Plan for additional ground at St Giles Hill, Winchester by HE Milner 1894 courtesy of Winchester City Council.
In 1894, Henry Ernest Milner was engaged by Winchester Corporation to provide a design for part of St Giles Hill Park nearest to the city. H E Milner was a well-established, leading landscape architect based in Westminster, London. In 1890 he had published The Art and Practice of Landscape Gardening. He was second generation in the business of design, his father Edward Milner having been apprenticed to Joseph Paxton and having then gone on to design gardens such as The Pavilion Gardens in Buxton and projects such as supervising the re-erection of the Crystal Palace when moved from Hyde Park.
H E Milner’s plan produced for Winchester is well thought out taking in the topography and possibilities, but it would be deemed superficial and inadequate today when multiple drawings, construction drawings, planting plans, project schedules and subsequent management plans and detailed costing would form the set of materials for a project. In Milner’s plan we have little more than would be considered a design concept. It is nonetheless not atypical of the times.
The plan, for instance, is even lacking the compass rose showing cardinal directions, though someone has written N and S in pencil on the plan held in the Archives to help them interpret it. This may not have been a problem for the Mayor and councillors of the time but orienting this plan to the present day is a little more difficult, so let me help. More or less the left side of Milner’s plan is North and to the right therefore South. This makes the top East and the bottom West. The mnemonic “Never Eat Shredded Wheat” comes in handy here. (I eat Bitesize Shredded Wheat every day so I don’t espouse practising the mnemonic but it is useful.)
Let’s interpret the plan to what we recognise today. Starting at the bottom you will see Morn Hill Road named. This is the road which today leads up the hill from the mini roundabout by The Chesil Restaurant and heads off to Morn Hill, Magdalen Down and Alresford. In signage terms today from the mini roundabout firstly we have Bridge Street and after it turns left up the hill it is signed as Magdalen Hill and later after turning right beyond the junction with Blue Ball Hill and just off to the left of Milner’s Plan it becomes signed as Alresford Road. This means that for Morn Hill Road one should read Magdalen Hill today.
Image above: Blue box represents the approximate area covered by H E Milner's original plan. Crown Copyright and data base rights: Winchester City Council.
On the bottom right of the plan the road/path heading West-East from the start of Milner’s signature to the top right of the plan is that between the block of St Swithun’s Court today, depicted by a blank square on Milner’s Plan and the properties to the right (South) named Pipe Kiln Court, Beeching House (a great name with a nice nod of irony, by the way) and Prospect House today. These properties are just blank on Milner’s Plan as outside the scope of his proposal. This route is the one currently signposted to the St Giles Hill viewpoint and is the most direct and, with every year passing as any local person will tell you, is also as the steepest ascent to the top of the Hill from the city.
On the plan you will see the old mortuary is labelled. The access gates to the mortuary are now bent and chained with the route to it behind St Swithun’s Court well overgrown with brambles. The mortuary itself has long since gone.
Milner depicts another building in pink on the plan but without any label. This building was Prospect Cottage, part of the overall gift by Lord Northbrook. This, too is no longer present with dense undergrowth currently obliterating any sign of it.
The main entrance to the Park area designed by Milner and mentioned in his short letter to the Mayor accompanying his plan is about 70 feet (21m) up the hill of Morn Hill Road (Magdalen Hill, today) from the route signposted today as described in the last paragraph. It is most understandable that Milner proposed a much more elegant entrance to the Park with a sweeping, more serpentine and gently ascending route. The proposed entrance route was more appealing compared to an entrance towards the mortuary rather than towards an elegant park for recreation. Milner, you will see was determined to hide the mortuary, and the other building on site from sight with copious screening planting.
The curved entrance pathway joins the pathway that then wiggles more or less North-South following the contour somewhat. In his letter Milner notes that the “natural formation of the ground” is somewhat deterministic to routes but even though there may well have been a pre-existing path hereabouts, Milner no doubt proposes the curvaceousness associated with parks where such non-linear approaches are preferred over straight lines. Curves tend to lend themselves to leisurely perambulation over more direct routes which are generally approached at greater pace towards a destination.
The handwritten letter to the Mayor accompanying the drawing outlines the thinking behind the plan and provides the costings all in less than 350 words. To return to my earlier point, this is quite amazing. Today such documents would form a pile of papers and not that which might be covered easily on one side of A4.
