Americana
16 October 2026
Ben Pentreath
0 Comments
Well, by the time you read this I will be on my way back home for Fall Break. There appears to be no storm hitting Orkney; hopefully the planes run on time and tomorrow afternoon I’ll be back with Charlie and the dogs on Rousay.
Seven weeks have flown by, just like that; we’re half way through the semester, things are hotting up in the architecture school as pin-up after pin-up, deadline after deadline roll up like autumnal storms for the students… the heat and humidity of the Indiana late summer feels like it’s passed, and soon we’ll be in the depths for winter. For now, I’m home. Charlie and I have a busy week… a little party for friends for the launch of ‘A Year at the Parsonage’ (you can buy your copy through the shop complete with a signed bookplate from us!) – and the night before I’m giving a talk at the Garden Museum in case you would like to come along and listen – you can find tickets here, and we’ll be both be signing copies of the book as well. Then, as you can imagine, a fair amount of work to catch up, sites to visit, and spending as much time with the studio as possible. It’s actually amazing how well it’s gone given the huge distance between us. Teams calls really do work for me right now.
Back, then, to the last seven weeks. You’ll perhaps understand why I haven’t posted a blog until now. The mornings start early, and the evenings are quite often fairly late, catching up on work, or spending as much time as possible in the studio. And then travel, and exploring more locally! It’s all been something of a roller-coaster. So buckle up, enjoy the ride, a bit of mid-western Americana!
C L O S E T O H O M E
First stop, just a regular first weekend at the South Bend Farmers Market, with a classic car meet on the parking lot next door. It couldn’t have been more perfect.
Obviously, the characters are almost better than their cars.
But as is so often the way, soon passed.
We visited our old colleague and friend James Moore at his beautiful house, and then found ourselves unexpectedly getting an invitation to climb the lighthouse.
I was staying for a couple of nights with my brother Jon & sister-in-law Laura, and it was good to plug in to West Dorset again after all these months, on a brilliant walk one morning. The air was filled with autumn.
Team photo!
Hello Nancy!
Excellent junk shops.
We were lucky with traffic and managed to catch a ferry back that got us home before dark. What a difference to walk around the gardens where Charlie has been working like crazy, with the dogs, as dusk fell. The house glowed as we looked back up.
Cromarty is a joy, all those little lanes and alleys…
Early morning food markets opening…
The occasion – our friends Skye and Anthony’s joint 40th birthday celebrations in Venice. A wonderful weekend! Have you seen a more beautiful room.
We were astonishingly hot, not helped by the heat of so many happy people entirely lit by candles. It felt truly like being in the 18th century. 
Here is the view looking back… the villa in the distance.
Charlie looking good for drinks that evening. A joy to be in the warmth after our cold English July.
Perfect still evenings have felt as if they have been rather few and far between this summer, but this was one.
Sibyl in one of her favourite spots.
A couple of mornings later, back in London, Enid in one of hers.
They aren’t positioned finally and buried in the earth but they are already amazing. Pale custard yellow is Charlie’s brilliant choice of colour. It sings against the colours of the mid-May garden. 
The copper beech is breaking, such a good moment. 
High above us an almost full moon.
It was a wonderful trip down distant memories, yet everything fresh, and connected to nature – as I remembered it.
The incredible contents have been given a fantastic new display. I am not sure who designed the re-hang, but it’s superb.
So many treasures abound. 
It is stunningly beautiful and I cannot recommend a visit highly enough. 
The amazing, decaying but still intact “Kasbah”, as it’s known, in the old fish docks at Grimsby. 
Truly wonderful. And, all now being slowly restored, thanks to an initiative by Associated British Ports, North East Lincolnshire Council, and Historic England – you can read more 
Here we are in bed the next morning. I was definitely with Sibyl this holiday. 
Sunshine streaming in, Charlie’s beautiful decorations this year. 
We were outside at any rare glimpse of sunshine.
As well as the amazing house, Robert and Anna have created an astonishing and multi-layered garden, completely magical. 
The long shadows of October. Even the telephone wires are like a spider’s web. 
Everyone was so hot. 
That afternoon, Charlie baked a cake! 
And an early evening walk – the valley tipping in to Autumn so strongly, now. 
Jeremy Musson, my old friend, architectural historian and writer, leads our group – as he does a series of lectures through the year. Here he is explaining the majesty of Petworth’s palatial Baroque west front. To his left is a special guest, Martin Drury, former head of the National Trust, and before that curator of Petworth House. It was wonderful to meet him, and hear his many tales. 
