Garden

Inspired by William Kent and the ideas behind the English Landscape Movement, Horace Walpole created a romantic garden to complement his Gothic castle. Formal borders mixed with groves of trees and shrubs crossed by winding paths, and flowers and fragrance were all important. There was also a fine lawn, an open terrace and meadows that led straight to the River Thames. The views have been lost to housing and the growth of woodland but the grassed areas and the layout of his tree planting survived.

The five-acre garden has been, as far as possible, restored to its original appearance using Eighteenth Century maps and paintings as well as Walpole’s own writing. It is Grade II* listed and of national importance as a reminder of a fascinating period in garden history.

Walpole’s grove of lime trees has been replanted, as he wrote to his friend Horace Mann in 1753: “it is an open grove through which you see a field which is bounded by a serpentine wood of all kind of trees and flowering shrubs and flowers”. In more recent developments we have also recreated the ‘serpentine wood’ that Walpole mentioned in this quote. An extraordinary Shell Seat that was a feature of his garden has also been recreated.

It is a charming, compact garden full of a variety of beds, borders, walks, groves, lawns and woodland.