As I worked, a little old Harrods van trundled up the narrow drive and the little lady of the house came and took a piece of meat and a wholemeal loaf.

I worked on until I heard the sound of a bell calling us to lunch. Michael used to say, much later that when he first encountered this sullen shy adolescent, that he tried to reach me, but couldn’t make any connection. He thought me, very difficult and rather rude. We laughed about it later and I said I found him difficult too. Like poles of a magnet repelling each other, it was Denis who with great patience and love, had to try and bring us together to act as the catalyst. With care he prised out a response and the conversation began to flow.

Lunch, to me was a curiosity; very different from my fair of white bread and marmite sandwiches I had at home.

As mentioned before, Denis, the market gardener; we have to give him credit for being an early pioneer of organic and sustainable living. He really believed in the health giving properties of plants and the importance of working organically and using the land for livelihood and this could be linked to his interest in ceramics which is so much a part of the geology of the locale. Using sand, local clays of the area; “these gifts of nature to create beautiful things was his ambition.”

*

I was introduced to many new foods that I take for granted now. Sweet corn, sweet peppers, garlic, artichokes all of which I had never eaten before. The meals were a hodge – podge of stews, curries and salad dishes normally cooked by him or his mother. To eat we sat perched precariously on old wooden chairs around a gate leg table in the living room.

Michael and Denis talked about everything from the price of oil, to world politics and religion and were on the whole very disparaging. I didn’t join in the conversation as I didn’t feel qualified, being in only my teens and feeling that this was a new age for me and I wanted to feel optimistic and forward thinking.

After lunch it was time for the pottery. We headed down the slope between the apples and the cherries, past the hog weed and scabious acting as landing pads for the peacock butterflies and myriad insects buzzing, hovering over nature’s larder.

Denis gave me a talk about the various clays and what clay is made of, he called it “the body”. Most of it I can’t remember, but he introduced me to silica, feldspar, china clay and grog. He set me the task of weighing out the clay and demonstrated kneading which took some doing. He then set me on the foot wheel to centre the clay. Well, I threw the first lump on the wheel rather haphazardly, with a shower of water splashing, I wrestled and struggled and pushed and pulled. At first, I couldn’t decide when it was in the middle and like all beginners I had disappointment after disappointment. It drove me mad, particularly as Denis seemed to manage it with so much ease. Disaster followed disaster and as if the clock had suddenly speeded up, it was time to go home!

There was nothing to show for 3 and half hours work except a pile of very wet slushy clay called slip, very appropriate in my case and one extremely wobbly half collapsed, vaguely bowl like pot. Was I cut out for this? Painting seemed so much easier than this. 

Now, cycling home I felt completely drained, deflated and depressed, would I go back again?

I remember it as a rather damp, grey sort of summer in the mid sixties when I commenced my summer job working in the garden. I can remember listening to Simon and Garfunkel and Thunderclap Newman on the radio. Sometimes on good days I cycled all the way pedalling up and down the various hills that you don’t really notice when you are in a car or bus. I would then work all morning in the field and happily ride home in the late afternoon early evening, oh the stamina of youth!

It is now time to introduce Denis’s partner to the equation, Mr Michael Buckland. As I arrived early that first morning, he zoomed up the drive in the ubiquitous Austin Mini, turned abruptly left with a rough sound of crunching gravel, reversing into a small space beneath the shade of a giant beech tree. I am not too sure if this was the first time of our meeting? I may have met him on the stall, but at that time I was so focused on my mentor that he didn’t figure much in my consciousness.

Michael had a rather swarthy complexion, a protruding jaw, unkempt black hair that kept falling in his eyes that were dark and deep. He had a rather gypsy like appearance and I took a dislike to him immediately! He was an interloper in my rather selfish and insular self absorbed world. Over time my views of him changed significantly and we became firm friends. He was like an older brother to me, full of wit, deep thought and a master of the pottery wheel. An unlikely pair, we were thrown together initially by our mutual love of the place. I have always thought that those that turned up at the door, including abandoned cats and dogs, were somehow orphans of a storm, outcasts in a crazy world and it became our sanctuary.