The views to the South Downs are astonishing – perhaps the best borrowed landscape I have seen in a while? 
Charlie met me at Arrochar and we headed on that familar road, home. The bothies were sparkling in hot sunshine when we arrived. 
And the sunset, the following evening, in Tuscany….
I was returning to Valentina’s, to a house I’ve loved for so many years now, with that magical, unchanging view, so many beautiful evenings, so many fresh clear mornings…. 
It has been a wonderful year for the wild flowers of the chalk. The weeks and weeks of unsettled summer and rain, grey clouds, drenched afternoons, has been rather amazing for the green hills and I have never seen so many wild flowers and butterflies as the moment. 
Delicate harebells and wild scabious are particularly profuse this year.
Pretty close to heaven on earth on an evening like that. 
We got to the bothy late and unpacked the car by the fading light and rolled in to bed, so happy to be there for the first time in weeks.
Church flowers in a bucket waiting to be taken down.
There is a tradition in the village that we pick hundreds of bunches of primroses every year… 
Which are then placed in ancient Victorian armatures on the window ledges, spelling out – HE IS RISEN
(I think the spelling has changed in the last 150 years). It’s the most magical tradition. I hope it continues for ever.
On a lighter note, we took the dogs for a walk that evening. In an otherwise completely dry valley, Sibyl, like a water diviner, managed to find the only puddle for miles around.
She loves a puddle.
And this even more amazing monument…
Carved by the astonishing John Bacon, the most famous English sculptor of the 18th century. I love the things you find in tiny parish churches in the middle of sleepiest nowhere.
As well as loving Victorian floor tiles, almost even more. 
And signs like this. 
And, for good measure, village names like Buckland Monachorum. 
We were visiting the famous and beautiful Wildside Garden, one of the most wonderful alpine gardens in the country. 
But then, we went down the road to David’s own Alpine garden. Extraordinary. Such dedication. I was in awe. 
The glasshouses had a lot of interesting paraphernalia in them, such as these – which could almost, in a different world, be the name of an Indy Rock Bank.
Charlie and David talking plants. Yes. David is also probably the youngest member of the Alpine Garden society, as well as one of the most successful exhibitors out there. 
It was a brilliant visit. Please don’t ask me the names of anything. That would be like me testing you on the names of obscure details of classical architecture. They don’t matter except to people who already know them. But the dedication – now, that, I can appreciate.
My kind of place:
Very much my kind of place!
Landscapes of astonishing beauty, and so unspoiled. Long may it so remain. I am not sure how much landscape and building protection is yet in place.
And after two long and very, very happy and fruitful days, I found myself on the long journey home again. Here we are, flying – I think – somewhere to the north of Baghdad. 
It’s been an amazing spring for cowslips too. 
The chickens out at last. 
I love the bunny and caterpillar topiary. 
Blythburgh Church, like a great stone ship. 
Tiny flies dancing in the setting sun.
On our walk the next morning, 
Old methodist chapels, 
Modernist bungalows,
And reeds for miles. 
Little hints of the Coronation are appearing.
A bunch of tulips for our lovely neighbour Christine – and for you! 
That’s April gone, and that’s a wrap!
We didn’t have masses of time on our own, to be fair, but just enough to get absorbed in the amazing collections of the Art Institute, and to hurtle around many beautiful buildings including the Chicago Athletics Club – with floors like this, 
And walls of the elevator car like this:
I could almost be interested in Athletics. 
Staying at our absolutely favourite hotel… Built in the later 19th century, and (with a few modifications) hardly changed since. 
The snowdrops in the hedge bank were just poking their leaves up a week or two ago. Now here they are, announcing the beginning of the end of winter. 
We were staying (not in the Lord Nelson Hotel, but just around the corner) in the Rocks district, the earliest part of Georgian Sydney, still extraordinarily well preserved. Waking early on our first morning, we were soon out and about and exploring, as the city woke up. 
I cannot get enough of single storey villas with porches. 
And stripy corrugated iron canopies. 
We were having some friends over and had FINALLY been prompted to frame and hang the beautiful drawing of Dahlias by our friend Oisin Byrne that now at last hangs above the fireplace. I’ve lived at the Parsonage for, what is it, fourteen years now and it’s only taken that long to put something there. I am sure you know the feeling. 
