A Farewell To Trent Park
I'm decently proud of this piece. Now I'm giving myself twelve hours off. Yay cider!
Reached down a long drive, the campus of Trent Park lies some distance from Oakwood station, and a long tube-ride further from the metropolis of London, of which surrounding Enfield is a distant part. Part of Middlesex Polytechnic, now Middlesex University, since 1973, it comprises a scatter of low buildings around the hub of a tall Edwardian mansion house. Students wander between red-brick blocks enigmatically named Bevan and Sassoon on their way to and from classes in music, drama, and creative writing with media studies.
Journeying to Trent Park begins as I leave the comforting confines of the tube and stand in line to wait for the campus bus service, which ferries students to and fro sixteen hours a day. The bus dips and rises down the long straight drive, and as I clutch my morning coffee I glimpse flashes of bright caps and plaid to my right as golfers tee off. On each side of the private road lie lines of massive trees, the well-spaced boles adding grandeur rather than shrouding it in gloom. The walk to Trent Park takes scarcely longer than the drive, yet most students shun the exercise; night-time sex attacks on lone walkers are not unknown.
Before arriving on campus the bus halts at a fluorescent security barrier. A guard in a bright yellow jacket steps onto the bus and walks down the central aisle, briskly turns, and hops off. I asked him once what the purpose of this was.
“To search for bombs,” he replied. We then proceeded to look at each other, confused by the ramifications of this. “What would he do if he found one?” I asked my colleague. No-one seems to know.
Formalities concluded, the bus sweeps around in a curve, entering a wide open space which sweeps ahead of us down to the mansion. In spring picnicking students poke their heads up like prairie dogs among fields of vivid yellow and white daffodils. Behind me sit the imposing blocks of student halls, shielded from the formality of the gardens by a stand of trees. I walk down towards and past the mansion, slipping to one side of the portable safety-barriers placed by the litigation-conscious university to stand on the long terrace. Lawns slope down towards the lake, then the land rises beyond towards the heavily forested horizon. The only break in the trees is a grassy strip that leads to an obelisk on the brow of the hill, darkly contrasted against the sky.
All of this was forest once. When the Normans came to Britain in 1066 they compiled a register of all the property in England, the Domesday book, in order to ascertain the value of their new holdings. Enfield Chase, a vast area that includes the current campus, is referred to as being a park. For many years it was a grand hunting ground, passing from noble to noble until it became the personal property of King Henry IV. The park was never untrodden by human feet: the commoners of nearby settlements enjoyed ancient feudal rights to cross the park freely, to pasture animals, and to collect firewood. They were forbidden from putting up fences to enclose crops or livestock and they often risked savage penalties by poaching deer to supplement their diet.
This simple tale of nobles versus commoners became complicated by the 17th century, when merchants from the nearby city of London set eyes on the Chase. When Charles I was executed after losing the English Civil War, the balance of power shifted. The new republican administration faced unrest from the army which put it in power, some of whom were Levellers who organised in favour of extending the vote to all men, rather than just holders of property, and promoting equal rights for all. Though some Levellers ended up shot, the new republic needed money to pay off its army so decided to split up and sell the Chase to the highest bidders. At last the common was enclosed, but not by the commoners who had long lived there, but by rich newcomers.
No longer having the means to feed themselves, the local commoners responded directly to this by tearing down the new enclosures. Though cavalry were sent to stop them, so many displaced commoners now occupied the Chase that neither the republicans or the later restored monarchy were able to evict them. For a time, the “rude multitude” of Enfield won.
This arrangement ended when two powerful forces aligned: the desire for progress, and the interests of profit. As agriculture improved populations grew, and Improvers argued that Royal land needed to be turned into more profitable farmland. King George III at last consented for the Chase to be divided, enclosed, and sold. Trent Park was created, not at the behest of a rich merchant, but at that of a doctor. “Farmer George” struggled all his life with mental illness, and Dr Richard Jebb had often been at the King's side and that of his family: he once dashed across Europe to Trento in Austria to treat the King's brother. Though he succeeded in becoming a baronet, Sir Jebb, like many of the nouveau riche who bought country residences in the Chase, was never much of a farmer, and the Improvers never saw their dream of progress realised.
