‘Pillar and Moon’ 1932-42 (detail) by Paul Nash

Certain works of art, like particular aromas, have the power to bring people or places vividly to mind and somehow transport us back through time. This painting, entitled ‘Pillar and Moon’, by Paul Nash had this effect when I came across it on a postcard recently.

The image took me back, several decades, to a location I frequently visited as a child – High Elms Estate (or High Elms Country Park as it is now known) near Farnborough, Kent. The odd perspective and strange visual components – an oddly isolated pillar, a wall of towering trees, the pink-tinged clouds and day-time moon – all combine to give the work a surreal feeling, creating a sense of otherworldliness which I remember experiencing strongly whenever I visited.

The Latin phrase ‘genius loci’ refers to ‘a powerful and protective guardian or spirit of a place’. Artist Paul Nash used it in relation to certain familiar and much-loved landscapes or landmarks which were imbued with a particular atmosphere. In some early works he rendered this feeling literally – depicting a goddess floating in the sky or a solitary female figure in a landscape. Later, Nash managed to capture this same sense powerfully, in works such as The Wittenham Clumps, through his sensitive draughtsmanship, mark-making, composition and colour tones. He sensed ‘a presence’ in these places; something akin to the spiritual. An intangible, elusive, sense of magic together, perhaps, with a feeling of being ‘outside’ time.

High Elms Estate was bought by the wealthy Lubbock Family in 1808. In 1842 John William Lubbock (3rd Baronet) built a 60 room Italianate Villa surrounded by formal gardens. The estate was handed down through several generations of the family and left to Bromley Council in 1938, protected for use by future generations by Green Belt legislation. The house, latterly used as a nursing school, was sadly destroyed by fire in 1967.

All my family and friends loved exploring High Elms. This place was our ‘go to’ destination all year round – for the annual Boxing Day walk across frosty fields, at Easter when the daffodils were in bloom, for dusty, sun-filled days and picnics in summer and for long leaf-kicking walks through the woods during the crisp days of autumn. We often had the place to ourselves and rarely passed another soul. It was easy to imagine it was our own private country retreat.

I vividly remember the remains of the formal garden – adrift and somehow ‘suspended’ – detached from any visible dwelling yet meticulously maintained and planted with care. Large stone urns marked the outer corners of a sunken garden, surrounded by grassy banks with inset steps that led nowhere in particular, other than, perhaps, backwards in time. I always looked forward to our visits but it was my Grandmother who repeatedly declared a strong attachment to the place, more akin to a memory, as if she had once lived there.

I haven’t been back to High Elms for years. Maybe I should go. Perhaps I will discover my Grandmother there as the resident ‘genius loci’. In the meantime, I have very happy memories of that place and this image on a postcard as a constant reminder.