Walled Garden

The Walled Garden is actually part of a much larger area once called Park Farm. A “closed” estate required every skill for its maintenance while producing adequate supplies of everyday needs for a large household. The acreage described in “The Gardeners’ Chronicle” includes the estate workshops for blacksmiths, carpenters, painters,  plumbers; plus,  a sawmill, forge and timber yard. The area devoted to the needs of the gardens extended to about 4 acres. The actual walled kitchen garden itself covered a smaller area, closer to 2 acres. However, this smaller area had to produce vegetables, fruit and flowers for a mostly self-sufficient household at the Hall.

The central feature of Park Farm, or the Walled Garden, is the rectangular walled structure enclosing about 1.7 acres, probably built in the late c.18. The walls are built of soft Suffolk red brick, laid in an English bond, some 42 courses high. The wall has gabled clay coping running its length on top with a dentilled (prominent repeating pattern) top course of bricks just beneath. There are 4 buttressing wings on the east and west walls. These also provide additional support for such a length of wall, wall space and protection for plants. This design creates a series of microclimates for planting.

The Gardens are orientated on a north-east to south-west axis. To the south and east there are two smaller “slip gardens”. Just to the north of the central walled area is the Head Gardener’s thatched cottage which was built in 1839. 

Entrance to the gardens from the park was through a spectacular late eighteenth century wrought-iron gate in the north wall. The gateway incorporates pilasters, an overthrow and a large single gate. All is of the highest quality.

In 1861, the walls were described as covered in fruit trees. Beds of vegetables were disguised by borders of flowers which gave “the appearance of a flower garden and it has exemplary neatness”. Coping with the English weather meant artificial heating was required. A double range of pits for the production of melons were heated with hot water. The hot water was produced in a boiler room, brick with a slate roof, within the complex and running through a system of pipes which also supplied heated houses and rooms. The water from the boiler went first to the mushroom house and then further round various structures that required heat. Much of the fresh water came from wells but some was driven by a hydraulic ram from a fast-running stream in the valley running down to Deer Park Lodge. The water was stored in a brick water tower on the edge of the garden area.

In one of the slip gardens was a glass house devoted to vines. Various structures were built to house increasingly exotic plants as the Victorian gardener benefited from the expansion of Empire. One house alone provided flowers for the conservatory. A fern nursery brought on exotic plants for the new Fernery House attached to the conservatory at the Hall. 

In the south slip garden, there was a second vinery producing Black Hamburgh and Muscat grapes, with a further peach house and fig house. Any space around these houses was used to grow flowers for cut flower displays. “It would be difficult to find a series of gardens more admirably managed both for the beautiful and the useful, doing credit to the taste of the owner, the genius of Mr Nesfield, and the skill of the intelligent gardener (Sheppard) under whose care they are kept in their present admirable condition.” reports the correspondent in the Gardeners’ Chronicle in 1861.

By 1867, a new Paxtonian peach house had been built. There was increasing use of glass and other buildings. The Gardeners’ Chronicle contains a list of buildings on the garden: 

• An early peach house 27’ x 6’
• Paxtonian 6 ½’ x 11 ½’ 
• Fig House 27’ x 10’
• One very long narrow vinery for late grapes 70’ x 6’
• Two wider vineries 20’ x 14 ½’
• Large span house, 80’ x 18’ – azaleas and other hard wooded plants
• Large greenhouse 40’ x 14’ – for flowering plants supplying the conservatory and cut flowers for the house
• Stove house 48’ x 11 ½’ – for winter cucumbers among other things
• Hot house 48’ x 11 ½’ – for ferns and fine foliaged plants. The front wall of this house has been surfaced with artificial stone for growing the ferns.

Further informattion can be found here: https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1391781?section=official-list-entry