Brief Garden of Bevis Bawa

Bevis Bawa (1909-1992) was the son of Benjamin Bawa (1865-1923), a rich Colombo lawyer. He was also the brother of renowned architect Geoffrey Bawa [(1919-2003) Cooper, 2009]. After the death of Benjamin, the mother of Bevis gifted him a rubber state named "Brief" in 1928. That estate was known by that name because it had been acquired in lieu of payment of a legal brief (Cooper, 2009). It is said that Bevis's mother who was spending her final years at the Brief during the 1940s, encouraged Bevis to create a garden (Cooper, 2009). Bewis created the garden later, as he had enough time to do so because, by then, the rubber estate was making losses and his duties as equerry to the Governor-General were light (Cooper, 2009).

Bevis's home also had space for his guests/friends such as Vivien Leigh (1913-1967), Laurence Oliver (1907-1989) and Agatha Christie (1980-1976), as well as artists including Barbara Sansoni and Donald Friend [(1915-1989) Gilber & Gollings, 2018]. The "bottle wall" at the Brief garden is said to be a creation of Sansoni and the mural on the wall inside the entrance to the house is a work by Friend (Gilber & Gollings, 2018). The entrance gate posts, many of the concrete and stone statues including the table tennis table on the lowest terrace are the works of both Bevis and Friend (Gilber & Gollings, 2018).