It is clear that Milner has only been commissioned to design a small part of the Park that we know today but he acknowledges that there is an ambition for the Corporation to obtain land mainly to the East as we head towards the top of the Hill that we recognise today. Hence, he proposes a spur path heading South East to adjoin pathways outside of his planned area where he depicts pathways by dashed edges. The other very short spur off to the North West to the left of the plan is to property to the left of the plan in and beyond the area in blue grey which is outside the planned and to be fenced off park area. There is a disused gate through the railings here today.
Regarding planting, the plan seems to show some small scale ornamental planting in two areas either side of where the paths intersect but otherwise we have mainly clumps of trees depicted with gaps for vistas and of turfed grassland, the fashion then being that of control rather than than more natural approaches taken today.
The entire planting scheme is described in one sentence in that it “should consist of flowering trees and shrubs, suitable for the site and soil”. Again, compared to today this is jaw dropping in its brevity and sadly doesn’t provide the sort of detail that one would have liked. On the ground nevertheless we do have some record of tree placement and type by identification though some trees will have come and gone and a lot of more invasive types entered the fray. The holly fringing the clumps today for instance will no doubt have been spurred on by bird droppings.
What is most pertinent is Milner’s use of the term flowering trees. Here the reference is probably to the planting of trees other than conifers and therefore more trees of a deciduous nature. The use of Corsican Pine and Yew, for instance, as in other parts of the Park is a separate matter still to be investigated further.
On the plan next to the fence a covered seat is labelled by Milner and is referenced in his letter. This seat has long gone but its position was perfect with a great view to the city between the framing clumps of trees. Today there is a seat further along the path side with a view masked by trees.
Given the sweeping generality of the plan the answer to making it happen is that Milner recommends “that the corporation employ one of my skilled foremen to superintend with local labour under his control”. With such a generalised plan offered there could be little choice to make this happen as envisaged by the designer other than to have the project led by someone who largely employs their own intellectual property and experience as so little is committed to paper.
Perhaps the most staggering difference from a tender response that one would see today with all its detailed specifications, spreadsheets and terms, conditions and caveats is the way that the way that the cost is conveyed. “Cost including unclimbable iron fencing enclosing the area with entrance gates, forming undulating ground, cost of trees and shrubs and planting, making and asphalting (tar) walks, turfing and generally finishing according to plan at £490”. That would be over £80,000 in 2023 just based on the inflation and not taking into account how specific elements might have inflated.
Milner’s drawings made in December 1894 with his letter dated 31 December 1894 would have arrived early January 1895. The Recreation and Grounds Committee agreed to the plan on 10 January 1895 which is an incredible time frame compared to today. They even noted urgency in the Minutes of the Committee as work was to start at once “to provide labour for the unemployed during the present severe weather” with the costs noted as to be simply included in further estimates of Council spending.
By the end of January work commences with Milner writing to the Town Clerk on 21 January 1895 to say that next Wednesday one of his best men would arrive to superintend the project and was to be paid £5 per week and £3 per week for lodging and railway fare, “beyond which there was no charge”.
Milner’s letter included all materials most of which would have been supplied locally, including the fine gates and fencing of this area still present and made at Jewell and Sons Iron Foundry in Winchester that were not seemingly removed for the war effort. However, supervision and labour cost was in addition to the £490 for materials. The costs of this labour could have been as much as materials and so when added up at today’s cost the overall costs would have been £82,000 and considerably upwards. How different, then. In 1895 a merest of outline designs was submitted by a single supplier and a subcommittee nodded through a big budget expenditure about a week later for a project commenced less than three weeks after that.
Fast forward to today and this Milner designed section of the Park is just one small part of the Park. Much has changed and although I will move on to further research both via the archives and by observation on the ground, I think this small Milner designed section of the Park is the part we may end up with most knowledge about. In addition it is part of the Park where restoration to its original intention is a strong case for tree scape and viewpoints being re-established. This part of the Park could be the most elegant and formal rather than a part somewhat by passed. We may not have original drawings for other parts, where I believe there isn’t so much evidence of Milner’s hand, but we will see.
In other parts of the Park the pathways are more practical, sometimes informal and less curvaceous. The original planting is less formal. Coniferous trees such as Corsican Pine and Yew have been employed. This differs from Milner’s work in the Northwest corner of the Park that we have been considering from his plan drawing and letters. Elsewhere in the Park there are nonetheless some superb compositional elements such as using distance, space and the borrowed landscape. Viewpoints to St Catherine’s Hill and the City are superb, for instance. All in all, some parts of the Park will benefit from restoration but other parts need to be viewed from twenty first century users and thinking whilst anticipating and bearing in mind the need for planting relevant to a rapidly changing climate.
Image of H E Milner's original designs for St Giles Hill: Winchester City Archives, Hampshire Record Office: W/C5/9/29
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