The plan was, in exchange for helping out in the garden in the mornings; Denis would then teach me the rudiments of his craft in the afternoons. Michael directed me in the garden and I started by cleaning cloches, making seed trays with a strange contraption, weeding out between the rows of carrots, onions and artichokes. At first I found it hard work and I seemed to notice every ache in my bones and back, but after awhile I found the quiet, gentle, rhythmic routine really quite contemplative. I enjoyed the sounds of the wind, the smell of elder and the beauty of my surroundings. If I stopped and just listened I could sense a still silence that brought a real sense of joy and other worldliness.

I can’t remember how many times I helped out, probably only a few times. I did meet some interesting characters, many who like me had just happened to be passing. One rather eccentric character who I do remember very well was an extremely tall slightly lugubrious fellow called Nicholas Rocke. Like many tall people he was very self conscious and to cover his shy nature had developed a rather supercilious, reproving air. I was initially very daunted by this lanky condescending quintessential art collector. I learned over time, with his many visits that he was a passionate advocate of the pottery and really had a soft vulnerable centre. He was a most generous man unique in many ways and perhaps another of those orphans that washed up on the shores of Greendene. Together with his interest in music, he was very much a part of the scene and played and sung on the old piano such favourites as Vaughan Williams and other English composers.

On one of my visits to the stall to my horror, Denis suggested Nicholas could take me home in his car. As I found him rather terrifying, I was some what reluctant to take up the offer, but unable to find an excuse not to, I agreed nervously and got into the front seat with trepidation. Once on our way, he tried to break the ice by asking me about my interest in the pottery and about my painting and I managed some how to talk about my art and my wish to go to art school.

This brings me on to one of my many discussions with Denis while waiting for the curious to come and visit the stall. I had showed him my sketches and he was most generous in his praise. I had mentioned that I wanted to go to art school and he argued against it, sucking on his gauloise cigarette saying, it would force out all my naïve, pure unaffected creativity? It’s something I have never forgotten and often consider how things might have turned out, if I hadn’t ignored his advice. When I consider and look back at Denis’s life style and his approach to his craft, I can understand his feelings and anti establishment stance. He was very much the supporter of the individual and the loner, of the artist who couldn’t sell his work. Technique and style had to be subservient to exploring your craft, being daring, in order to create a work of uniqueness.

In 1952, at the time of writing Pennies from Heaven and Earth, we find Denis working up in the City as a solicitor, having to try to make ends meet. It was while on the train back to East Horsley that he got into conversation with Michael Buckland.

Michael was an unhappy soul, lacking in confidence and persuaded by his forceful father into an office job totally unsuited to his nature. He was somewhat dyslexic which at that time was unheard of and suffering from an education in the war, which could be said to have been at best sparse and old fashioned.

 I would love to have been a “fly on the wall” during this chance meeting. Imagine them sitting in the carriage. Denis rather over wrought and wishing to be back in his idyll, while a grumpy disillusioned Michael sat idly looking out on post war ravaged England. Whatever the conversation, the outcome was that Denis invited Michael to work in the garden at Greendene. This was much against his father’s will, who felt that Michael should have “a proper job”.  

So, Michael started in the garden, after David Martineau, Denis’s previous helper,left in that year.

Unfortunately, very soon after he was called up to go into National Service, for which again he was an unlikely candidate. He told me he got by partly because he didn’t smoke, by selling his fags to the others and therefore keeping in their good books. He learned to drive and enjoyed the relative freedom of driving rather than routine marches and other soldierly duties. Like Denis, he got invalided out of service, this was due to contracting glandular fever which lasted some time and kept him away from Greendene. Eventually however, he got back to the garden that was now much in need of his strength and zeal, to help support Denis who was really not cut out for hard labour in the field.

According to what I have gleaned from various sources. I will try and piece together some sort of timeline.

Denis was born near the start of the twentieth century in 1908, possibly at Haigh near Wigan in Lancashire. At 13 he attended St Bede’s Catholic college in Manchester. There he studied History, Greek, Latin and Chemistry. This last subject, being useful later during experimentation with glazes and reduction firing.

This typical middle class upbringing leads him towards the study of law and in 1931 he passed his final exam. He applied for various jobs including teaching with the Egyptian Ministry of Education, but he was unsuccessful. Around this time he discovered the little plot of land and small house at Greendene and settled there along with his mother. The whereabouts of his father was unknown.