Don’t forget the beautiful green candles from Pentreath & Hall….
The main purpose of our visit was to look at materials. We are building a new and highly environmentally friendly farmhouse on a small farm, that is designed to look, if at all possible, as if it’s always been there. So using reclaimed materials wherever we can is a key part of the brief. It was wonderful to visit so many incredible salvage yards in the lowering sunshine of our first day there, last week. 
Beautiful Luserna stone which will be used for paving, inside and out. 
The facade of the warehouse. 
It is SO good to have the shows back at last, after two silent years.
True to say, the Second and Third Prizes didn’t do quite so well as Caddy. We’ve been missing Charlie’s award winning onions…
Bearing in mind that that other West Country 5 day summer festival, Glastonbury, which every two years hosts the same number of people as the Dorset Steam Fair, merits back to back coverage in every single newspaper, across Radio 4, and most of our media, I’ve always felt a little intrigued that for some strange reason this huge, magical, mystical clash of so many worlds never even gets a mention. I suppose that’s life. The media isn’t always very interested in what’s really going on out there, is it? 
So much to look at, immediately on arrival, from Vape stalls….
To a huge steam rally in the grand Arena. 
Bright and blustering for a minute the next day…
Daffodils (not planted by us – they are much, much older) out towards the shore. 
Matching our yellow doors perfectly! 
A bothy breakfast for our first morning. 
Tornagrain was basking in incredibly warm sunshine – the last day of that almost-early-April-heatwave, before the weather changed and an arctic chill settled in. It was wonderful while it lasted!
The hills glowed with the pinky-orange of the setting sun.
The dream. 
The fantastic allotments are one of my favourite that I’ve ever been. This very nice couple are not, in fact, the growers of that incredibly fine stand of bearded iris, on the brink of flowering (if you go to Winchelsea this week, I suspect they will be pretty incredible).
Trade was insanely brisk. On Sunday evening, this is all that was left. I’m currently very obsessed by the colours of those daffodils. They are flying through all our interior decoration at the moment. I’m doing a lot of tangerine coloured walls, I don’t know quite why I’m finding it quite so beautiful and optimistic.
His daffodil bed is about to break!
The cottage borders are about to burst too…
We had the quietest Christmas ever. I am guessing, you will have done too; and in some ways, because we were not missing parents or grandchildren, across the generations, I’ll admit – it was one of the nicest Christmases ever.
I arrived in Dorset, exhausted. Charlie was awake early the following morning. I wasn’t sure I was ready to get out of bed, but he was meeting our neighbour Nicky for their regular walk. I dragged myself up.
I have been practising taking a few photographs with my proper camera recently – a Canon (I will find the model number for people who are really in to their photography) – it sets up a whole different frame of mind to taking pictures on your iPhone. But really, you can’t go wrong with a garden like this, looking like this…
Incredible misty mornings… 
Mavis was the first in for a swim.
But it is so far from normal that I can’t even begin to imagine where to start.
Last week Charlie decided he didn’t have enough space in the vegetable garden for growing all the flowers and veg that he intends to enter in the shows next year. About a minute later, nine huge new beds have appeared in the meadow, looking a bit like freshly dug graves in the lee of the church. It’s going to look very beautiful in the height of summer next year to see Giant pumpkins and dahlia stands in amongst the meadow grass. 
I know I have blogged this great monumental arch 
On Friday, Mum & Dad had a drinks party at their new flat (one of these days I must blog about their new flat). Charlie, meanwhile, was heading up early to Macclesfield to collect SIBYL. 
I’ve loved those snowdrops for years, now; this can’t be first or even the second time that I’ve posted photographs of them. But I learned recently that they were planted over many decades by Jill Maltby, our neighbour, who used to come to our church without fail every other Sunday, until she sadly died last autumn.
We’d got down to Dorset that day… I’d come early, on the train, for meetings. Charlie and Mavis followed down later in the car. It was a beautiful sunset that evening.
At the Holy Trinity Scout Group Hut.
The moment when you first catch sight of the spires of Venice across the lagoon is always breathtaking. 
So exciting to see how it’s all grown in just six months. Everything is looking amazing. And the houses are being snapped up. Here are the little cottages around Malvina Green, taking shape.
It really is Iris time. Charlie planted 200 tubers last autumn.
