Bell House - All dressed up for Christmas

This year the decorations are bigger and better than previous years in readiness for the the Christmas play.

Four Magical Scenes from the Bell House’s long and fascinating history will be told in promenade throughout the house and is being performed Friday 2nd, Saturday 3rd (Gala evening) and two performances on Sunday 4th December.

Our wonderful volunteer florists, Dawn and Janie have created stunning displays to reflect the character of the rooms and the period of the scenes being performed. Apart from the twinkly lights and a few baubles on the tree, they’ve only used sustainable and natural materials.

Bell House is grateful again to Dulwich Park and their head gardener Michael, who supplied a bountiful quantity of seasonal foliage, without which all this would not be possible. And as always, the Bell House garden was scavenged and there was an early morning visit to Covent Garden market for the final touches.

September Monthly Garden roundup

The arrival of rain at the beginning of September was welcomed by the garden…and the gardeners! Everything in the Bell House garden really perked up after the very dry spell, and we were all kept busy with the growth explosion.

September highlights, and things to look forward to, include:

 The meadow areas in both the House Garden and Walled Garden are in the process of being cut back in sections. The cuttings are left for a few days before being added to the compost bins so any insects which have been sheltering there can find a new home. Cuttings are removed to reduce nutrients being added back to the soil as meadows thrive on poor soil. Our next job will be to scarify the meadows and add yellow rattle seeds to slow the spread of grass so more wildflowers grow. We tested removing the flower heads of docks this year rather than digging them out and we will see next summer if this worked! Big thanks to everyone who worked on the meadows as it is a labour intensive job. A shout out for Jenny who put her hand up every Saturday to tackle this job.

• In the Walled Garden, the tomatoes are still going strong. We know that the cooler days and nights are coming so the tomato plants have been pruned, removing the leaves so that the plants direct their energy to ripening the remaining fruit. The garlic and onions were also lifted, and after drying nicely for a couple of weeks, have been happily received by all of us gardeners 😊. We have had a new delivery of bricks so that edging around the raised beds can continue, led by the expertise of Cookie and Reg. Our new mower finally arrived so we now have two electric mowers to help manage the grass and meadow areas next year.

• Staying in the Walled Garden, you’ll see some “new” tables close to the Greenhouse. When a local garden centre closed down we picked up the tables which will be adapted to use as potting and demonstration tables. Also, at that end of the garden, the raspberries which were saved from the ground source heating works have never been super happy there so will be lifted and moved to another part of the garden. This bed will then be planted with Comfrey, specifically Bocking 14 Comfrey as suggested by Shelagh. Comfrey is one of the most useful and versatile plants that can be grown – it’s a fabulous pollinator attractor, a highly effective fertiliser and apparently has potential health benefits for humans (I need to find out more about this).

• Over in the House Garden, there has been a fair bit of weeding action over September – in the Rose Garden, around the arch leading to the Rose Garden and throughout all of the main beds. Our winter project will be to improve and replant the long border with more perennials and grasses. We also plan to work on the quince and rose arch, pruning the roses so that they flower lower at the sides and leaving more light and space for the quince to grow over the arch itself.

Bell House Garden will be open again on November 5th.

Arrive anytime between 11am and 12:45. Tea and coffee will be available. We encourage a £5 donation that will go towards garden maintenance and activities. Free tickets are also available.

The joys of shared reading

Bell House runs a monthly Shared Reading group which is open to all and free to attend.

But what happens at a meeting? A group of people, one of them a trained Reader Leader, reads a great novel, short story or poem aloud. The group then talk about what has been read. There is no need for group members to read aloud or speak – it’s fine to just listen. The idea is to create a space where people feel at ease. 

As members of a choir get enjoyment from singing together, so reading the literature aloud in real-time, means that everyone is involved in a shared, live experience. Group members are encouraged by the Reader Leader to respond personally, sharing feelings, thoughts and memories provoked by the reading BUT only if they want to. The sharing of the reading experience allows more connections to be made. The group share and develop the meaning together and develop their thinking as a result of listening to others during the reading experience.

Shared Reading is not a therapy but most find they get benefit beyond reading. People are bringing their life experiences and the literature into the focus of a prism. They’re looking through it and just see themselves at first and then they realise that there’s loads of other people and they’ve got all different reasons for going and enjoying it.

