Walled Garden and Associated Structures at Hewell Grange, Tutnall and Cobley, Worcestershire

Summary

A mid-C19 walled garden to the Hewell Grange Estate including associated C19 structures including a gardener's house and former apple store, internal walls and brick sheds, pine pit and vinery glasshouse.

Description

A walled garden of mid-C19 date constructed for the Hewell Grange estate with C19 and C20 garden structures and an early-C19 dwelling.

MATERIALS: constructed of brick in Flemish garden wall bond with stone coping. Most of the brick buttresses have replacement concrete coping and the main entrances have stone hinge blocks in brick piers for cart doors. There are brick buildings with tile and cement roofs, including the Gardener’s Cottage, Garden Office and sheds, and glasshouses within the walled garden.

DESCRIPTION: the walled garden is rectangular on plan, approximately 196m in length and 92m in width, and the walls are between 3.35m (north-east) and 3.75m (south-west) in height; built on a site that slopes away to the west. The walls have external brick buttresses set approximately 4m apart. The original cart entrance is in the north-east wall. An opposing entrance in the south-west is a later insertion. There are also pedestrian entrances under segmental heads.

Two internal C19 walls 3.7m in height, built to support glasshouses and sheds, divide the internal space of the garden from the north-east to the south-west. The longer wall (about 73m), was possibly formerly heated, and is in line with the main north entrance and has a series of low brick sheds with lean-to clay tile roofs attached to its north face. The sheds are arranged as offices with a variety of openings facing north, and may have held a boiler for heating the adjacent wall. The former glasshouses to the south wall have been removed and a concrete hardstanding has been laid. To the south of the hardstanding are the pineapple pits, which survive as brick walling, steps and a below-ground brick pit with raised beds. There is a later C19 wall to the north-east. To the left side of the wall is a late C19 vinery glasshouse with Henry Hope and Sons maker’s mark on the doors (the glasshouse to the right is late C20). The cast-iron frame and mechanism, heating pipes and cast-iron columns are still in place. The glasshouses and walling between the walls, and in the southern half of the garden, are of late C20/ early C21 date.

To the south-east corner of the walled garden and facing Hollyoakes Lane are the Head Gardener’s House and Garden Office (a former apple store). Both are of two storeys and built of brick. The house is of two bays with a central door with porch, and is rendered. It has a pitched roof with tall paired brick end stacks, probably of late-C19 date. It has a rear range extending into the walled garden and to the left is an arched opening in the garden wall into a cottage garden. The windows have modern units. The detached office to the right has no openings to the roadside elevation, which has been built behind the brick kitchen garden wall, below a deep pitched roof with oversailing eaves. The north-west (end) and south-west (rear) elevations have round-arched openings with metal glazing bars. The rear elevation has a central door with rubbed brick flat arch and fanlight.

Other garden and service structures are arranged in the grounds of the cottage and against the interior faces of the walled garden.

History

The walled garden forms part of the Hewell Grange estate, which includes a landscape park laid out for the Earls of Plymouth by William Shenstone and Lancelot 'Capability' Brown in the mid-C18 and remodelled by Humphry Repton in the early-C19. A new kitchen garden was created on Holyoakes Lane to the south-west of Hewell Lane in 1827, to replace one to the south west of the main house. The garden was accessed by a lane from the south-west gate to the park, passing the home farm. A brick kiln was built in a nearby field in 1833 and the tithe map of 1838 shows two buildings on the site, one of which is the Head Gardener’s House, named as ‘Gardeners House’ on the tithe apportionment. The land and neighbouring fields were owned by Robert Henry Clive, who in 1819 had married Harriet the daughter of the eighth Earl, to whom the Hewell Grange Estate passed in 1843. The garden around the cottage is shown on the tithe as a relatively narrow irregular rectangle on plan, but was extended to its five acre extent when the complete walled garden was subsequently built, probably from the 1830s. The area adjacent to the wall in which the kiln once stood was later used for growing vegetables. A brick apple store was built alongside the Head Gardener’s House in the 1850s.

In the mid-late C19 additional structures were erected within the walled garden and by the Ordnance Survey Map of 1885 there were brick walls, sheds, glasshouse buildings and pineapple pits (the latter built by 1843), mostly arranged on a north-east/ south-west orientation towards the centre of the walled garden and grouped around the access from the main entrance from the north. These were supplied by Jones and Co of Birmingham (later Henry Hope and Sons Ltd). To the south-east of the entrance, facing up the lane to the home farm and park entrance, the front elevations of the former apple store (Garden Office) and Head Gardener’s House form part of the walled garden enclosure. Other structures are shown along sections of wall to the north and west including further glasshouses.

During the period of the rebuilding of the main house at Hewell Grange (listed at Grade I) under Lord Robert Windsor-Clive, the kitchen garden glasshouses were repaired and rebuilt. A further east/west brick wall was built to the north of the central glasshouse/ shed wall, and two further Hope and Sons glasshouses were erected. The garden was regarded partly as a pleasaunce, with flower beds, flowering shrubs planted against some walls and a rose garden created to the rear of the Head Gardener’s House. Further glasshouses and tanks were built outside the walled enclosure to the south and are shown on the Ordnance Survey Map of 1904, around which time the pineapple pit fell out of use. Further buildings were replaced or added in the later C20, including within the southern half of the walled garden. In 2020, a number of the C19 structures remain within the walled garden, including a late C19 Hope Glasshouse and the brick sheds.

The garden has remained in horticultural use until 2020, when the institutional use of the wider site is due to end. The walled garden retains C19 walls to the interior, the brick sheds, which may have once housed boilers, and one pre-1904 Hope and Sons vinery glasshouse remains in place in the north half of the garden. The other C19 glasshouses have been removed or replaced and the pineapple pits have had some structure removed and otherwise altered. Further walling has been built in the north half of the garden in the C20. The Head Gardener’s House and Garden Office are both in use as part of the estate business.

Reasons for Listing

The walled garden and associated structures at Hewell Grange, dating to the mid-C19 and later, are listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons:

Architectural interest:

* as a whole the walled garden and its associated historic walls, dwellings, sheds, glasshouse and pine-pit form a well-articulated evolved set of estate garden structures built to a high standard using quality material and technologies;
* the walled garden has undergone relatively minor repair and replacement since first constructed and survives well, remarkably so given its almost continual use since the mid-C19;
* while the associated historic structures have undergone more alteration in line with the changing needs of an estate garden over a significant period of time, most notably to the mid-C19 pine-pit, a significant proportion of the historic fabric survives in a legible form, forming an extensive and notable ensemble of structures built for horticultural production.

Historic interest:

* the garden and its historic structures are an important element of Hewell Grange, dating from a key period in the development of walled gardens built at many country house estates in the early Victorian period.

Group value:

* they have strong group value with Hewell Grange (Grade I) and numerous Grade II listed structures within the estate; and the walled garden is itself a prominent feature on the southern edge of the Grade II* Registered Park and Garden. These designated assets enhance the historic interest of the walled garden, altogether forming an important ensemble illustrating the evolution of the Hewell Grange estate.

External Links

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