It’s a happy and completely unplanned coincidence that at the precise moment the irises are out, the sun settles perfectly to shine on them through the gap of the garden gate. 
This afternoon, after heavy rain, mist came down with a vengeance. The valley was silent and warm, the garden drenched, and the air dripping.
On Monday, a week ago, very early in the morning, poor little Percy was run over by a car on the road outside our house. Charlie and Mavis were already on their way down to Dorset, and I was in London, when we got the text from our neighbour Mandy, that a tabby cat had been found and everyone was trying to work out who he was. I don’t think I’ve been as sad in such a long time. It has felt like a whole week of real loss. Percy was a huge character, endlessly racing around the house, climbing up the curtains, causing mayhem. It feels very empty here without him. We loved him so much. Henry was very sad too, looking everywhere for Percy, but I think he’s on the mend now. And Mavis has lost a real friend too. The price of love is grief, as a real friend said to me during the week. One day soon, I’ll post some more photos of dear, missed Percy, but not tonight.
Immense variety is achieved; within a few steps of one view, a new vista and corner of the garden is revealed.
The cloister garden, made from architectural fragments that Peto salvaged in Italy. Here, now, once a year, Iford holds its annual opera – for a tiny audience of 80 people sitting on all four sides of the cloister. 
Two weeks now stretch out before us, when no work will happen, I am promising myself, and when we can spend days pottering around Dorset. We might do a little holiday in London next weekend, just for fun, because that is another city we never spend quite enough time just doing nothing at all. But next week, of course, Charlie is entering the Melplash Show – which if I am honest is probably the real reason we are not going away this year…. a blog will follow in due course.
Some things don’t change… primroses coming out in their usual spot…
But others do. A few weeks ago this was the site of our dying golden laurel tree. Which is now going to become Charlie’s flowering shrub bank (for cutting branches).
Perfect to have a wider opening so that we can at long last dump a load of manure right by the veg garden, rather than wheelbarrowing everything from the very top of the garden down to the bottom, which has always felt like making a bad job worse.
And a lovely new rabbit proof fence… the badgers had been having a fun time with the last one.
Tulips are coming up everywhere.
The apple trees down to the church gate..
The garden feels different… so much bigger.
Work in progress, but nearly complete. The next time I’m in Dorset, I think everything will be finished (as you can see, I’m an armchair spectator in this game). I can’t wait; we can’t wait. Spring feels like it’s on the brink of coming. And it’s never looked better.
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Not bad, when you think about it, although I think I rate Iran’s chances slightly higher than our own. But obviously I was quite pleased about Brazil.
…and that was the last we saw of the sun. The following morning a heavy fog lay in the valley, and rain was falling. We abandoned plans for Bridport market, never that fun in the wet, and decided instead to head to the tiny cottage, that none of us had visited before, which was Thomas Hardy’s birthplace, at Higher Bockhampton, just the other side of Dorchester. A good thing for a day like that. 
Here’s Rob, at the summery, breezy, farewell picnic that we had out at Badbury Rings, an ancient hill-fort near school, the sort of landscape that inspired his incredible paintings and drawings so deeply. 
To be fair, it had (or is that has?) been a crazy few months in the office. From time to time I’d wake up in the middle of the night worrying about how I was ever going to cope, but then it all seemed like a bit too much to think about and quite definitely a problem for another day. Not so long ago, at a social club party, my landlord wondered if I’d abandoned the house entirely (it has been known to happen from time to time in the village).
Kim Wilkie and Pip Morrison are landscape architects. Kim is, of course, brilliantly well-known, and if you don’t already own his beautiful and beautifully-written book, 
Wes, we love you!!!
The people were queuing to see Hockney. I’m afraid everything else was a bit ignored, which is something which probably wouldn’t make David feel especially happy.
It’s been back to reality with a vengeance. The noise of Mexico City and the peace of Tulum seem an age away: hard to believe I’ve only been back a week. Life in the office has been… how can I say?… intense. The briefest trip to Dorset on Wednesday night; back on Thursday afternoon; a lot to do in London, and then of course, yesterday and today, great fun in the shop with our manic clearance sale. It was so good to meet so many customers, and have hiliarious chats, and for Bridie and I to watch the occasional shopper who would spend 45 minutes stalking a £1 item, but then decide, I guess, that it was not quite for them… and we were thrilled to say that the £1 china table started completely laden and ended at 5pm this afternoon completely empty! Our kind of sale. Everyone loves a bargain. And Bridie, Sophie and I just love a clean and tidy stock room. So I hope we’re all very happy!
