Sir Frederick Gibberd

Speaker 10:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive.

Speaker 10:05

For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in 1983.

Speaker 10:11

And the presenter was Roy Plumley.

Presenter0:30

This week I'm speaking to you from a house in the country, on the Essex Hertfordshire border, the house of the architect, Sir Frederick Gibbard. Sir Frederick, you've chosen to live in a fairly isolated spot. Does that mean that you could endure isolation?

Sir Frederick Gibberd0:46

Well, I don't think it's isolated, because it is part of Harlonio town. I came here not because I wanted to be isolated, because I wanted to make a garden.

Sir Frederick Gibberd0:56

And for the last twenty five

Presenter0:57

Five years I've been making it. And you've certainly made a great success with it and we're going to talk about that later.

Presenter1:03

On your desert island, which is a far less comfortable place to be, do you think music would be a great comfort?

Presenter1:09

Oh man

Sir Frederick Gibberd1:09

Certainly, of course.

Sir Frederick Gibberd1:11

I don't have any musical background at all.

Sir Frederick Gibberd1:14

There was no music in the family. My father bought an immense

Sir Frederick Gibberd1:19

H M B gramophone without the dog and he used to play Gilburn Sullivan and Music Hall and that sort of record and we used to solemnly listen to them and then uh when we got bored it was put away and I really didn't hit any music at all until I left school and went to a school of architecture where I began to meet people who uh enjoyed music.

Presenter1:40

Yet you'll find it difficult to pick just eight records that may have to last a long, long time.

Sir Frederick Gibberd1:44

Very difficult indeed. You see, I must confess I had an eye on this interview and I thought, well, so-and-so would give me a jolly good lead to talk about some episode in my life. And then in the end, I thought, no, I'm going to be shut up with this. So I'm really going to get eight records that I really would love to live with. And I think I've probably got them. What do we start with? Could we start with Verdi? Because I have a passion for Verdi. He was the sort of chap that I most admire. A complete autocrat. He had a farm. He had a passion for farming. He loathed the press. He loved brass bands. He was a complete one-off character. And careless of singing. And, well, marvellous voice.

Presenter2:25

And which is the opera?

Sir Frederick Gibberd2:27

Macbeth.

Speaker 12:34

Yeah.

Speaker 22:41

Evil

Speaker 22:42

We're through.

Speaker 22:50

Oh my pleasure of

Speaker 12:52

Yeah.

Speaker 23:10

Uh

Speaker 23:20

This foot's motivated, whatever.

Presenter3:30

Maria Callas in the letter scene from Veridi's Macbeth. Sir Frederick, whereabouts will you want?

Presenter3:36

I was born in the centre of England, in in Coventry. You said there wasn't much music in your background. Was there an appreciation of pictures and buildings and art in general?

Sir Frederick Gibberd3:47

No, not at all. I come from a middle-class liberal background. My father was a shopkeeper. He had a gentleman's outfitter, which my grandfather had before him, and my brother now has. And they were all three splendid Coventry businessmen. We had very little conversation, except about school and just living. We certainly had pretty nearly no music.

Sir Frederick Gibberd4:16

But on the whole, I think I had a pretty good upbringing because I went to the local grammar school. Were you good there? I mean, what were you best at? I wasn't particularly good at anything. I was I played cricket quite well. I could, of course, draw. Did you go round drawing old churches? Well, my passion has always been for design. And

Speaker 14:33

As well.

Sir Frederick Gibberd4:38

Coventry was a place that made motorbikes and motor cars. And I thought to begin with it it'd be great fun to design cars until I discovered that they weren't designed by individuals. And I really I think I really hit on architecture because first of all they built a town hall and I went through a period I must have been about twelve at the time of designing Gothic.

Speaker 24:49

Mm.

Sir Frederick Gibberd5:00

Town halls, but they

Sir Frederick Gibberd5:01

The turning point was when father built the billiard room, single story building, and had a very unpleasant terracotta coping round, and my father said, Look, it should have been battlemented and he wouldn't pay the final account and there was a tremendous row. And the contractor said to my father, You should have had an architect.

