Going down to Kew in daffodil time

When spring finally reached London after those Arctic weeks with the bitter wind from the east, I hurried out to Kew to see what was happening to Nature. And there it all was: millions of daffodils in massed marching ranks, spreading golden carpets between the still bare specimen trees. The crocuses broke ‘like fire’ at my feet, as Tennyson says, and the magnolia blossoms were bursting on the trees with all the pent-up energy stored during the long, cold winter months: an extravaganza in ivory.

But first I looked in at the parish church of St Anne on Kew Green. It is one of my favourite churches because it has expanded from a tiny box, built as a chapel in 1714, being added to or embellished on no fewer than ten occasions, the latest being in 1988. Yet all these extensions or alterations are entirely congruous with the original concept in multicoloured brick, so you’d think it was built all of a piece. Architects commissioned to add to ancient buildings should be obliged to visit this church to see how it is done, and how to honour distinguished predecessors. Indeed, this is a church for those who design buildings. In 1960, to mark the 200th anniversary of the church’s founding, a dozen ladies of the parish formed a tapestry guild to create a set of pew cushions. They eventually made 140 of these beautiful objects, in white, red and gold, commemorating all the sovereigns connected with St Anne’s from Queen Anne, through the Georges, to Elizabeth II, and in particular the architects who worked in the parish and its great gardens — Sir William Chambers, who designed the giant pagoda; John Nash, builder of the Orangery; Decimus Burton, responsible for the vast Palm House, Wyatville and Robert Tunstall, James Paine and Sir John Barry, who built the bridges across the river.