Published in 1952, the book is I suppose also enjoying a diamond jubilee this year. Cowells were the superb Ipswich printers who are responsible for so many of the books that we love to sell the shop. If you’re interested in reading more about them, don’t fail to have a look at Ruth Artmonsky’s brilliant Do you want it Good or do you want it Tuesday? which you can find 
Amazing, is it not? If only the Cowell’s manual was still in use, 60 years later, one feels the world might be a better looking place. Anyway, I’ve been leafing through those fantastic fat faces and shadowed letters a little recently, while putting together ideas for the exhibition Bridie and I are putting on in the shop in May – of new works by the brilliant 
Mr & Mrs Clark and Percy was at Dulwich a little while ago. I’m not sure if it is still in the gallery at the moment, but what a refreshing joy it was to see in that hallowed space. And, of all the exhausting hype (I mean, Andrew Marr with Hockney on Radio 4: really?) surrounding Hockney at the R.A., perhaps the most exciting news of all is the BFI’s reissue of that brilliant, strange film A Bigger Splash. Watch the trailer here. For the real fun, watch at home, with a glass of wine or three. Can we have enough Peter Schlesinger? Hmmm. No, we can not!
No prizes for guessing the location of all these places; although if someone got all of them—well, I would be seriously impressed. The names of each city would be enough to impress me. Apart from Venice. I should point out that the final two photos are the impossible ones.
This last image shows the book that I bought at the V&A exhibition 20 years ago. A little easier to house than the real thing. But not quite so amazing.
Somehow, in this mood, I wanted to spend some time this weekend looking at my four beautiful volumes of Recording Britain – that extraordinary second world war programme to record in thousands of watercolours this land and her towns and buildings. The brainchild of Kenneth Clark, the project employed hundreds of distinguished artists to paint scenes that were felt to be under threat—initially from bombing, but later extended to include places threatened by ‘progress’, and by a changing way of life.
Some of these remind me very much of the 
This last print is from her ongoing Alphabet series. I rather think we have a new Edward Bawden. And that E is not for Elephant, but it is for Emily Sutton. Hooray!
Years ago, when I worked in Norfolk for my then boss and now great friend Charles, he and his wife Rachel bought a little blue Morris Minor which became, sort of by default, my company car. A little eccentric to be sure, but on visits from the Norfolk coast to north-west Essex, ‘Deb’, as she was known, took me on my charmed and happy way. Ever since then I’ve looked back fondly to my Morris Minor years.
He emailed me the advertisement. ‘Didn’t you say your garage would never be complete without a Moggy?’, he said. Well… he was right. And I have to admit, I couldn’t forget that ad. Every few days, I would find myself clicking on it, just for a quick look. This is the moment to share with the world the wonderful world of Jeffs Auctions, and their splendid 
It is perhaps inevitable that the main edition has already sold entirely – I checked with John before writing this post. But, if you are able to treat yourself, there are a few of the special editions remaining, and these come complete with Anderson’s remarkable large-scale linocut, ‘The Rock of Cashel’, printed on nine sheets and bound together, and which come in their own separate folio. Here are some photographs of The Rock of Cashel:
It is hard not to use hyperbole when looking at and reading A Vision of Order. But I hope you can see what I mean. You can contact John and Rose Randle 
and only later descended into perfect chaos. Manic dancing and goodness knows what sort of unprintable activities ensued.
Sadly, it wasn’t to last. As you will have guessed, the pink paint was an undercoat and the guy in the hoodie was the decorator. I think he was a bit perplexed as to why I was taking a photo or two. An hour later, my meeting was finished, and the phone box was red.
Nice to see it being looked after, and smart in its fresh coat of paint. But I was glad to have passed by when I did!
I wonder if we are living in extraordinary times? Can I admit that events unfolding in Europe leave me scratching my head a bit—the beautiful sunshine we have had in London today feels remote from the trouble I’m reading about in the paper every day.
When I started thinking about my border I was keen not to make something too tasteful, too ‘knowing’. I wanted a bit of glorified cottage gardening. Which I have. But I think next year it will be time to subtly turn the dial – without being too subtle, if that is possible. There is after all nothing original in these ideas at all… I am sure many of us yawn when we see another black garden.
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However, the Key Lime Pie is very special.
