Beyond the wall - June 2017
Garden statue
Near the lake
Jo and I recently decided to return to the place which originally inspired the track 'The Other Side of the Wall' on The Night Siren.
These beautiful grounds of a large old house in Wimbledon wove its spell on us from the moment we first visited. Walking from an open space, through trees surrounding a small lake into a walled garden beyond, we felt we were being drawn into a world of the past. We were now alone. The path took us downhill through flowers and hedgerows until we descended steps beyond some stone balustrades.
Here was the trigger for our story... To our right we saw a bricked up gateway within a high wall. We wondered why it was blocked. Following another way through to the other side, we entered a rambling area where you felt that anything might happen. At the bottom was a stream, where shafts of sunlight through trees above twinkled between lilies. You could imagine Millais' Ophelia lying there. This felt like a forgotten place.
We imagined an old story, where lovers met in secret in a long forgotten Pavilion beside the stream. It was a forbidden love which could never be revealed. Then one day they were discovered and thereafter their meeting place was blocked off by a walled up gateway. It also involved the idea that a modern couple stumbles across this story and they feel a powerful connection with the doomed man and woman of the past.
This inspired a combination of poignant romance with the ghostly atmosphere of a place haunted by the sadness of those long lost star-crossed lovers...
Looking back from the balustrades
Through to the 'secret' garden
The walled up gateway
Shadow on the wall...
Dreaming the story...
Sunken garden