Sir Frederick Gibberd5:19

And then I discovered that the architect was the chap who designed the buildings and he was a key figure. And from then on I was determined to be an architect and it was as simple as that really. Where did you study? First of all, I was an article pupil for four years, but at the same time I went to the Birmingham School of Architecture.

Presenter5:34

Well this was fine, so you were getting practical work and theoretical at the same time.

Sir Frederick Gibberd5:37

Many years later I became principal of the AA school during the war. My contract was for the wartime period and they asked me to go on and I said well I could go on only on condition that the school was based on that sort of fury, that people came in from private practice and taught and went into offices and at the same time the school provided fury but it didn't take off so I went back to private practice.

Presenter6:03

When you'd graduated, when you'd Uh

Sir Frederick Gibberd6:04

completed your four-year study did you

Presenter6:07

We'll stay with that firm.

Sir Frederick Gibberd6:08

Oh no, I left immediately. I got into the final of a

Sir Frederick Gibberd6:12

One of these students' competitions, and uh I wanted time to work it out. The subject was a

Sir Frederick Gibberd6:19

a monastery in the Italian hills, of all things. Funnily enough, I've since designed a monastery and I needed time, so I got a job in Warwick, where I could start work at eight o'clock in the morning and knock off at four in the afternoon, and it was a very small firm.

Speaker 16:22

Enough.

Sir Frederick Gibberd6:34

And I did all the designing and I had endless trouble because the firm was famous for its Tudor architecture and I wanted to do Georgian. And after about nine months we fell out and I came to the big city and got a job there.

Presenter6:48

Before that, what was the first job you'd been allowed to do on your own when they said we'll let Gibbard have a go?

Sir Frederick Gibberd6:54

Ah, my mother said let Gebbard have a go before that because she got tired of this huge house and said, Look, I'm going to have a modern house. And my father was bullied into it and he bought a site. And at the age of twenty, I designed a modern house for my mother. It was tremendous fun. A local architect supervised it and carried it out because I was earning a living. And it had all kinds of strange things like flush doors and kitchen equipment, which were unheard of at that time. And I thought, good lord, this is really going to make me. I shall get endless work. Of course, I didn't. Every spec builder copied it, and I just went on being.

Speaker 17:22

About

Sir Frederick Gibberd7:31

An architectural assistant, but it still stands. Oh yes, it still stands, yeah.

Sir Frederick Gibberd7:35

Your second record. What shall we have next? I would like Mozart. His piano concerto, number 27. Why do you choose this?

Sir Frederick Gibberd7:44

Oh, I don't know, just because it was the sort of record I'd love to hear thrown up on a desert island, that's all.

Sir Frederick Gibberd7:50

Because I I I would uh cheerfully settle for uh eight Merzott records anyway for the whole programme.

Presenter8:54

Part of the second movement of Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 27, Wilhelm Kempf with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra. So building a modern house for your mother was your first, well, not really professional job, because you were only twenty. What was the first design that you look back on which you can still see that made an impression?

Sir Frederick Gibberd9:18

It was a block of flats in Streatham called Boolman Court. This was in about 1933, I suppose. Actually, I picked up a girl at a dance hall, and she was the secretary of a tycoon who wanted to put money into property. He was a furrier.

Sir Frederick Gibberd9:39

And he said to me, Look, if you can find a site on which I can put flats for single people, which would be the alternative to the digs, I'll build it. And so I hunted for sites, and in the end, I made several planning applications, and they all failed because the local authorities were worried about what they called encouraging the part-time girl, somebody doing a bit of light whoring in their spare time. But in the end, I got this scheme in.

Speaker 110:05

That

Sir Frederick Gibberd10:09

Streatham approved and I built it and it has been a pioneer building and it has been listed as a building of historic interest. I think because it was of a time when modern architecture was first coming into this country and I belonged to a group called the Modern Architecture Research Group and we knew what architecture was. We believed passionately that one went back to fundamentals, that first of all you built a building for its use, not for its appearance. In fact I've always been probably more interested in people than anything and had I been less interested in people and more interested in building a monument, I'd probably been a better architect.