Few traces of Sir Jebb's original mansion remain today. The current grounds are smartly manicured, bringing to mind Brideshead Revisited rather than the rambling abode of an eccentric doctor. Elegant hedged gardens and a large swimming pool evoke scenes of Edwardian excess, though sadly no longer: the outdoor pool is now padlocked away, awaiting the university's decision to fund a certified lifeguard.
Indeed Philip Sassoon, final architect of Trent Park, was a somewhat Bridesheadian figure. His father, Sir Edward Sassoon, was himself the scion of wealth, the Sassoons being an ancient Jewish family formerly of Baghdad, Persia, and Bombay, and rich from trade in silk, spices, pearls, and cotton. Well integrated into British high society, Philip went to Eton and subsequently Oxford, being a member of the Bullingdon club alongside future Field Marshall Haig. Philip used these connections well, entering parliament and later assisting Haig in his role in command of British troops during the First World War. Sassoon was soon found to be of more use at home, lobbying for support of Haig's tactics. When Philip's cousin Sigfried Sassoon sent his collection of anti-war poetry to Haig's office, he did so conscious that Philip, too, would read.
After the war Philip's career rose further still: a 1921 cartoon shows a racially caricatured Philip pulling the strings of a puppetised Prime Minister Sir Lloyd George. Such a high-flying career had to have surroundings to match, and a redesigned Trent Park played host to a glittering array of guests including Winston Churchill and Charlie Chaplin. Despite, or quite possibly because of his influence Philip often found himself under attack by the media. Philip's role as a behind-the-scenes organiser brings to mind New Labour's Peter Mandelson. While attacks on Mandelson never dared echo the anti-semitism deployed against Philip, both were expert stage managers, and while Philip could never have declared himself openly gay, he disdained marriage and his other country house, Port Lympne, was known for its unashamed opulence. Philip was lampooned by wags for being “opulent, swarthy, jejune and lithe”, though quite why any of these were considered negative epithets is beyond me.
Be that as it may, the tasteful classical statue, which I pass daily on the way to Trent Park's library block, depicts a pair of naked Greek wrestlers. Just as Sassoon's milieu echoes Brideshead's, so does the story of Trent Park echo that of Brideshead Manor, irrevocably changed by the coming of the Second World War. Sassoon was involved in frantic efforts to avoid the war, going so far as to travel to Austria with the abdicated Edward VIII and his wife Wallis Simpson; whether he actually met Adolf Hitler is not recorded. When he returned to Trent Park, the future was marked: he found that fascists had carved swastikas in the oak gates. He died soon afterwards, in 1939, and his ashes were flamboyantly scattered over the park by his 601 Squadron. Soon most of the young men in the “Millionaire's Squadron” would too be dead, and with the advent of the war Trent Park was requisitioned and turned into a prisoner of war camp.
Unlike current occupants of the park, the German prisoners were keen botanists. Though conditions for the prisoners were good, the elite Germans added to their austere wartime diet by prospecting for edible mushrooms in the wood and on dead trees. Currently students find themselves pushed to name any of the trees, yet alone distinguish between types of mushroom. Though students often blunder through the dark wood at night, motives are now quite different from the exercising German generals, who were likely quite aware that every room in the mansion was bugged by British Intelligence. Still, useful information was gathered, though quite what remains a matter for rumour and speculation.
Walking through the mansion house today reveals few traces of this invisible history. Outside, the post-war Nissan huts are long gone, the camp becoming a teacher training college before merging with Middlesex. Indeed, traces of far more recent history are not at once apparent. On the top floor a few doors still bear signs for Middlesex Philosophy Department, and an occasional flyer mentioning protest. In 2009 the university announced that the department would close, despite its success and international reputation. Citing funding cuts, the university stated the department was not sustainable, although far less renowned departments in other universities remained open. Students and academics were outraged, and the mansion house was occupied directly by dozens of newly politicised students.
Though the highest ranked post 1992 university for philosophy, the department taught European philosophy: less fashionable, and, interestingly, more leftist in political outlook. While newspaper comment speculated that the department was paying the price for being a successful outsider, students hoisted a red and black flag over the mansion, where once Philip Sassoon had the Union Jack hauled down for clashing with the sunset. With academics and students threatened with suspension by the university administration, after a time the occupation had to end.
