THE LEGEND LIVES ON

My last visit to Barnsley House was in July 2001 for a reception following Rosemary Verey’s memorial service at Cirencester parish church. I was chatting to the Oxford don and Financial Times garden columnist Robin Lane Fox when Charles Verey came up to us, despairing of maintaining his mother’s garden. The classicist, in puckish mood despite the occasion, responded: “If I were you, Charles, I’d just grass the whole thing over.”

Returning 21 years later, I was relieved to see that Charles had not taken Robin’s advice and that the garden remained much as I remembered it, despite the house becoming a hotel under a succession of owners in the interim. In fact, the only glaringly obvious change had been made by Charles himself shortly