Future Events

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Wotton House and Albury Park CANCELLED – 22nd September 2020 at 10:30

Location: CANCELLED

Cost: £55.00, Members £50.00 (to include coffee on arrival at Wotton, and then a sandwich lunch at Wotton)

Book online. There are currently 2 places available for this event.

John Evelyn ( 1620-1706 ) was born at Wotton, ‘my most cherished place on earth’. The house lies in the valley of the little Tillingbourne river, west of Dorking. It has been owned by the Evelyn family since 1579, but has been extensively restructured and enlarged since then. It is now an hotel. In 1640 John’s older brother George created an Italianate garden around the house to John’s designs. Although major modifications have been made, key features of the original gardens survive, including the terraced mount and classical garden temple.
If time permits we will briefly visit Wotton Church which contains the Evelyn mausoleum.
Albury Park, with its Grade 1 registered park and garden (seldom open to the public), is just five miles from Wotton and also on the Tillingbourne It now belongs to the Duke of Northumberland. In the 17th century the estate was owned by the Earl of Arundel, a close friend of John Evelyn. Evelyn produced remarkable plans for the site which his friend duly followed, and much is still there today: extensive terracing (390 metres long!), a bath house, a semi-circular pool, and the unique tunnel, or ‘crypta’, an idea from Naples. Evelyn’s vineyards and canals were removed in the 19th century after the new owner Henry Drummond employed AWN Pugin to remodel the house. A collection of specimen trees was planted which in maturity are a serendipitous complement to the Evelyn elements.
We will glimpse the mansion - with its very distinctive Pugin chimneys - on our walk (it is owned separately from the park), and we will visit the exceptional Saxon Church.
We will be guided at both Wotton and Albury by Cherrill Sands and Brenda Lewis, both of whom were deeply involved with Evelyn when Surrey Gardens Trust marked the 300th anniversary of his death.

KGT contact Richard Stileman Richstileman@btinternet.com 07968787950

Fire, Plague and 17C London Life CANCELLED – 3rd October 2020 at 10:30

Location: CANCELLED

Cost: £60.00, Members £55.00 (to include lunch near Tower Hill)

Book online. There is currently 1 place available for this event.

This tailor-made half-day walk with guide Diana Kelsey marks the 400th anniversary of the birth of John Evelyn, and 360 years from the start of Samuel Pepys’s diary. Both diarists, who became close friends, witnessed and chronicled some of the most turbulent years of London’s history and their diaries give an insight into both public and everyday life of mid-17th C London. However, the two men and their diaries were very different. Evelyn, aware of his position at the centre of English social and political life in the 17C and friend of Charles II, was more circumspect and restrained in his commentary on London. Pepys in contrast did not hold back from recording details of everyday high as well as low life including his own philandering!
The route of this walk is necessarily based on Pepys’s life (Evelyn lived downstream at Deptford), starting where he was born, weaving through the narrow alleyways along routes that he would have known, ending at the church where he is buried. Diana’s commentary will however draw extensively on both diarists’ eye-witness accounts of the Plague in 1665, the Great Fire of 1666, and the regeneration of the City after those cataclysmic events.

KGT contact Richard Stileman richstileman@btinternet.com 07968787950

Fire, Plague and 17C London Life (2) CANCELLED – 6th October 2020 at 11:00

Location: CANCELLED

Cost: £60.00, Members £55.00 (to include lunch near Tower Hill)

Book online. There are currently 10 places available for this event.

This tailor-made half-day walk with guide Diana Kelsey marks the 400th anniversary of the birth of John Evelyn, and 360 years from the start of Samuel Pepys’s diary. Both diarists, who became close friends, witnessed and chronicled some of the most turbulent years of London’s history and their diaries give an insight into both public and everyday life of mid-17th C London. However, the two men and their diaries were very different. Evelyn, aware of his position at the centre of English social and political life in the 17C and friend of Charles II, was more
circumspect and restrained in his commentary on London. Pepys in contrast did not hold back from recording details of everyday high as well as low life including his own philandering!
The route of this walk is necessarily based on Pepys’s life (Evelyn lived downstream at Deptford), starting where he was born, weaving through the narrow alleyways along routes that he would have known, ending at the church where he is buried. Diana’s commentary will however draw extensively on both diarists’ eye-witness accounts of the Plague in 1665, the Great Fire of 1666, and the regeneration of the City after those cataclysmic events.

KGT contact Richard Stileman richstileman@btinternet.com 07968787950