The meetings are held online and the next one is on Tuesday 25 October -18.00 - 19.00. Visit: http://www.bellhouse.co.uk/upcoming-events

Creative Arts Club for older adults - Watercolour workshop

Sarah Wetherall ran another successful and happy 2 hour workshop on Friday 30th September - the second in a programme that will be run monthly. Many of the group were new to using watercolours and with Sarah’s inspired teaching everyone got stuck in with little hesitation.

She suggested we choose a painting from one of the books available and then take a small section and concentrate on this - to experiment with brush strokes and wetness and depth of colour. It meant that we could focus on the process rather than trying to copy the artwork. By doing this we learnt so much about how watercolour reacts on paper and what reactions we particularly liked and would want to use in any future paintings.

Look out for Sarah’s next class later this month.

Sarah’s work can we seen at www.clockworkstudios.co.uk

The Garage Press is now permanently based at Bell House - an interview with Simon Trewin, the owner.

Simon has now moved his extensive collection of presses and blocks - in fact “everything he owns” - into the garage block [once the old stables] at Bell House.

He fell in love with letter printing when at the age of 10 he accompanied his father - who was the then Literary Editor of The Times - to see the printing of the newspaper in Grays Inn Road. His first impression was of noise, mess and industry and yet out of this chaos appeared a clean newspaper - beautifully written and a font of knowledge and opinion. It caught his imagination.
He said he grew up believing he had a creative mind but was unable to put his ideas on paper. Years later, he was reminded again of the appeal to him of a printing press when he ‘had a go’ on the one his wife owned. He decided he must find a course. 
Simon found a course to learn how to use an Adana Press - the press that could be found in most schools, police and other official offices in the 1950’s. 

He remembers with pride his first attempt - he was hooked! He realised this was how he could ‘put his ideas’ on paper.

On the course he met a couple who were downsizing their studio and wanted to get rid of a large press - named ‘Gloria’. ‘Gloria’ has a wonderful history but suffice to say, in more recent years it was named after a lady called Gloria who owned a shop, ‘Unite and Type’. Simon met her and learnt she was selling up and needed to find a new home for the rest of her stock. 

Simon bought it all and moved it into a garage he owned. And so the Garage Press was born.

Simon says that the craft has enabled him to interpret his ideas. Now he knows that when he has an idea, he just has to sort out his mind because everything he needs to put it on paper is in his workshop.

Letter press was classified as an endangered craft by the Heritage Craft Associations and in the last 15 years, thankfully, Simon has seen a revival of the craft.  He will run courses at Bell House but he also recommends The London Centre of Book Art - which runs workshops and offers workspace. https://londonbookarts.org for anyone who’d like to have a more intensive introduction.

The Garage Press plans to integrate closely with Bell House - from printing signage (eg for the recent Dyslexia Fair), offering printing workshops (eg Xmas cards, info cards) and he is also planning to create inks from the plants in the garden.

He is currently making an ink from ‘oak gall apples’ which he has collected from the garden’s oak trees. These ‘apples’ result when a wasp stings the oak tree bark and the tree reacts and so the growth appears. He is currently drying the apples and will then grind them. He will make a ‘medieval black ink’, used in the past for manuscripts. His challenge he says will be to make it thick enough to print with, otherwise it will be a watercolour ink. As Simon said “anything that stains can work”.

Simon by day is a Literary Agent. Because of his contacts he is able to source paper and inks - often donated by his suppliers for free. One of his long term authors he represents is John Boyle. His most famous book is “The boy in the striped pyjamas.”

John has accepted an invitation to come to the Garage Press as part of the promotion of his new book - “All the broken places”, a sequel to his most famous book. This is a private affair but Bell House will be there to report. Simon has kindly offered a signed first edition of John Boyne’s new book as a raffle prize. Details of which will be announced nearer the time.

The Garage Press is a wonderful addition to Bell House. Keep an eye on the coming events to see when he’s running his tasters. He is normally around on the days when there is an Open Garden and is often there on a Thursday if you are passing and would like to say hello.

Before signing off, here are two further points of interest Simon shared.

1. The terms UPPER and lower case are derived from the type shelves. The capital letters were at the top of the drawer. A good setter didn’t look at the shelf, he knew where everything was, rather like on a keyboard.

2. The phrase - ‘You’ve come a cropper’ - when someone got their finger caught in a WH Cropper press - ouch!

You can find out more about what Simon is printing via his instagram feed @thegaragepress