Silk-Farr House has well-kept lawns, delightful flower beds, a lake, a water-fall, a glasshouse filled with tropical plants, a tennis court, and a hermitage. (The paid recluse who once lived there was dismissed after being seen sneaking out of the grounds for an unreclusive pint in the My Full Moon).
The delivery round of Bennie, our "fastest in the west" milkman, includes both the prefab estate and Silk-Farr House. He has heard from Sir Isaac Silk-Farr that before the war children's fetes
were held once and sometimes twice a year in the grounds of Silk-Farr House. When he asked whether the time had come to hold another fete (and perhaps inviting kids from the prefab estate along as well) might be held some day Sir Isaac burst into tears and became quite disconsolate. Benny is sure that getting ordinary Twivertonians and scions of the Somerset gentry socialising and playing croquet together "could be a first tentative nudge towards building the New Jerusalem!"
In its heyday symmetrical geometrical designs of the grounds of Silk-Farr House were widely appauded. Then Lancelot 'Capability' Brown's 'natural' style became all the rage. Today it has acquired a wild romantic 'picturesque' look. No wonder the TLS editor has been losing his patience and was on the point of thundering out an editorial in tabloid style which said: "Farr Silk's Sake, Make Your Mind Up! Your grounds cannot be symmetrical and natural and 'picturesque' all at the same time!"
Well, Sir Isaac Silk-Farr begged to differ, and the TLS and its dingy down-at-heel editorial offices next to the railway arch on the Lower Bristol Road has had to put up with it.
In recent years Silk-Farr House itself has begun to look a shade dingy and down-at-heel. Even in its prime the much trumpeted warm-air heating system never seemed to work in the servants' rooms. Today Miss Silk-Farr's own quarters are said to be "as cold as a prefab kitchen." The gas lighting is failing, and locals talk of an evening is coming in which will light none of Silk-Farr House's lights.
Hanging in pride of place on the first floor stairway at Bath's Victoria Art Gallery is a painting by an artist whose nom de brush is 'The Tristan Tzara of Twiverton'. In the foreground is a honey-walled Italian villa set in well manicured lawns. Behind the villa is a majestic galleon beached up on a debris-filled industrial canal. In the top right corner a fortune teller gazes into a crystal ball engraved with the words "Silk-Farr House."
Len Flanders could hardly believe his good fortune when he was appointed 'Firewood Chopper-Up In Chief' at Silk-Farr House. (One of his ancestors is said to have been 'Guardian of the Stool' in the sixteenth-century King's Court so the post was as good as his.) Len's new career got off to a somewhat choppy start. With his first shift completed he stretched himself out on the lawn, rested his weary head on a log wrapped in purple overalls (how the Somerset gentry love
purple!) and fell into a trance-like sleep. The scent of the giant mushrooms that grow in the turrets of Brunel's railway tunnel must have been carried towards him in the wind. Len fell into a dream of lost time, starlit nights filled with a Harvest moon, jugs of winking mead, and tales of those who had died too young. Hours later with twilight drawing in Miss Silk-Farr stumbled across his sweat-soaked form. It was touch and go whether he would be invited into the firewood shed again.