splendid trees: a magnificent beech and a view of the famous catalpa.

Joyce Brooks, Nick Maurice