Presenter10:49

Well then you won an open competition to design a nurse's home. That was something of a breakthrough for you, I think.

Sir Frederick Gibberd10:54

Yes. After Pullman Court I got two more flat blocks to design and I'd married in the meantime and uh

Sir Frederick Gibberd11:01

Then all work dried up, you'll see so that's got me going again until

Presenter11:06

Luoka. And the war, of course. Well, there wasn't much building going on except airfields, but you you told me that you taught

Sir Frederick Gibberd11:13

Well, I had a really a most enjoyable war.

Sir Frederick Gibberd11:19

I've always been w ill for one reason or other. I think it probably started because I got rheumatic fever as a small child. And I sort of made a hobby of going into hospitals, you know, having all sorts of things done. Anyway, I got a lot of pain one way or another. And I was told that I'd got a defective kidney, so there was no question of fighting. So I got a job building. They are pee shelters, which was great fun. And we built them without any drawings. And then we were told to do the working drawings, the shelters. And I thought this is absolute nonsense. So I wrote to the Architectural Association, thinking it would be rather nice to have a sort of academic career and said, look, can I have a job? And I got a letter back saying there was no vacancies. And then the telephone rang.

Sir Frederick Gibberd12:04

And a very excited voice said, Oh, this is Geoffrey Jellico, who's now Sir Geoffrey Jellico. I'm the principal, and I'm sorry you had that letter. When can you come? Can you come on Monday? So I went on Monday.

Sir Frederick Gibberd12:15

And I taught for two years, and I had some marvellous students. I taught Sir Philip Powell of Powell and Moore. I taught Geoffrey Powell, who

Sir Frederick Gibberd12:24

Did the barbecue

Presenter12:25

Central people like them. With the war over, there must have been a boom time for architects because half the country needed building up again.

Sir Frederick Gibberd12:33

Yes, it goes back as far as I'm concerned, the bit before the end of the war, because uh uh everybody had a reconstruction scheme.

Sir Frederick Gibberd12:41

I got more and more interested in the kind of environment in which you build. It'd be more interesting to relate buildings to each other and make places. And so I wrote to the Town Planning Institute and said, look, I'm principal of the AS School of Architecture and will you make me a member, you see? And they wrote back and said, yes, of course, but you must sit for the exam. So I swatted for a couple of years, really hard work, and I sat for the exam and I passed it. Now that left me in a situation where I was an architect who was reasonably well known as an up-and-coming young architect with a a planning qualification which not many young people had.

Presenter13:18

Yeah.

Sir Frederick Gibberd13:19

And that opened a new world to me, really.

Presenter13:21

You were invited to design the nineteen fifty-one film.

Sir Frederick Gibberd13:23

Festival of Britain. Why did you turn that down? Oh, because I have limitations and what I do I like to do really well. And I didn't have the sort of imagination that would really really set that alight with as Hugh Casson had, who did it.

Presenter13:39

You took on London Airport, which was then just a field. Could you guess what was going to be needed? Oh, good Lord, no, nobody could.

Sir Frederick Gibberd13:47

We hadn't got a clue. The whole job was farcical. There was an expert committee that sat and talked about the future of the airport and what should be done there.

Sir Frederick Gibberd13:57

And amongst other things they said that there should be a an open architectural competition and they left it for a very long time. And then the situation got critical. So they decided they'd put up what were called semi-permanent buildings.

Sir Frederick Gibberd14:11

Now at that time I had done a house called the British Island Steel Federation House which was a prefabricated house which was very successful.

