DOI issue:
Nr. 105 (November, 1905)
DOI article:Ashbee, Charles R.: On the Dromenagh Estate at Iver Heath
DOI Page / Citation link: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.26961#0067
The Dromenagh Estate
the light of a trusteeship; it is so much saleable
stock to him. The tenant gets a poorly-built
house at a stiff price ; the whole estate is badly and
ignorantly laid out, and every interesting or beauti-
ful or historic feature, every nice old house or
quaint piece of handicraft, every tree or natural
feature, is destroyed. No System is better devised
for sacrificing the past and the future to the imme-
diate wants of the present.
At Dromenagh we are proposing to try a rather
better plan, and we are seeking to do what has
been done on some old-fashioned English estates
before the glorious period of “commercial develop-
ment ” stereotyped the present System.
We have a landlord who is in sympathy both
with the more dignified needs of his estate and the
practical requirements of his tenants, and we pro-
pose to treat the whole estate as a unit capable of
being developed before all things as a thing of
beauty.
It is, wre consider, not necessary to have so
many middlemen for purposes of “ development,”
and we hope to prove that if the owner Starts with
the resthetic idea, this will not only be shown to
be financially sound, but will give the tenant more
value for the rent he pays. It must, we think,
necessarily be so, because it is both more economi-
cal and more intelligent.
I do not here give the plans of the whole estate,
because for the purpose of this article it would be
too large a matter, but I shall content myself w’ith
such portions only of it as are being immediately
handled. These will in themselves show some of
the principal features. They may be summed up
as two main boundary roads between Uxbridge
and Windsor, an exceptionally healthy neighbour-
hood with gravel soil, pinewoods, and glades of
oak interspersed with meadow land, a new railway-
station on the proposed line about to be con-
structed from Uxbridge to Stoke Pogis, and in
certain parts of the estate some rather fine points
of undulating landscape, also well wooded, from
which a good look-out over fat Buckinghamshire
meadows and glades is obtainable over a fall of
some ioo feet and from a height of about 300 feet
above the sea-level. I am particularly anxious to
avoid the turgid eloquence of the auctioneer’s
catalogue, but what I want to emphasise is that all
these natural features are being first considered in the
working out of the whole. Thus the little plan on
page 47 shows a laying out of the garden of one of
these houses. The trees are all marked to stand,
pines and oaks mainly, and hardly one has been
cut down. A careful observation of the placing of
these trees will show how, in the first place, they
will serve with a little pointing to create the garden ;
FIG. 4.—PLANS OF COTTAGES AND SHOPS FOR THE DROMENAGH ESTATE
C. R. ASHBEE, ARCHITECT
49
the light of a trusteeship; it is so much saleable
stock to him. The tenant gets a poorly-built
house at a stiff price ; the whole estate is badly and
ignorantly laid out, and every interesting or beauti-
ful or historic feature, every nice old house or
quaint piece of handicraft, every tree or natural
feature, is destroyed. No System is better devised
for sacrificing the past and the future to the imme-
diate wants of the present.
At Dromenagh we are proposing to try a rather
better plan, and we are seeking to do what has
been done on some old-fashioned English estates
before the glorious period of “commercial develop-
ment ” stereotyped the present System.
We have a landlord who is in sympathy both
with the more dignified needs of his estate and the
practical requirements of his tenants, and we pro-
pose to treat the whole estate as a unit capable of
being developed before all things as a thing of
beauty.
It is, wre consider, not necessary to have so
many middlemen for purposes of “ development,”
and we hope to prove that if the owner Starts with
the resthetic idea, this will not only be shown to
be financially sound, but will give the tenant more
value for the rent he pays. It must, we think,
necessarily be so, because it is both more economi-
cal and more intelligent.
I do not here give the plans of the whole estate,
because for the purpose of this article it would be
too large a matter, but I shall content myself w’ith
such portions only of it as are being immediately
handled. These will in themselves show some of
the principal features. They may be summed up
as two main boundary roads between Uxbridge
and Windsor, an exceptionally healthy neighbour-
hood with gravel soil, pinewoods, and glades of
oak interspersed with meadow land, a new railway-
station on the proposed line about to be con-
structed from Uxbridge to Stoke Pogis, and in
certain parts of the estate some rather fine points
of undulating landscape, also well wooded, from
which a good look-out over fat Buckinghamshire
meadows and glades is obtainable over a fall of
some ioo feet and from a height of about 300 feet
above the sea-level. I am particularly anxious to
avoid the turgid eloquence of the auctioneer’s
catalogue, but what I want to emphasise is that all
these natural features are being first considered in the
working out of the whole. Thus the little plan on
page 47 shows a laying out of the garden of one of
these houses. The trees are all marked to stand,
pines and oaks mainly, and hardly one has been
cut down. A careful observation of the placing of
these trees will show how, in the first place, they
will serve with a little pointing to create the garden ;
FIG. 4.—PLANS OF COTTAGES AND SHOPS FOR THE DROMENAGH ESTATE
C. R. ASHBEE, ARCHITECT
49