Henry’s secret garden

I’ve been a fan of Henry Moore for years, possibly since Dad, on driving us past the newly installed Knife Edge Two Piece, in front of the Houses of Parliament, dismissed it with a scathing grunt as ‘modern art.’

Knife Edge Two Piece

I was at that age when everything one’s parents say is complete rubbish so automatically I strove to like it. And I still do, so thanks, Dad.  Having been to a major retrospective at the Tate a few years ago and to an exhibition of Moore’s works at Kew Gardens, it was with excitement that I planned my trip to Hertfordshire with a competent map-reading friend.

It takes a while to find Perry Green, the tiny hamlet where Henry Moore lived. When you get there, you feel like you’ve dropped through time, to an era before technology ruled the world; a peaceful, slower time, where people stopped to pass the time of day. The sort of place where a whistling butcher’s boy rides past on an old bicycle and the bus comes once a week. There are no shops, but there is a telephone box, which, on closer inspection, is a tiny exhibition gallery called the Red Cube. The Hoops Inn, tucked away behind a hedge, provides a further clue that this is no ordinary village: the size of their car park suggests they expect a crowd.

Hoglands – Henry Moore’s home

Hoglands, Henry Moore’s delightful house, is part of the Henry Moore Foundation, a registered charity founded in 1977 by Moore himself to encourage public appreciation of the visual arts. The garden and adjacent fields are home to many of Moore’s finest pieces, the setting complementing both the structure and form of his sculptures. Opposite the main house is a little cottage which doubles as the ticket office and coffee shop. We were advised to book a time to see the interior of the house as only a few people are let in at once. This is well worth clock-watching for as inside the house there is a real feeling of the artist’s presence – as if he and his wife have just popped out to the nearest town and will be back any minute.

The garden is informal with hedges and plantings masking the next treasure. At the far reaches of the garden are the sheds and barns HM used for creating, and these too, are open for inspection – some are as he would have left them; one is an indoor exhibition of his work and another, The Aisled Barn, has an exhibition of tapestries designed by HM and woven at West Dean College in West Sussex.

Colour composition with half moon – tapestry

Beyond these buildings is the sheep field where some of his largest pieces can be seen, magnificent against the landscape, yet completely at home with the animals resting against them. 

I’ll finish with a few more images from my day at Hoglands. Henry Moore’s home is most definitely on my top-ten-places-to-visit list.

Large Standing Figure: Knife Edge

Double Oval

Large Internal Form

Three Piece Sculpture: Vertebrae

If you decide to go, be prepared to spend the whole day there and book a table at the Hoops Inn – the food is good but they do get extremely busy.

Hoglands is open until 27 October 2013, Wednesday to Sunday and Bank Holidays 11am – 5pm.

Header picture shows Large Reclining Figure, situated on a mound in the far corner of the sheep field: an imposing sentinel.