Sir Frederick Gibberd14:20

So I was one of the names that that they thought about in connection with semi-permanent buildings. And the idea was to

Sir Frederick Gibberd14:28

To put them up and get an architect to sort of do colour schemes and make them look pretty. So they interviewed a number of architects, and I asked a lot of questions. The chairman character named Sir Jocnomet was a very outspoken man. He said, Do you want this bloody job or don't you? I sort of jumped into the T pen and said, Yes, I do. So I got it. And then it was quite obvious that it couldn't be done with semi-permanent buildings. You could only handle the traffic on two levels. So I did some designs for free, you see, and said, look, this is the way you should do it. And they said, well, this is all very well. You're not commissioned to do this. But in the end, they decided that I should do it. And then I became the architect, and I've gone on. I didn't know

Presenter15:14

I didn't know until I was doing some reading before I met you that there's a chapel at the airport. That was your design.

Sir Frederick Gibberd15:20

It was. I don't like a lot of my architecture, but I think that's one of probably one of the best jobs I did. It really arose because.

Sir Frederick Gibberd15:29

It was really Cardinal Heathen. It was the time of the building of Liverpool Cathedral, and he was very anxious to have a non-denominational character there, with the three religions represented. And he talked to me about it, and he talked to the ministry. Now it so happened that I had the two clients, you'll see.

Speaker 215:47

Cool.

Sir Frederick Gibberd15:48

Healing and the airport authority. And so I was told to find a site, and I looked for a site.

Sir Frederick Gibberd15:55

Everywhere one thought of building a small chapel was completely dwarfed by immense car parks, which I didn't design incidentally. The whole environment had been ruined by the engineers. And so I suddenly thought, well, the thing to do with this is to bury it and have it underground, rather like a catacomb, you'll see, and give people chalk and they can chalk little symbols on the walls. Anyway, that's what we did. And I think it works.

Presenter16:14

Simple course.

Speaker 116:15

Topic

Sir Frederick Gibberd16:20

Let's have your third record. My third record is Vivaldi, his oboe concerto.

Presenter17:26

Part of the second movement of Evalde's concerto for erbo strings and continuo in D minor.

Presenter17:32

P two five nine.

Presenter17:34

Heinz Holliger with members of the Dresden State Orchestra.

Presenter17:39

You designed a bridge, which must be a great pleasure to do.

Sir Frederick Gibberd17:43

Yes, it was uh it was a great pleasure because I've always been very scared of getting type costs for designing a particular sort of building. I did a lot of flats and housing earlier on in my career and I was scared stiff of becoming a housing expert. And uh this really arose because uh

Sir Frederick Gibberd18:03

I think, feeling about the environment. This was a bridge at Nietzsche, and it was going to cross the river and go smack into the town centre. There was a terrible row about whether it was going to wreck the town centre and so on. And the Minister of Transport said, Look, why don't you get Freddie Gibbett to have a go? Because he'll get a reasonable compromise. And so I designed this bridge without an engineer. I sort of used my intuition and my intelligence and designed it. And I got a very nice approach to the town. And then they got an engineer in, and he did a lot of sums. And I was more or less right. I think most brilliant engineering is not done on a computer. I think it's done by somebody who really gets.

Sir Frederick Gibberd18:49

a spark at intuition. I found designing that the uh

Sir Frederick Gibberd18:54

The whole process is absolutely fascinating. You start with a blank piece of paper on a drawing board and you haven't got a clue what's going to happen. You say it's a marvellous adventure. And suddenly you get a brainwave and you almost fancy that you feel divinity in you breathing wings, to quote Milton. It really is an extraordinary thing. And that is the distinction between

Speaker 219:11

Built on that.

Sir Frederick Gibberd19:16

Art and uh and technology.

Sir Frederick Gibberd19:20

What's your fourth record going to be? Well, I would like to get back to Metzart to the Hafner Symphony. What does this do for you? I just get enormous pleasure listening to it. That's all it does to me.

Presenter20:31

Part of the second movement of Mozart's Symphony No. thirty five in D, The Hafne, Raphael Kublik conducting the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra.

Presenter20:40

Let's talk about your religious buildings, other than that underground chapel in London Airport. One which personally I enjoy very much is is the Mosque on the edge of Regents Park, London.

Sir Frederick Gibberd20:53

I think most architects regard the mosque as being a bit of a pastiche.

Sir Frederick Gibberd20:57

I think it comes off because, again, I was obsessed with the environment and.

Sir Frederick Gibberd21:03

It's designed very much in relationship to uh the park, the Nash terraces and the view of the dome through the trees. And I think it makes a contribution to London in that respect. When I say it was designed because of this, of course I didn't start with that. I started with what went on inside a a prayer hall and so on.

Presenter21:21

I mean, this is how you begin. And you have the distinction of building one of the two post-war cathedrals in this country.

Sir Frederick Gibberd21:27

Yeah.

Presenter21:27

Yes, this was Liverpool.

Sir Frederick Gibberd21:28

Yeah.

Presenter21:28

Yeah.

Sir Frederick Gibberd21:29

The most miserable time in one's life is when one hasn't got any work to design. But it's also nice to be able to design different kinds of buildings. And I thought, well, I'll never, never design a cathedral, let alone a church.

Sir Frederick Gibberd21:41

Until the opportunity came for this competition. And one of my partners went in for it. He was a devout Catholic, actually. He prayed to win. And about a month before the competition was due in, I'd done nothing about it. He said, Now look, Freddie, it's too late for you to enter. Come and have a look at my designer. He gave me a credit. And I said, It's not too late, I'm going to enter. So I got together a scratched team in the office, people that nobody else wanted. And we worked all day and we worked most of the night, and we got it in time. And then one morning, the phone rang and

Sir Frederick Gibberd22:16

was Basil Spence, my secretary. So Basil Spence wants to talk to you. So this voice said, Oh, Freddie, um, Archbishop Heenan wants to talk to you. So I thought, Good Lord, what does he want?'Cause I'd forgotten all about the Liverpool Cathedral competition and uh and he said I

Sir Frederick Gibberd22:31

I have to tell you, Mr. Gibbard, you've won the competition for Lilford Cathedral, sir.

Sir Frederick Gibberd22:36

I was absolutely thrown and I said, Well, I really don't know what to say and he said, Well, I knew what I'd say, Mr Gibbet, I'd say, Thank God which was absolutely typical of him. We became tremendous friends afterwards.

Presenter22:44

Which is absolutely typical of

Presenter22:46

And

Presenter22:48

It's very light and cheerful and uncluttered. Inside, rather like a a circus tent, I thought.

Sir Frederick Gibberd22:54

Well, maybe, maybe. I don't think it's the ideal shape, actually, for that particular problem. I think probably the Greek theatre is probably the right shape. You see, the whole idea is to focus people on the altar who are not spectators. They are going to be involved with what goes on there. So you don't really need a circle with anything behind it.

Speaker 223:11

The

Speaker 123:11

Uh

Sir Frederick Gibberd23:16

But I was back on this problem of the environment. And Liverpool has one marvellous, marvellous building. That's Scotts Cathedral. The Anglican. The Anglican. A crown, you see. And I thought, terrific, if Liverpool could have two crowns.

Presenter23:27

The Anglican, the Anglican.

Sir Frederick Gibberd23:33

And they're a short distance apart, it would give this town, this city, a fantastic act. So I tried to turn a fan shape into a cone and a tower, and I couldn't. So in the end, I made it a circle, and then it developed from that. Functionally, functionally in a way, I think aesthetically, of course it works in a way in that the the most important space is over the most important place. It works to that extent.

Presenter23:49

Function

Sir Frederick Gibberd23:58

Right, record number five.

Sir Frederick Gibberd24:01

For sentimental reasons, I would love to be on the island and listen to ballet, because I've had such magical times at ballet. And of course it's visual as well. You'll get the dance and you'll get marvellous sets. And I think perhaps Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake would be the one I'd opt for.

Presenter25:16

The finale to Act Four of Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake Ballet, Richard Bonning conducting the National Philharmonic Orchestra.

Presenter25:25

Now surely the biggest job you've done, Sir Frederick, is laying out Harlowe New Town.

Presenter25:32

You stuck 80,000 people in open countryside on a new site. Yes, of course, I didn't. Stick them here.

Sir Frederick Gibberd25:38

A lot of people were involved in this. Yes. I was.

Sir Frederick Gibberd25:42

I was asked in the first place to uh do an exercise to discover whether it was possible to put a new town here and if so how much land was required. And I did that. Uh Silkin asked me to do it and uh

Sir Frederick Gibberd25:55

That idea. The magic formula for building it was to set up a development corporation to do that. It had powers to do that job. It appointed its own staff. And I worked with them when they were a committee before they became a a development corporation. We got on well and they said to me, Now will you be the architect for this new town? And I said, No, I can't possibly. I've got a

Sir Frederick Gibberd26:17

Practice and I'm not prepared to give it up, you'll see, so we hit on a formula in which I would work for them part-time.

Sir Frederick Gibberd26:24

And I wrote into my agreement uh a clause to the effect, which nobody noticed actually, that I'd be responsible for the design of the town, so that gave me a great deal of power. I could control everything.

Presenter26:34

Yeah.

Presenter26:35

That was very

Sir Frederick Gibberd26:35

Uh well, it wasn't cunning. Uh design is um is my passion, you say, and if I was going to be involved in this, then uh

Sir Frederick Gibberd26:45

I was really going to carry the can. Mind you, hundreds of architects have worked here, but all within a broad framework which we've developed over the years. You see, a town is totally different from architecture. We're really designing an organism which is changing all the time. And although the town is complete in a sense in that the corporation have been dissolved, it is still going to go on developing over the years. It's going to grow or it's going to die.

Presenter27:12

Yeah.

Sir Frederick Gibberd27:14

Yeah.

Presenter27:14

Your basic plan was to put the habitations in clumps round the town centre, with the open country between the clumps, roughly.

Sir Frederick Gibberd27:22

Yes. Yes. The dilemma I was in was this, that...

Sir Frederick Gibberd27:26

I think towns have got personalities and one likes to live in a place which is different from everyone else's. Uh a lot of new towns are going to be built and it looked to me as if they're all going to look the same because the majority of people wanted a two-story house with a garden.

Sir Frederick Gibberd27:43

And I thought the only way to give this town an overall character is to latch onto the site itself. And it was a lovely valley site. And what I did was preserve all the valleys from building, because a valley is always where the landscape's most interesting. I used a river on one side as a barrier and some hills on the other as a barrier. And I developed this valley idea into a series of landscape wedges which separate the town into different districts. And within those districts you have clusters of neighbourhoods with its own shopping and as many different activities as possible going on at that one place, Tennyson's Avenue.

Speaker 228:24

Yeah.

Speaker 128:24

Yeah.

Sir Frederick Gibberd28:26

And on the highest point is the town centre, which is the focus. In other words, there is a break between the town centre and these neighbourhood groups.

Sir Frederick Gibberd28:38

Now what you won't get in the town centre is uh people living there. Nobody wants to live there. So it'll never be alive in the sense that a medieval town was where people lived and worked.

Sir Frederick Gibberd28:49

And it's no different from any other town. I had a job in Doncaster and after dinner I didn't know what to do, so I walked down the main street in Doncaster, and Doncaster's bigger than Harlow, and a character came up to me, and absolutely nobody about and he said, Where's the nightlife chum? and I said, I don't know, you tell me I'm looking for it.

Presenter29:10

Um from

Presenter29:12

Planning a town planning a reservoir. Now that must be a technical job. You've done two or three. Yes, I didn't, in fact, plan them.

Sir Frederick Gibberd29:21

I really got involved, I suppose, because the

Sir Frederick Gibberd29:24

Landscape Harlow got known, and I've got a reasonably large practice.

Sir Frederick Gibberd29:31

The Water Authority up in the north were told, this was the Derwent Reservoir, that if they were going to get planning permission they'd got to hire an architect to do the buildings and a landscape architect to do the landscape.

Sir Frederick Gibberd29:44

And they thought about those people and I was the only one who had both qualifications. So I got the job, you'll see.

Sir Frederick Gibberd29:51

One evil of two.

Presenter29:54

We've got to record number six.

