Nowt so queer as folk

Ian and Barbara Pollard may be totally mad, but they are as much a part of their gardens as the roses and rhododendrons.

Barbara crunches down the gravel path towards us. She is wearing green thigh-high waders with fishnet tights, hot pants and shirt - all in shocking pink - and there are crimson streaks in her dark hair.

Her husband Ian, who is digging down by the river, is wearing a long-sleeved denim shirt. And nothing else, except boots. This is no ordinary garden tour.

The Pollards are totally nuts about gardens. They may also be totally nuts, but in that disarmingly unselfconscious English way that makes you feel strange for noting that they are not wearing comfortable civvies. Given that they sometimes like to work completely nude, we have a lot to be thankful for.

Theirs is not just any old garden. Abbey House Gardens in Malmesbury, Wiltshire, is, in parts, as confoundingly formal and proper as Barbara and Ian clearly aren't. In spring, its 2ha form the most sublimely imaginative paradise - private havens opening on to lawns bordered with flowers of every hue; an intricate Celtic cross garden, a circular herb "patch" with 1200 varieties; archways that lead to glades of camellias and rhododendrons; beds of roses planted in a rainbow drift of colour and scent; irises in gorgeous shades you can't even describe; shady slopes and wildernesses; a tunnel of laburnum that seems to drip from a golden ceiling. It's a place of magic, peace and exuberant beauty.

As she shows us around, we also take pleasure in watching the startled faces of the mainly older visitors when they catch sight of Barbara. They stare then look away quickly, realising that she is in her colourful element - as much a part of her garden as the flowers and the fruit trees.

Barbara and Ian took on an enormous project when they moved to the property 10 years ago. Malmesbury is a very old site. Iron Age fort workings have been found on the east side of the town, which is dominated by the partly ruined abbey. Its walls loom up on the western side of the garden, creating an extraordinary backdrop that has influenced the layout, design and planting in the garden.

Ian and Barbara discovered a medieval coffin, complete with skeleton, while digging, just outside the abbey's walls. The 50-year-old man, who apparently suffered from toothache and had a limp, was interred between 1050 and 1300, according to the carbon-dating experts.

A Benedictine monastery was established in Malmesbury in 675, making the town the third most important religious centre in England after Canterbury and Winchester. Henry VIII dissolved the monastery in 1539, although the abbey's Church of St Peter and St John continued to be the town's parish church.

Abbey House was built in the middle of the 16th century, on the ruins of the 13th-century Abbot's House. Looking at the mansion today, it's obvious that the ground floor is much older than the rest of it.

In fact, the whole glorious enterprise is bursting with fascinating history, which Barbara fills us in on as we walk around: the "stew ponds", where the monks kept fish caught from the larger ponds until they were ready to make stew on Fridays; the Lady Chapel, now a part of the garden, with yew hedges where 13th-century chapel walls once stood; St Aldhelm's Pool, the spot where the abbey's first abbot, Aldhelm, carried out penance. It's said that this stoic chap used to plunge into the freezing spring up to his shoulders and stay there all night, that he might reduce the force of his "rebellious body".

Ian points out a tiny water vole ferrying her babies one by one along the riverbank. A couple of white swans (the property of the Queen, who also owns all of England's deer) glide past, and fish swim lazily in the ponds, safe from monks and Friday stews.

Our first glimpse of Charles Berkeley takes us by surprise for different reasons. We are meeting him at his stately pile of pink granite, Berkeley Castle in Gloucestershire's Severn Vale, which has been in the family for 850 years, but we don't know what he looks like.

People are milling about outside and one of them, an older gent, has a sleeveless, green, quilted jacket and a white walrus moustache. He looks pretty aristocratic. I'm on the verge of asking him if he's Charles when a gate opens and an employee of the castle emerges.

Charles is summoned. He trots in a few minutes later, beaming from ear to ear. He is in his mid-30s , and his olive-green oilskin is the only indication that he's of the huntin', shootin' and fishin' set, although he's happy to admit that he doesn't ride much now because he usually falls off. We don't discuss shootin' and fishin'.

Effortlessly posh and with an impeccable family tree, Charles has no need to swagger or show off, and he doesn't. In fact, he spends more than four hours with us, giving us a grand tour of the castle, taking us to the tearooms afterwards and displaying a quiet modesty bordering on endearing shyness.

His delight in the castle's history is infectious. Berkeley began its life as a keep built by Henry II for Robert FitzHarding in 1117, growing over the centuries into the enormous fortress and comfortable, if draughty residence that it is today.

Writer and garden designer Gertrude Jekyll wrote that "the giant walls and mighty buttresses look as if they have been carved by wind and weather out of some solid rock-mass, rather than wrought by human handiwork". But to Charles, it's still the place where he spends his winter holidays and that he will one day inherit.

As he takes us around and gives us the official spiel - as well as spicier details that are not in the official guide book - it's fascinating to realise that these are his ancestors we are talking about and they are forever entwined with the turbulent, and frequently bloody, history of England.

Berkeley's most gruesome claim to fame is as the final resting place of Edward II. He was a weak and probably gay king and was surplus to the requirements of his ambitious wife, who had a lover and no need of Edward. So he was imprisoned in a cell above an 8.5m dungeon where rotting animal carcasses were thrown in to asphyxiate prisoners.