The grounds at Greendene were split and Denis just had the west side of the driveway and only later bought the other piece of land as described in his description “Pennies from Heaven and Earth”, an article written for the Pottery Quarterly in 1959.

It was just after the war that, he began an interest in living off the land. He had suffered during the conflict from several illnesses including the serious rheumatic fever and also a duodenal ulcer. I think that this was to some extent an effect of the trauma of the war and influenced him to find a less stressful job out in his country retreat. Leading later to try and live a more sustainable, and rural existence on the land and live a more healthy life.

His interests were also musical and he took Cello lessons and was involved in the Surrey orchestra. Later, it drew a number of musicians up the little windy path including well known cellist Julian Lloyd Webber and during the sixties the rock group Moody Blues.

At some point during his upbringing he had stayed with a wealthy family in London, who had a collection of Chinese ceramics which must have stuck in his mind when he was considering how to supplement his income from the market garden. He entered into correspondence with the now famous Bernard Leach, who more than anyone revived the craft of “Studio” pottery in Britain after the war.

Coincidently, also around that time in 1949 there was an important exhibition of Sung dynasty ceramics at the Oriental Ceramics Society. This too, must have encouraged Denis to get building a small studio

We were invited up to the house, but my mother stayed with my grandmother by the car as she was wobbly on her pins. As we approached up the brick driveway I noticed a very small stooped figure leaning to feed the bantams that clucked and strutted round her ankles. They, in fact roamed the grounds and even in the house, laying eggs on the stairs! This dark shadowy figure was the mother, with grey hair and black formless dress in slippers; she was the archetypal matriarch and ruler of all she surveyed. The house was a wooden affair that was clapboarded and creosoted, deemed to be a wedding present to a member of the Guinness family. This has been called into question now, but it gave the old place a rather quirky, beach hut, but mystical fairy tale air.

On stepping into this sanctum, I could smell a scent of warm creosote and my eyes had to get accustomed to the dark panelled hall way. As we walked down I remember seeing a large Chinese vase and a wizened looking cactus growing out from the rim. I discovered later that it occasionally bloomed with magnificent crimson flowers. 

We were invited to step into the large wood panelled room, that brought the summer light back. It filtered through the 1930’s metal panes of glass and dappled the furniture with shadow and light, like tiger stripes. The atmosphere was green, soft, and liquid, partly due to the close proximity of the tall cherries looming over us and threatening to engulf the room. Dusty particles were suspended over the cluttered surfaces. I marvelled at the sheer untidiness with Listener magazines piled high on the floor, low tables laden with art books, pamphlets and ashtrays. It appeared so remarkable because my father, who was so strictly tidy and always waiting to throw things away. It wasn’t unheard of to find my mother rummaging through the dustbins trying to find an article that my father had sentenced to an untimely abandonment.

Gradually my eyes began to rove around the room and I began to notice the paintings. One, I remember stood out for me. It was of a blue glass vase with bright Chinese lanterns and quite clearly painted in this room. On another wall there were watercolours, very accomplished, of landscapes in broad blocks of earthy colours. They were paintings of a friend of Greendene, Gordon Randall. Later I got to know him and his work more intimately and visited him and his very talented wife Barbara at Frimley. Their house was very ordinary and comfortable. Whereas Greendene on the other hand was really like an “artist’s” place should be and I felt an instant rapport and love for its ramshackle nature.

While my father talked chemistry and geology I wandered amidst this treasured chaos. I was in a daze. This was my “Garden of Earthly Delights” my “Shang RI La”

Continuing my ambling around the room, I noticed the large logs piled on the hearth of a beautiful art deco brick fireplace blackened and charred evidence of it being in constant use. On the other side of the room there was baby grand piano with music manuscripts and music memorabilia Then, I turned and focused on the long old wooden bench immediately below the windows. This was covered with wonderful bight red and purple bowls all different and of various sizes like the ones on the stall by the road.  Rich copper, deep vibrant chocolate black and along side these, other exotic nature- like shapes that appeared to have grown out of the soil. At that time, I knew nothing, of Zen and Taoist beliefs, of Chinese culture, its obsession with the natural world and the undercurrents that govern laws of the earth, how these were translated by artists, poets and thinkers, into the arts and crafts of many past dynasties. 

To be continued: