Set in the back garden of a semi-detached house in the quiet Northumberland village of Branxton is one of the least well known but possibly most endearing visitor attractions you’ll ever see.
In the 1960s, John Fairnington who owned The Fountain House in Branxton had an idea to create a private garden of concrete statues mainly as an entertainment for his son Edwin who suffered from cerebral palsy.
With the help of one James Beveridge, he set about designing and moulding statues of animals and people and placing these randomly around the 1 acre garden at the back of the house.
By the 1970s, the garden has a massive 300 statues in it including concrete statues of elephants, panda’s, deer and zebra’s. Alongside these were non-animal statues including angels, Sir Winston Churchill and a shrine to Robbie Burns who was a favourite of John Fairnington.
Edwin died in 1971 which is also when the garden additions stopped and John himself died aged 98 when the garden was bequeathed to 6 charities. However John Fairnington Junior bought the gardens back and opened them to the public.
Today the house is owned by his grand-daughter and access to the gardens is still free, although there is a donations box outside the gate. The gardens attract a small but dedicated number of visitors each year despite having absolutely no paid publicity and appearing in virtually no tourist publications.
Perhaps one of the reasons why the garden charms those who visit is that it was never laid out or designed to be a public attraction and today many of the statues are faded having been sitting outside in the Northumberland weather for 50 years.
As it happens, the house is also close to the site of the famous Battle of Flodden which took place only a couple of miles away, and there is even a monument within the gardens to this battle.
Links around Branxton:
Good pictures of the Branxton Concrete Menagerie
Visitor attractions in Cornhill-on-Tweed (near Branxton)
Hotel accommodation in Coldstream (near Branxton)
Photo from Geograph
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