 In about 1750 the poet and landscape gardener William Shenstone stayed at Mickleton Manor, and it was he who inspired the planting of the elm avenue which used to run between Kiftsgate Court and Mickleton Manor - now alas, destroyed by Dutch Elm Disease, along with countless other elms between 1972 and 1976.The line of Scotch firs silhouetted against the sky between Kiftsgate and the Warwickshire county boundary was also due to Shenstone's imaginative foresight, as were the lime trees bordering the front drive - although the house had not been thought of then.During the past fifty years most of these enormous trees have fallen.