Middlesex remains in the news as Alfie Meadows, a Middlesex philosophy student, was critically injured, allegedly by a police baton, during 2010's protests against government cuts and the marketisation of education and public services. Recently charged with “violent disorder”, Alfie's case is central to the anti-cuts movement, with legal investigations taking place both of the allegations against Alfie and against the unknown officer alleged to have hit him.
While the debate around the international banking collapse and cuts is far from settled, Trent Park faces consequences that are more immediate. With plans to add to the campus rejected by Enfield Council, the university has decided for financial reasons to move courses to its Hendon Campus. From autumn 2011, Trent Park will grow increasingly empty, occupied again only by dog-walkers and the rabbits in the woods. It seems far from impossible that the campus will, in time, be sold.
At the end of the day, I depart Trent Park in a sad, reflective mood, painfully aware of the uncertainty of the future. Once again, financial interests and the narrative of financial progress have resulted in seismic social struggle around Trent Park. Trent Park itself has always occupied a strangely liminal place in history. Standing between the urban and the rural, it has always been a place where the clashing interests of social groups and classes has been made visible. Once more, a former Bullingdon club member has control over the fate of the Park, though this time from Downing Street rather than the drawing room.
I find my bus-stop sojourn interrupted by a group of student friends: loud, boisterous, and amiable. A happily mixed group in race and sexuality, their egalitarianism and energy gives me hope for the future. Still, when most students - including myself - are far more able to name individual cartoon Pokemon than species of tree, I wonder if we will be able to find the language to challenge outside influences on our lives. As Alfie Meadows’ case shows, future struggles will take place as much in the media - and, consequently, in the artistic world of ideas - than in reality. Pastoral Trent Park may well be swept away utterly by technological progress.
When the children of Commonwealth newcomers to Britain went on to further education in the 1970s and 80s, Middlesex was a particularly common destination. Many West Indian students networked against racism, sewing on Black Power badges themselves. Faced with a regime of austerity and the potential of £9000 per year in fees, their children now must consider their alternatives carefully: protest and organise, like the Levellers once did, or accommodate the ever-increasing encroachments of big business. Whichever way they turn will indicate to the rest of Britain which way the wind is blowing. May they choose wisely.
Reached down a long drive, the campus of Trent Park lies some distance from Oakwood station, and a long tube-ride further from the metropolis of London, of which surrounding Enfield is a distant part. Part of Middlesex Polytechnic, now Middlesex University, since 1973, it comprises a scatter of low buildings around the hub of a tall Edwardian mansion house. Students wander between red-brick blocks enigmatically named Bevan and Sassoon on their way to and from classes in music, drama, and creative writing with media studies.
Journeying to Trent Park begins as I leave the comforting confines of the tube and stand in line to wait for the campus bus service, which ferries students to and fro sixteen hours a day. The bus dips and rises down the long straight drive, and as I clutch my morning coffee I glimpse flashes of bright caps and plaid to my right as golfers tee off. On each side of the private road lie lines of massive trees, the well-spaced boles adding grandeur rather than shrouding it in gloom. The walk to Trent Park takes scarcely longer than the drive, yet most students shun the exercise; night-time sex attacks on lone walkers are not unknown.
Before arriving on campus the bus halts at a fluorescent security barrier. A guard in a bright yellow jacket steps onto the bus and walks down the central aisle, briskly turns, and hops off. I asked him once what the purpose of this was.
“To search for bombs,” he replied. We then proceeded to look at each other, confused by the ramifications of this. “What would he do if he found one?” I asked my colleague. No-one seems to know.
Formalities concluded, the bus sweeps around in a curve, entering a wide open space which sweeps ahead of us down to the mansion. In spring picnicking students poke their heads up like prairie dogs among fields of vivid yellow and white daffodils. Behind me sit the imposing blocks of student halls, shielded from the formality of the gardens by a stand of trees. I walk down towards and past the mansion, slipping to one side of the portable safety-barriers placed by the litigation-conscious university to stand on the long terrace. Lawns slope down towards the lake, then the land rises beyond towards the heavily forested horizon. The only break in the trees is a grassy strip that leads to an obelisk on the brow of the hill, darkly contrasted against the sky.
