Three Ornamental Pavilions on the Canal Pond, Kearsney Court, Temple Ewell, Kent

Description

TEMPLE EWELL

1411/1/10008 ALKHAM ROAD
11-MAY-07 Three ornamental pavilions on the Cana
l Pond, Kearsney Court

II
Two bridge-pavilions and a boathouse-pavilion of c1900 by Thomas Mawson. Brick, with red tile roofs.

DESCRIPTION: The three garden buildings, two bridge-pavilions and a boathouse-pavilion, stand on the long Canal Pond which runs east-west at the southern extremity of Kearsney's original grounds, and now Russell Gardens. The bridge-pavilions stand at either end of the canal, providing access across it and acting as eye-catchers. That to the west end of the canal comprises a low, red brick bridge with a level parapet with a small, low, arch to the centre with a semi-circular, stepped, cascade carrying the stream into the Canal Pond. Rising above the centre of the bridge is a pavilion with a hipped, red-tile, roof supported on brick piers with tapering, square-sectioned, columns forming an arcade. A balustrade is supported on brick columns and squat balusters. Chains drape off either side of the pavilion to the sides, a simplification of Mawson's original design which had a brick-columned pergola flanking either side of the pavilion. The east bridge-pavilion is effectively identical, although without the cascade steps. The boathouse-pavilion stands centrally on the south side of the Canal Pond, at the bottom of the main north-south axis of the garden. It is a truncated version of the bridge-pavilions with just a pair of columns in place of an arcade and an almost pyramidal hipped red-tile roof. To either side are low, scooped, flanking walls.

HISTORY: Kearsney Court, which stands in Temple Ewell on the north-west fringe of Dover, was planned in 1899 for Alfred Leney, a brewer and drinks manufacturer. However, the project was soon sold on to Edward Percy Barlow, the owner of Wiggins Teape, a paper manufacturer. The original plans which were for a rather severe gothic house were amended and softened by a local firm of architects, Worsfold and Hayward of Dover. The house was completed about 1900, and at about the same time the grounds were laid out by Thomas Mawson (1861-1933), perhaps the leading, and certainly the most prolific, landscape designer of his day. Several set-piece photographs of Kearsney and its garden buildings, all designed as far as is known by Thomas Mawson, were included in his main account of his life's work, The Art & Craft of Garden Making which appeared in five editions between 1900 and 1926. On Barlow's death in 1912 the property passed to Mr Johnstone, a London newspaper man, and was later a nursing home and in the Second World War a military hospital. About 1950 the whole estate was bought by a development company; the main house was split into seven residential freeholds, and later several new houses were erected off the main drive. Part of the grounds (including the lowest third of the formal gardens where the three buildings in question stand) was acquired by the local authority for a park, now known as Russell Gardens.

SOURCES: Builders Formal and Architectural Record (1902), 371; TH Mawson, The Art & Craft of Garden Making (1907 edn); Architectural Review (August 1910), 71-2; Gardeners' Chronicle (28 June 1913), 438; G Jellicoe et al, The Oxford Companion to Gardens (1991), sv Mawson, Thomas Hayton; Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, sv Mawson, Thomas Hayton.

SUMMARY OF IMPORTANCE: Kearsney Court, on the north-west fringe of Dover, was planned in 1899 for Alfred Leney, a brewer and drinks manufacturer. Its grounds were laid out by Thomas Mawson (1861-1933), perhaps the leading, and certainly the most prolific, landscape designer of his day. The main elements were formal, comprising a series of terraces falling away from the house to a lower area whose main feature was a long, formal, Canal Pond. The near-identical, high-quality, bridge-pavilions designed by Thomas Mawson stand at either end of the canal, providing access across it and acting as eye-catchers, while at its centre, at the end of the main axial view down the garden, is a matching boathouse-pavilion. Several set-piece photographs of Kearnsey and its garden buildings were included in Mawson's main account of his life's work, 'The Art & Craft of Garden Making' which appeared in five editions between 1900 and 1926, underlining its importance, and the landscape is included on the Register of Historic Parks and Gardens (2007).

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