Green Feature Walls

A wall at the back of the Terminus Hotel is completely covered in ivy. The vine has grown over the entire face of the brick, forming a uniform green surface that follows the contour of the wall and turns at the corners. The ivy has buried windows and doorways. Nothing of the original wall is visible. Where the wall meets the roof, the ivy has climbed onto the gutter and continues up onto the roof tiles. The feature reads as deliberate, like a designed garden wall, but is the result of decades without maintenance. From a distance, the ivy could pass for a hedge.

The ivy at the Terminus started in the rear beer garden in the 1960s or 1970s and went unchecked after the pub closed in 1983. Without anyone to trim it back, the vine grew across the building over the 33 years of vacancy, eventually covering the entire rear and partly the southern and eastern facades. By the early 2010s the ivy had become the building's most identifiable feature, more recognised than the pub itself. The 2018 restoration kept the ivy in place where possible. The wall in this photograph is one of the sections that was left fully covered.