Fusing garden design and architecture, the Garden Museum is delighted to host the London premiere screening of 'Turn End – The Home and Garden of Architect Peter Aldington.'
Turn End is one of three listed award-winning modernist village houses (The Turn, Middle Turn, Turn End) in Haddenham, Buckinghamshire designed and built in the 1960s by Peter Aldington. This documentary, by award winning film director Murray Grigor and Hamid Shams, tells the story of the creation of these internationally renowned houses and garden, and how their modern design reflects the unique features of the ancient village in which they are set.
Turn End’s garden, designed and made by Peter as a natural extension to the house is an expression of the architect’s belief that architecture and landscape design are an indivisible whole. In less than an acre, spaces with intriguing names such as No-Mans, Daisy Garden and Sittery, are linked to the house and main garden by a series of vistas, courtyards and pools to create an illusion of size. Throughout, the garden is enriched with stoneware pots by Svend Bayer and Monica Young and exemplary planting by Peter. The garden is a rare example of a listed modern landscape.
The beautifully made and immersive film captures the unique character and atmosphere of Turn End, through the seasons and over several years.
The screening is 49 minutes long and will be followed by a Question and Answer session led by landscape architect Dominic Cole OBE and President of The Gardens Trust with Peter Aldington OBE, Turn End Head Gardener Jackie Hunt, the film maker Murray Grigor OBE and architectural historian Elain Harwood .
Tickets, including wine reception, £20.00; £15.00 for Friends of Garden Museum and Friends of Turn End Trust.
Garden Café
The Garden Café will be open from 6.00pm, serving drinks and seasonal suppers. Booking in advance is essential if you would like supper before or following the premiere.
Biographies
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Peter John Aldington, OBE. Dip Arch. RIBA. MCSD
Peter John Aldington, OBE. Dip Arch. RIBA. MCSD
Peter Aldington was born in Preston, Lancashire in 1933. He studied at Manchester University School of Architecture, qualifying in 1956. After working for London County Council Architects Department, then for the Timber Research Development Association, Aldington established his own practice in 1963. He quickly gained an international reputation for his three village houses in Haddenham, Buckinghamshire, which he built with his wife Margaret between 1964 and 1968, including their own home Turn End.
The practice of Aldington, Craig and Collinge designed many building types, but it perhaps became best known for its houses. Their work gained many awards and was published internationally. All 9 houses completed before Peter retired from the practice have since been listed, two at Grade 2*, more than any other living architect in the UK. In 1986 Peter was awarded an OBE in the New Year Honours List.
Visitors come to visit Turn End from across the UK, Europe and around the world, some having become architects or landscape designers as a result of studying Peter’s work.
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Dominic Cole, OBE. FLI. VMM
Dominic Cole, OBE. FLI. VMM
Dominic is a qualified Landscape Architect, Chartered Member of the Landscape Institute with some thirty years’ experience. He was a trustee of Turn End Trust from 1998 to 2004 and wrote an outline conservation plan for the garden.
He is the designer of the Eden Project in Cornwall and was recognised for this through the Landscape Institute Peter Youngman Award 2006 and being granted Fellowship of the Institute of Horticulture. He was awarded an OBE for conservation in 2015 and Royal Horticultural Society Vietch Memorial Medial in 2017. He is President of the Gardens Trust and was Chairman of the National Trust Gardens Advisory Panel 2008-2015.
Throughout his career, Dominic has engaged with the specialist area of Historic Parks and Gardens and has worked on sites such as Hampstead Heath, Wimpole, Sheringham and Chartwell. Dominic was on the Project Board for the Geoffrey Jellicoe Hemel Hempstead Water Gardens that received funding from HLF in 2014 and he has researched the original designs for the landscape of Churchill Gardens in Pimlico – the post-war housing estate that became a model for housing all over Europe. -
Murray Grigor, OBE
Murray Grigor, OBE
Murray Grigor OBE is an internationally acclaimed film director who has made over 50 films since the late 1960s with a focus on arts and architecture documentaries. His subjects include Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Robert Adam, Frank Lloyd Wright, Carlo Scarpa and Sir John Soane.
Photo - Hamid Shams (left) with Murray Grigor (right), who both directed this documentary together. -
Elain Harwood
Elain Harwood
Elain Harwood is a historian with Historic England and specialises in post-war architecture and related subjects, including landscapes and planning. Her book Space, Hope and Brutalism, English Architecture 1945-75 recently won the Art Book Award, and she is now writing on new towns, Ernö Goldfinger and post-modernism.
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Jackie Hunt, MA
Jackie Hunt, MA
Originally a museum curator & archaeologist, Jackie retrained as a gardener 10 years ago, obtaining various RHS and City and Guilds horticultural qualifications and a National Diploma in Horticulture. She previously worked for the National Trust and ran her own garden design & maintenance business. Jackie has been the gardener at Turn End since 2010 where she is responsible for the maintenance and development of the garden, as well as assisting with management of the estate.