Edward didn't succumb and was put to death - Charles tells us - by red-hot poker in 1327. "The shrieks of death through Berkeley's roof that ring, shrieks of an agonising king", wrote Christopher Marlowe in King Edward II. (It's not known what part the then Lord Berkeley took in these events, but he was not in residence during the King's captivity.)

In the Great Hall, we inspect the famous tapestries and paintings (including a Gainsborough). Without Charles we wouldn't have known that a jester was once tossed off the minstrel's gallery for telling bad jokes, or that it was in this room that Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream was first performed, to the children of the house.

In the Housekeeper's Room, we look at a bedspread and cushions hastily embroidered for Elizabeth I when she arrived for a visit at short notice. Charles adds some colour to the story: the lord of the manor was away, but when he got back, he discovered that the Queen and her entourage had shot 27 of his stags and nearly wiped out the herd. He got angry, she packed her bags and left behind these beautiful things.

As we walk around, Charles stops for friendly chats with staff and other visitors. He seems utterly down-to-earth and I'm not surprised to read later that the entire clan, from Robert FitzHarding onwards, were known as "men of peace". Their nicknames also suggest this: there was Maurice, Second Lord Berkeley, known as Make-peace; Thomas the Wise, Maurice the Magnanimous, and Thomas the Magnificent. Never mind that they sounded like magicians. It stands to reason that the other attraction at Berkeley Castle is a butterfly farm. 

Jonathan Wright seems like a pretty normal guy, considering that he spends much of his life underground. He peers a little nervously from behind his glasses, which makes him look a bit like a mole, but that's quite appropriate, given his occupation. He is one of the last of the Clearwell Caves miners in Gloucestershire's Royal Forest of Dean.

This extraordinary cave system has been mined for iron ore for 2500 years, and ochre is still taken from here. Freeminers were able to work for themselves at a time when most working men were serfs or vassals whose lives were controlled by overlords. They had to be "male, born and abiding within the Hundred of St Briavels, of the age of 21 years and upwards who shall have worked for a year and a day in a coal or iron ore mine or a stone quarry within the Hundred". (A "hundred" was an area from which the king could demand 100 fighting men.)

Jonathan was part of the last intake on a local mining course and nowadays spends more time showing visitors around the caves, but he is licensed to mine ochre, used for colouring paint and other substances.

Walking through Clearwell is a sobering experience. It's quite chilly (a constant 10C, we are told), but it was the conditions the miners imposed on each other that made their lives so hard.

Until 1842, children as young as 5 were sent down the mines. It was their job to haul loads of up to 30kg of iron ore on their backs in boxes called "billies" or, later on, in mine trucks called "drams". If they worked too slowly, their supervisors put iron fragments between the billy and the boy's back, causing him pain and making him hurry to the surface to get rid of his load.

Everyone worked up to 12 hours a day, six days a week, and although some innovations, such as gas lamps, made their lives easier, others, such as pneumatic drills, were lethal. Chillingly known as "widowmakers", these produced so much dust compared with the traditional pickaxe that the miners developed lung diseases and died in large numbers.

In these regulated, discrimination-free days, a tour through the mines is a fascinating walk back in time. As well as providing a human record of toil, endeavour and enterprise, the caves are geologically interesting. The iron was formed over millions of years, but the cave rock is mostly limestone, and so stalagmites and stalactites are here, too, as well as chambers that rival New Zealand caves in their size and grandeur. Some of the caverns are huge and Barbecue Churn is the site of regular dance parties and concerts.

Clearwell Caves, Berkeley Castle and the Abbey House Gardens are as different as they could be, as are their proprietors. But what they share, in common with all things ancient in Britain, is a history so vast and eventful that you really need days in each place just to soak it all up.

In years gone by, your quality of life all came down to an accident of birth. The unfortunate ones were crippled by miserable years in an iron mine; the pious with a little money could take holy orders and immerse themselves in freezing springs for their sins; and the really well-off could watch the passing parade of servants catering to their every whim. But even wealth was no guarantee of a long life. Look what happened to Edward II.

* Diana Balham travelled to Britain courtesy of Cathay Pacific and VisitBritain. For more information go to www.visitbritain.com. Cathay Pacific has daily one-stop flights from Auckland to London, via Hong Kong. Return economy flights are from $2449. Go to the Cathay Pacific website.

Abbey House Gardens Malmesbury, Wiltshire

Open daily: March 21-October 21, 11am-5.30pm; 5.50 ($14.70) adult, 2 ($5.30) child.

Berkeley Castle Berkeley, Gloucestershire

Open April 1-October 2, Tuesday-Saturday, 11am-4pm; Sunday, 2pm-5pm, October 3-31, Sunday, 2pm-5pm.
7 ($18.70) adult, 4 ($10.70) child, 18.50 ($49.50) family.

Clearwell Caves Gloucestershire

Open daily: February 14-October 31,
10am-5pm; mine visit: 7 ($18.50)
adult, 2.50 ($6.70) child, 11.50 ($30.70) family; semi-deep level visit: 7 ($18.50)
a person; deep-level visit: 11 ($29.40) person.