SPEAKER and subject could not be more perfectly matched at this Friday’s meeting of Monmouth Field and History Society.

Helena Gerrish is both the biographer of the architectural writer and garden designer H Avray Tipping and also lives in a house he built.

She will be speaking about his extraordinary achievement in restoring Mathern Palace near Chepstow.

Her talk on Friday at the Priory at 7pm is this year’s Monmouth Field and History Society Keith Kissack Lecture, given in memory of our esteemed late President. Guests are welcome (£5).

Tipping (1855-1933), was brought up in Kent, but made Monmouthshire his adoptive county. In 1894, he bought Mathern, near Chepstow, a former palace of the bishops of Llandaff, and restored it according to the principles set out by William Morris for the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings (still serving a vital duty as SPAB).

There was a lot to do: Mathern had badly suffered from Owain Glyndwr’s visit four hundred years earlier and not much had happened since except for it to become increasingly derelict.

For Tipping, the setting of a country house in its landscape is part of the story (the garden of Chequers, the prime minister’s country residence, was among his designs) and there is no one better than Helena Gerrish to tell that story, as visitors to her own beautiful “Tipping garden” near Monmouth, generously opened to the public on National Garden Scheme open days, will attest.

Monmouth Field and History Society’s £10 membership fee covers the monthly talks over the winter and summer outings and summer drinks party.

The Society’s all-day coach outing in July (this year to Kenilworth Castle) is charged extra.