Suffolk author Sarah Hardy found the inspiration for her atmospheric new novel right on her doorstep.
On a calm, flat day, when the damp air hangs heavily just before dusk, it feels as if there are ghosts around every corner at Sudbourne Park. It used to be a grand country estate dating back to the 17th century, and was used by the military in the Second World War, but the Palladian mansion was demolished in the 1950s, after falling into disrepair. The grounds now only have hints of the topiary, terraces and avenues of trees which once would have grown here.
There are people living and working in the collection of buildings that remain. A co-operative of printmakers has a workshop here, while the former stables, offices and game larder have all been converted into attractive private homes. Nearby, the cricket pitch is in use for summer matches, but the quiet and stillness is palpable. There is little evidence of modern life among the surrounding fields, woodland and lake, despite being a short distance from the road into Orford.
The estate is owned by Sir Edward Greenwell who is seeking to restore it as a vibrant community, replanting and rebuilding where he can. A Monet-style footbridge has been restored over the water and modern eco cottages have been constructed as new homes within the vast walled garden. Rich in history, atmosphere and potential, it’s no wonder that Sudbourne Park has proved the inspiration for a haunting new novel by writer and resident Sarah Hardy.
Called The Walled Garden, this warm, tender and thoughtful love story is set just after the Second World War, when Stephen, heir to the crumbling Oakbourne Hall in Suffolk, returns home a stranger, bitter and angry, tormented by all that he has seen and done, and the secrets he holds. His wife, Alice, lonely and afraid of the man she no longer knows, tries to pick up the pieces of her marriage and of Oakbourne Hall. She begins with the walled garden.
'The story of my scarred characters is about how people who have seen the worst of human nature find a way to live again,' says Sarah. 'In the resurrection of the walled garden, we see the beginnings of a resurrection of damaged souls and a damaged society. The walls make it a refuge, but it’s also hemming them in with the rules they live by and the secrets they keep.
'I’ve always found it fascinating, what people do after terrible trauma,' she says. 'My husband co-wrote a book many years ago about people coming home from war. I remember thinking what a great story that would be. War changes people. Ordinary people are put in extraordinary, extreme situations. It makes for great drama. And you see the best and worst of people.' This germ of an idea took hold seven years ago when Sarah first started working on The Walled Garden. She had been living in Sudbourne Park with her husband, the author and journalist Tony Rennell, for a number of years and her daily walks around the grounds gave her the perfect setting for her characters and their post-war story.
'When we came here, it was completely overgrown and wild,' she says of moving to the area. 'Every day we were confronted by this gap where the big house would have been. It doesn’t take a lot to imagine what it would have been like.' Sarah and Tony had been gifted pictures and articles about Sudbourne Hall by the previous owners of their property. There were images of a woman in a crinoline wandering the grounds, and the house in its splendour. All this had disappeared shortly after the war.
Although it’s easy to think you are stepping back in time as you walk the grounds of Sudbourne Park today, how did Sarah ensure her writing about this period was authentic? 'My husband’s written lots of books about the Second World War - which I have read in detail,' she says. Also, from her childhood, she recalls her grandfather’s response to questions about his experiences. 'Even at that age I realised I had trespassed somewhere utterly forbidden, and I was too scared to say another word. I know now that my grandpa fought at Gallipoli. They just didn’t talk about it.'
That sense of restraint and self-containment is a powerful feature of Sarah’s writing, as well as in the behaviour of her characters. 'My favourite novels, which I return to for a comfort read, are by 19th and early 20th century writers – Rose Macaulay, Rebecca West, Rosamond Lehmann – and I think maybe that’s what I was formed by.' She has been a writer throughout her working life, but it all happened by chance. 'I left university in the early 80s when there was massive graduate unemployment,' she says. 'I didn’t know what I wanted to do but I wrote a letter on the off chance to The Times. They had a column on their features page by Joanna Lumley and she’d just stopped doing it. They had a space to fill and they asked me to write a diary about being a job hunter.'
Working in London, Brussels and Dublin, other jobs for Vogue, Irish Tatler and the Daily Telegraph followed, until she was made redundant and wrote two novels under the name Sarah Foot. When 'life intervened' she had to take time out, but with The Walled Garden she is now using her great-grandmother’s name to mark a new start and a new direction for her writing. 'I hope people will be moved and feel compassion for all the characters who had terrible decisions to make. But above all, I hope they will enjoy reading the book and won’t be able to put it down.'
The Walled Garden is published by Bonnier