Sir Frederick Gibberd29:57

Well, Beethoven is fourth concerto and there's a lovely record by Arthur Rubinstein which I'd like to have.

Sir Frederick Gibberd30:05

Oh, the piano concerto. That's right.

Presenter31:08

The opening of Beethoven's fourth piano concerto in G, R to Rubenstein, with the Symphony of the Air conducted by Joseph Kripps. Now we've been talking about this vast landscaping project.

Presenter31:22

with reservoirs, you're doing a very

Presenter31:25

Splendid landscaping project in miniature. Well, not so much in miniature. You've got seven acres of garden here, which you've constructed beautifully. How long has it taken you?

Sir Frederick Gibberd31:36

Well I've been I've been here for 25 years. It used to be a little sort of farmstead and I bought it because it had a very squalid bungalow on it and a farmyard, equally squalid, and a lovely avenue of trees and a lovely valley side. And I always had a passion for gardens. It really started when I was a very small boy. I used to... Having four brothers, I used to find life was intolerable and I'd run away from home and that meant getting on my bike and going to my grandmother who lived five miles away in Nuneden, who had a passion for gardening and she used to get me to garden and I absolutely adored her. And nobody was worried about this, they all knew where I was and I'd get home at night or so. And one thing I missed when I first worked in London was being cut off from trees and the land. You know, I hadn't got a car and I was miserable. And

Sir Frederick Gibberd32:32

Later on I managed to get a house in Grave Test where there was a garden. Then I made a better one in Hampstead which was bigger. And I'd finished that. And then I thought, no, I must go on with this. And as I said, I hunted for a house and I found this site. And I bought it simply with the object of making a garden. Because I like the soil. See, I like contact with the soil. I like working with it. I like designing. And this was the one way that I could work and design without using a drawing board. So it was a complete relaxation.

Presenter33:03

Uh

Presenter33:04

You split it up most ingeniously into different areas, giving a completely different view, a different atmosphere.

Sir Frederick Gibberd33:11

Well, it was uh it was really developing the thing from the house and doing it bit by bit. It's really a sort of cellular plan. It's a whole lot of uh spaces and uh you're you're led from one to the other. It's got some quite amusing features in it, like a castle and uh

Sir Frederick Gibberd33:29

Temple and so on, but it isn't a series of features, it's a continuous sequence of different designs. You see, one leads into the other. And a fascinating use of water, little lakes and streams. Yes, well, I was lucky. You see, there is a river down there, and I was able to dam it and make a lake, and the water table is very low. And of course, you see, the marvelous thing was that being a valleyside, the soil conditions are totally different at different parts. So, that gave me a chance of using a wide variety of plant material. Not that I'm a horticulturist, I simply regard the plants as being raw materials. I mean, if I

Presenter33:34

Yeah.

Presenter33:36

And the plan

Speaker 133:53

Okay.

Sir Frederick Gibberd34:04

Wantum

Sir Frederick Gibberd34:05

Fell a tree, I fell a tree, I wait till my wife's out because she sh you know, she has a passion for all of them, but

Presenter34:11

Our attitudes are different. And you use the different areas as sites for your sculpture that you've collected.

Sir Frederick Gibberd34:17

Yes, or she's collected. She's bought a lot. Well, it's worked in different ways, you see. Sometimes.

Sir Frederick Gibberd34:25

One's seen a piece of sculpture which is absolutely stunning and thought one must must have this. One couldn't find a site, so I made a garden for it. In some cases there's been a site where I thought there ought to be a piece of sculpture, so we found a piece, but if I haven't found it, then uh we've commissioned someone to do it. We've done the same thing in the new town. My wife is chairman of the Art Trust and we've got I probably the best collection of modern sculpture of almost any town ten times as big as Hollow over the years. And your other hobby is model

Presenter34:57

Modern English watercolours.

Sir Frederick Gibberd34:58

Yes, my hobby has anything to do with design or art, really.

