In a quiet enclosure behind the playground is a red-brick cottage manifesting a medley of architectural styles, indeed almost amounting to an architectural joke.

Roughly cruciform in plan, it has baroque gables, decorative brickwork and mullioned windows with stone frames adorned with gargoyle faces of men and animals.

The Cottage provides a natural setting for a collection of old favourite plants reminiscent, at least in the public imagination, of the cottage gardens of the last century.

And what a succession there is! Aconites, snowdrops and Christmas roses in winter; auriculas, anemones, polyanthus and hyacinths to mark the advent of spring, followed by gillyflowers and columbines; the great bounty of high summer with carnations and pinks, catmint, marguerites, marigolds, lupins, peonies, hollyhocks, rose of sharon, too many to list here; then the nostalgic melancholy of autumn with chrysanths and Michaelmas daisies - all with fragrances characteristic of the season of the year.