All of this was forest once. When the Normans came to Britain in 1066 they compiled a register of all the property in England, the Domesday book, in order to ascertain the value of their new holdings. Enfield Chase, a vast area that includes the current campus, is referred to as being a park. For many years it was a grand hunting ground, passing from noble to noble until it became the personal property of King Henry IV. The park was never untrodden by human feet: the commoners of nearby settlements enjoyed ancient feudal rights to cross the park freely, to pasture animals, and to collect firewood. They were forbidden from putting up fences to enclose crops or livestock and they often risked savage penalties by poaching deer to supplement their diet.
This simple tale of nobles versus commoners became complicated by the 17th century, when merchants from the nearby city of London set eyes on the Chase. When Charles I was executed after losing the English Civil War, the balance of power shifted. The new republican administration faced unrest from the army which put it in power, some of whom were Levellers who organised in favour of extending the vote to all men, rather than just holders of property, and promoting equal rights for all. Though some Levellers ended up shot, the new republic needed money to pay off its army so decided to split up and sell the Chase to the highest bidders. At last the common was enclosed, but not by the commoners who had long lived there, but by rich newcomers.
No longer having the means to feed themselves, the local commoners responded directly to this by tearing down the new enclosures. Though cavalry were sent to stop them, so many displaced commoners now occupied the Chase that neither the republicans or the later restored monarchy were able to evict them. For a time, the “rude multitude” of Enfield won.
This arrangement ended when two powerful forces aligned: the desire for progress, and the interests of profit. As agriculture improved populations grew, and Improvers argued that Royal land needed to be turned into more profitable farmland. King George III at last consented for the Chase to be divided, enclosed, and sold. Trent Park was created, not at the behest of a rich merchant, but at that of a doctor. “Farmer George” struggled all his life with mental illness, and Dr Richard Jebb had often been at the King's side and that of his family: he once dashed across Europe to Trento in Austria to treat the King's brother. Though he succeeded in becoming a baronet, Sir Jebb, like many of the nouveau riche who bought country residences in the Chase, was never much of a farmer, and the Improvers never saw their dream of progress realised.
Few traces of Sir Jebb's original mansion remain today. The current grounds are smartly manicured, bringing to mind Brideshead Revisited rather than the rambling abode of an eccentric doctor. Elegant hedged gardens and a large swimming pool evoke scenes of Edwardian excess, though sadly no longer: the outdoor pool is now padlocked away, awaiting the university's decision to fund a certified lifeguard.
Indeed Philip Sassoon, final architect of Trent Park, was a somewhat Bridesheadian figure. His father, Sir Edward Sassoon, was himself the scion of wealth, the Sassoons being an ancient Jewish family formerly of Baghdad, Persia, and Bombay, and rich from trade in silk, spices, pearls, and cotton. Well integrated into British high society, Philip went to Eton and subsequently Oxford, being a member of the Bullingdon club alongside future Field Marshall Haig. Philip used these connections well, entering parliament and later assisting Haig in his role in command of British troops during the First World War. Sassoon was soon found to be of more use at home, lobbying for support of Haig's tactics. When Philip's cousin Sigfried Sassoon sent his collection of anti-war poetry to Haig's office, he did so conscious that Philip, too, would read.
After the war Philip's career rose further still: a 1921 cartoon shows a racially caricatured Philip pulling the strings of a puppetised Prime Minister Sir Lloyd George. Such a high-flying career had to have surroundings to match, and a redesigned Trent Park played host to a glittering array of guests including Winston Churchill and Charlie Chaplin. Despite, or quite possibly because of his influence Philip often found himself under attack by the media. Philip's role as a behind-the-scenes organiser brings to mind New Labour's Peter Mandelson. While attacks on Mandelson never dared echo the anti-semitism deployed against Philip, both were expert stage managers, and while Philip could never have declared himself openly gay, he disdained marriage and his other country house, Port Lympne, was known for its unashamed opulence. Philip was lampooned by wags for being “opulent, swarthy, jejune and lithe”, though quite why any of these were considered negative epithets is beyond me.