Sir Frederick Gibberd35:02

I know lots of ar artists and I knew lots when I was young and uh when I had some money I I bought pictures from them to encourage them so I had a sort of formula that they

Sir Frederick Gibberd35:14

Painter had to be um

Sir Frederick Gibberd35:16

British and he had to be alive.

Sir Frederick Gibberd35:19

And it had to be a watercolour, and they were watercolours simply because I couldn't afford oils. But now I've got so many that I've started a collection in the new town, the town hall. I've given them some and we shall build up a collection now. Splendid. Record number seven, we got you. Well, Mozart again and the marriage of Figaro, that marvellous area by the the Countess, I can't remember what it's called.

Presenter35:44

O Dove Sono and It's Sung by Maria Stad.

Speaker 235:50

We are the hustle.

Speaker 235:53

Unasperazo.

Speaker 235:58

They got to

Speaker 236:02

Oh my god.

Speaker 236:12

Dikamajara Lehikra Dikamajar Lehikra.

Presenter36:49

Maria Stada singing Dove Sono from Mozart's The Marriage of Figura.

Presenter36:55

Now we've dumped you on this mythical desert island.

Presenter36:59

Are you going to landscape that? Of course.

Presenter37:03

You could design a hut.

Sir Frederick Gibberd37:05

Oh, undoubtedly. I could build it too.

Sir Frederick Gibberd37:07

Would you try to escape? Oh, no, no, I I I can't stand travelling, and it would mean I'd have to swim anywhere, and I loathe water. I'd be perfectly content to make a god.

Presenter37:19

Yes, I have an idea you do very well. And you've got one more record to choose.

Sir Frederick Gibberd37:23

Ah well, that's Forre's Requiem, which uh I'd have full blast every other day, I think. But th there this is lovely record with the choir of King's College, Cambridge.

Speaker 237:35

Which is there, what is there?

Speaker 237:46

Christy Lee.

Speaker 237:59

Praise Holy

Presenter38:32

Part of the Kyrie from the Foray Requiem, David Wilcox conducting the choir of King's College, Cambridge and the New Philharmonia Orchestra.

Presenter38:40

Sir Frederick, if you would take only one disc out of the H you play disc, which would it be?

Sir Frederick Gibberd38:45

How difficult.

Presenter38:45

Perkled. Um I think I would take figura.

Sir Frederick Gibberd38:50

Yeah.

Presenter38:51

That's right.

Presenter38:52

And you're allowed to have one luxury on the island, one object of no practical use, but something that would give you pleasure.

Sir Frederick Gibberd38:59

Of necessity, pleasure? I what I would really like to take would be a bottle of sleeping tablets.

Presenter39:05

Well, that's all right, yes.

Sir Frederick Gibberd39:05

Okay.

Sir Frederick Gibberd39:06

It's not because I suffer from insomnia, but I watched one or two people take rather a long time dying. And uh the one thing that would frighten me more than anything would be to have a slow death, you'll see. And if I thought, my God, I've got cancer or I've got this, then I could extinguish myself nice and quickly. See, I wouldn't have the courage to drown myself, and I certainly wouldn't uh hang myself, so this would be a nice, easy way out.

Presenter39:30

Yeah. and one book.

Presenter39:32

You have the Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare, one other literary work.

Sir Frederick Gibberd39:37

I should want a book on poetry.

Sir Frederick Gibberd39:41

But, you see, there are lots of modern poems that I like. I cut them out of the listener on paper so I could stick them in a book. So I think I'd probably take my own scrapbook, which is a sort of anthology, because it would have all the poems in I particularly like. See, the awful thing about a poem is I I know quite a lot by heart. Others, one forgets a word, you see, and it's irritating, and uh so then I look it up. So if I had this book, this would solve that problem.

Presenter40:09

Write a personal anthology of poetry, and thank you, Sir Frederick Gibbard, for letting us hear your Desert Island Discs.

Sir Frederick Gibberd40:16

My wife said that this was going to be an echo trip, and it certainly has been. Thank you. Goodbye, everyone.

Presenter40:22

Yeah.

Speaker 140:48

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk/slash radio four.