Monument record MDO37800 - Gardens at Little Court, Charminster

The early twentieth-century gardens at Little Court. Both house and garden were designed by Percy Morley Horder some time before 1912. This garden displays a number of features thought to be typical of Morley Horder’s style, including walls between the main lawn and the kitchen garden, with shelter alcoves.

The precise date of the building of the house and garden is not known, though it must have been before 1912 when a plan of the garden at Little Court was published in Gardens for Small Country Houses by Gertrude Jekyll and Lawrence Weaver, with a brief description <2>. A watercolour by Percy Morley Horder of the front of the front of the house from the north west was published in The Studio in 1911 <1> but it is not clear whether this sketch represents the completed project or a proposal. Although the house appears to be very much like the present building, details of the garden beyond are rather hazy and the drive at the front of the house is square, unlike the more rounded shape shown shown on the plan published by Jekyll and Weaver.

The plan shows a short drive with ‘planting’, presumably shrubberies, on either side leading to a carriage court at the front of the house, with stables on the left, northern, side of the courtyard, opposite the entrance in the wing on the southern side of the courtyard. A plan published in The Studio in 1911 shows the wing to the northern side of the courtyard consisting of a motor house, stalls, and harness room. According to the Dorset Gardens Trust the ‘planting’ near the drive consisted of yew hedges. Beyond the stables and to the east of the house is a kitchen garden with walks, enclosed by brick walls. The plan shows greenhouses against the northern wall, and the southern wall has shelter alcoves, very typical of Morley-Horder’s work. The house, with drive and stables, and the kitchen garden occupy the northern, slightly smaller, part of the plot. A circular feature at the point where the paths of the kitchen garden cross may be a small ornamental structure; it should be noted, however, that trees in other parts of the garden are represented on the plan by circles, and this may simply be a very regular example. The southern part has a shrubbery along the road frontage, a lawn immediately to the south of the house with beds and a pergola on either side, a tennis lawn and an orchard. A border runs along the southern side of the walled garden (outside) from the eastern end of the house, and a walk beside it leads to a summer house against the far, eastern wall of the garden.

Relatively recent aerial photographs <3> suggest that most of the ‘harder’ elements of the garden survive. The walls of the kitchen garden, the walks and summerhouse, for example, can be seen. The pergolas and beds in the lawn appear to have been removed. A pool has been inserted into the vegetable garden, and a hard tennis court constructed on the tennis lawn.

Setting: Little Court is situated on the eastern edge of Charminster village, next to the Dorchester to Sherborne road. The house and gardens are enclosed within a brick wall, and quite self contained. The design of the garden does not encompass any external views, and it cannot be overlooked from any direction.

Context: Percy Morley-Horder was apprenticed to George Devey, who also trained Charles Voysey. Based in London, his buildings include the chapel at King’s College, London and Nether Lypiatt, Gloucestershire, and the Trent Building at Nottingham University, commissioned by Jesse Boot. In the country, much of his domestic work was on a smaller scale, and his clients drawn from the professions – solicitors and the like. Morley-Horder’s placed particular emphasis on the use of local traditions in terms of style and local materials. Another example of his work in Dorset is Waterston.

Significance: The garden at Little Court is a workmanlike and relatively complete example of a style of garden design influenced by Gertrude Jekyll in particular, yet displaying variations that are regarded as being typical of Percy Morley Horder’s style – elements such as brick walls with shelter alcoves, for example. Though regarded primarily as an architect, and certainly not of the first rank of garden designers, there are few examples of Morley Horder’s work.

<1> 1911, The Studio (Serial). SDO14465.

<2> Jekyll, G, and Weaver, L, 1912, Gardens for Small Houses, 72 (Bibliographic reference). SDO14466.

‘A site almost square and flat without natural features offers a blank cheque in the matter of design. In Fig. 93 is illustrated such a garden laid out at Dorchester, Dorset by Mr. Morley Horder, the architect of the house. It shows a useful division of the space into flower and kitchen gardens. As Horman wrote in his Vulgaria “the knotte garden serveth for pleasure, the potte garden for profitte.” Importance is given to the scheme by the wall in alternate bays, which divides the two main divisions and ties them both to the house.’

<3> Dorset County Council, 2009, Digital vertical aerial photographs (Aerial Photograph). SDO12079.

Record last edited

Apr 12 2016 1:53PM