It was the incomparable Christopher Gibbs who had brought the Bannerman’s to Simon Sainsbury’s garden at Woolbeding after masterminding their involvement in the massive project he had undertaken to see through at Wormsley on the Chilterns for his friend and patron Paul Getty. At Wormsley the entire estate was re-vivified under Christopher’s eagle eye and not a nut or bolt eluded his attentions over a decade. The Bannermans made various plans for bridges and follies and cup and saucer fountains which he struggled to impress upon a complex gaggle of Trustees and the mystery ‘client’ himself, never seen in the early days. However Christopher’s persistence paid off, and in a crisis of falling chalk cliffs cascading into the drive round the back of the new Library making it impossible to get to, the Bannerman’s came up with a brilliant solution. They designed and built, at huge physical and literal cost a monumental ‘Piranesi’ inspired, ruined, water washed limestone tunnel. Big enough to get a fire engine down and 100 metres long, the great vault of ‘holey’ stone is magnificently pierced with oculi through which pour beams of light and tailing stoles of Ivy. A path leads over the abyss through yew trees and nuts and hellebores, scrambling roses and periwinkle, to a strange grotto cum fountain presided over by three masks and above them the rather sinister statue of Hecate, triple headed Egyptian god – a statue found by Christopher Gibbs, and difficult to settle in a garden. Eventually this path lead on to the extraordinary Oak henge or roundel in the beech woods above the house, which was commissioned in 2002 and completed poignantly just in time for Paul, who had grown fascinated with its construction and the Bannerman’s outlook, to be buried in it when he suddenly and sadly died in April 2003.