Future Events

Click here to book any of our future events online using a credit or debit card. If you have any questions or comments about our events, please contact us.

King's Cross transformed – 14th September 2019 at 10:30

Location: to be advised

Cost: £55.00, Members £50.00 (includes coffee and lunch)

This event is fully booked, but you may register on the waiting list in case places become available.There are currently 4 people on the waiting list for this event.

If you haven’t been to King’s Cross recently you will be amazed and delighted at how much has changed. This walk, led by the inestimable blue badge guide Diana Kelsey (who has recently led us on two sold-out tours of the Olympic Park and Hidden Gardens of the City), will show how London’s once seediest area has been transformed into one of its most stimulating and vibrant areas. The famous gas holders have become both apartments and a park, the granary has become the new home of Central St Martins, and Thomas Heatherwick has turned the old coal drops into a shopping arcade. The massive ‘hip’ businesses Google and Facebook have each decided to have their new UK headquarters buildings in the area. Our focus will be on the imaginative ‘garden greening’ of the whole area, especially the work of Dan Pearson in the beautiful informal gardens and open spaces. The tour will conclude at a lunch venue and in the afternoon you will be free to explore the wider reaches of the area which include The British Library, The Francis Crick Institute, the St Pancras Hotel, and The Wellcome Institute…or just take the train home!

KGT contact: Richard Stileman (richstileman@btinternet.com)

Great Comp and its Salvias – 24th September 2019 at 11:30

Location: Great Comp Garden, Comp Lane, Platt, TN15 8QS

Cost: £40.00, Members £35.00 (includes tea/coffee on arrival and lunch)

Book online. There are currently 3 places available for this event.

Surrounding a 17th century farmhouse, Great Comp Garden was created by Roderick and Joyce Cameron in the 1950s and has, since their deaths, been run by the Great Comp Charitable Trust and is now managed and curated by William Dyson. We will be guided by William around the seven acres of garden as he explains the history of the planting of the garden which specializes in Azaleas, Hellebores and Dahlias and thirty different varieties of Magnolia as well as exotic trees and shrubs. There is also an Italian Garden complete with ruins and temples, all hand-built by Roderick Cameron. William will also talk about his own area of particular expertise in Salvias, developed over twenty years as Manager of the Salvia nursery within the garden and his successes in exhibiting at the Chelsea Flower Show. After our tour we will have a light lunch in the Old Dairy Tearoom and are then free to continue to wander in the garden at leisure.

KGT contact: Alison Philip (alison@thephilips.co.uk)

Eltham Palace and Kevington Hall – 15th October 2019 at 10:15

Location: Eltham Palace, Eltham, London SE9 5QE and then Kevington Hall, Orpington, BR5 4EP

Cost: £55.00, Members £50.00 (includes lunch at Eltham Palace and tea at Kevington Hall. English Heritage and Arts Fund members will receive a £10 discount - follow instructions when booking online.)

Book online. There are currently 4 places available for this event.

Eltham Palace, a rare surviving moated medieval royal palace and deer park, was acquired in 1305 by Edward II, whose successors enclosed another 1,300 acres of park. Edward IV built the great hall by 1480; Henry VIII added gardens beyond the moat. Considerably damaged during the civil war, Eltham was granted by Charles II in 1663 to his financier Sir John Shaw, who built Eltham Lodge and sublet the palace as a farm. The Shaws left Eltham in 1839. Stephen and Virginia Courtauld became Crown tenants in 1933, reversing a century of decline and restoring and extending the garden. Mawson & Partners, then Seely & Paget (architects of the Cortaulds’ Art Deco Eltham Court) created gardens on the terraces surrounding the Palace and the lower dry sections of the moat, including a Japanese-style rockery, cascade and sunken garden around a pond, all within the medieval framework of buildings, remaining walls, two arms of the moat and substantial earthworks beyond this from which St Paul’s Cathedral can be seen to the west. Since 1995 English Heritage have been custodians of Eltham Palace.

Kevington Hall was bought in 1768 by a London merchant, Herman Berens. He immediately engaged Robert Taylor, the Bank of England’s architect, to design a new house. His son Joseph added the full-height bow to the south elevation and built the Doric west portico and stables after 1795. Use by troops and a primary school for some 50 years from 1940 wrought havoc to the garden, but Jonathan Jackson, whose family bought Kevington in 1987, has reinstated the southern main drive and is planting many trees to recall the views and appearance of the landscaped 18th-century park. We are grateful to him for allowing a rare visit to his family’s home.

KGT contact: Andrew Wells (andrewwells@mere-house.co.uk)