Be that as it may, the tasteful classical statue, which I pass daily on the way to Trent Park's library block, depicts a pair of naked Greek wrestlers. Just as Sassoon's milieu echoes Brideshead's, so does the story of Trent Park echo that of Brideshead Manor, irrevocably changed by the coming of the Second World War. Sassoon was involved in frantic efforts to avoid the war, going so far as to travel to Austria with the abdicated Edward VIII and his wife Wallis Simpson; whether he actually met Adolf Hitler is not recorded. When he returned to Trent Park, the future was marked: he found that fascists had carved swastikas in the oak gates. He died soon afterwards, in 1939, and his ashes were flamboyantly scattered over the park by his 601 Squadron. Soon most of the young men in the “Millionaire's Squadron” would too be dead, and with the advent of the war Trent Park was requisitioned and turned into a prisoner of war camp.
Unlike current occupants of the park, the German prisoners were keen botanists. Though conditions for the prisoners were good, the elite Germans added to their austere wartime diet by prospecting for edible mushrooms in the wood and on dead trees. Currently students find themselves pushed to name any of the trees, yet alone distinguish between types of mushroom. Though students often blunder through the dark wood at night, motives are now quite different from the exercising German generals, who were likely quite aware that every room in the mansion was bugged by British Intelligence. Still, useful information was gathered, though quite what remains a matter for rumour and speculation.
Walking through the mansion house today reveals few traces of this invisible history. Outside, the post-war Nissan huts are long gone, the camp becoming a teacher training college before merging with Middlesex. Indeed, traces of far more recent history are not at once apparent. On the top floor a few doors still bear signs for Middlesex Philosophy Department, and an occasional flyer mentioning protest. In 2009 the university announced that the department would close, despite its success and international reputation. Citing funding cuts, the university stated the department was not sustainable, although far less renowned departments in other universities remained open. Students and academics were outraged, and the mansion house was occupied directly by dozens of newly politicised students.
Though the highest ranked post 1992 university for philosophy, the department taught European philosophy: less fashionable, and, interestingly, more leftist in political outlook. While newspaper comment speculated that the department was paying the price for being a successful outsider, students hoisted a red and black flag over the mansion, where once Philip Sassoon had the Union Jack hauled down for clashing with the sunset. With academics and students threatened with suspension by the university administration, after a time the occupation had to end.
Middlesex remains in the news as Alfie Meadows, a Middlesex philosophy student, was critically injured, allegedly by a police baton, during 2010's protests against government cuts and the marketisation of education and public services. Recently charged with “violent disorder”, Alfie's case is central to the anti-cuts movement, with legal investigations taking place both of the allegations against Alfie and against the unknown officer alleged to have hit him.
While the debate around the international banking collapse and cuts is far from settled, Trent Park faces consequences that are more immediate. With plans to add to the campus rejected by Enfield Council, the university has decided for financial reasons to move courses to its Hendon Campus. From autumn 2011, Trent Park will grow increasingly empty, occupied again only by dog-walkers and the rabbits in the woods. It seems far from impossible that the campus will, in time, be sold.
At the end of the day, I depart Trent Park in a sad, reflective mood, painfully aware of the uncertainty of the future. Once again, financial interests and the narrative of financial progress have resulted in seismic social struggle around Trent Park. Trent Park itself has always occupied a strangely liminal place in history. Standing between the urban and the rural, it has always been a place where the clashing interests of social groups and classes has been made visible. Once more, a former Bullingdon club member has control over the fate of the Park, though this time from Downing Street rather than the drawing room.
I find my bus-stop sojourn interrupted by a group of student friends: loud, boisterous, and amiable. A happily mixed group in race and sexuality, their egalitarianism and energy gives me hope for the future. Still, when most students - including myself - are far more able to name individual cartoon Pokemon than species of tree, I wonder if we will be able to find the language to challenge outside influences on our lives. As Alfie Meadows’ case shows, future struggles will take place as much in the media - and, consequently, in the artistic world of ideas - than in reality. Pastoral Trent Park may well be swept away utterly by technological progress.
When the children of Commonwealth newcomers to Britain went on to further education in the 1970s and 80s, Middlesex was a particularly common destination. Many West Indian students networked against racism, sewing on Black Power badges themselves. Faced with a regime of austerity and the potential of £9000 per year in fees, their children now must consider their alternatives carefully: protest and organise, like the Levellers once did, or accommodate the ever-increasing encroachments of big business. Whichever way they turn will indicate to the rest of Britain which way the wind is blowing. May they choose wisely.