Monument record MDO37807 - Gardens and park at Melplash Court, Melplash, Netherbury

The gardens around Melplash Court built in the early seventeenth century on the site of an earlier house, and restored and extended in the 1920s. The present gardens were designed and laid out by Lady Diana Tiarks between 1950 and 1975, then declined. Features include a ‘Japan-ised’ garden, a walled potager, a pet cemetery, and avenues. Since 1984 the gardens have been restored and large numbers of trees planted.

The house on this site is known to have been re-built in the early seventeenth century and pigeon house to the north-east of the house is also seventeenth century. The house was restored and extended in the 1920s, following a fire <1>. It is to be supposed that the earlier house would have been of at least sixteenth-century date and on the same site, though there is no archaeological evidence (known to the HER at the time of writing) of an earlier house. No traces of any earlier garden features have been identified.
The present gardens were redesigned and developed by Lady Diana Tiarks between 1950 and 1975, then going into decline until 1984 when they were restored by the owners. According to the Dorset Gardens Trust, 1200 young trees have been planted since 1984. The chestnut trees in the avenues are being replaced with limes as they die.

The outline of the park shown on the HER map is conjectural. Various elements of planting, particularly around the edges of the garden, appear to function as wind breaks within the present garden design. The date of this planting is not known – examination of aerial photographs taken in 2005 <3> suggests that these are relatively mature trees, and it is tempting to see them as survivors from earlier parkland, but they do not appear on the 1890 Ordnance Survey map <4>. A garden design plan produced for an open day in 1989 shows these blocks of woodland, albeit slightly stylised, as integral parts of the overall design. It appears, therefore, that they must be elements of the 1950’s design.

The Dorset Gardens Trust believe that the seventeenth-century park would have extended at least to the farm at the south east, and to the road on the northern side and towards Vere Cross at the north-west corner. Examination of modern maps supports this as a reasonable supposition.
In his book Historic Gardens of Dorset <2> Timothy Mowl remarks upon the ‘immaculate turf of Melplash Court’ and goes on to describe the garden in some detail.

Clustered to the south and east of the house are a loggia, a croquet lawn, a terrace with pear trees and a statue of a Chinese figure, and a sunken garden. A pet cemetery is situated in a shrubbery to the north-east of the croquet lawn, beyond which is a small wood planted as a wind break. An area towards the eastern end of the wood is a bog garden, which leads into the Japan-ised garden.

Ponds south of the ‘Japan-ised’ garden are not natural – they appear on current (2008) digital maps, but are not shown in the same form on slightly less recent (ie post 2000) maps. They follow the line of a watercourse, and seem to be a continuation of the landscaping, albeit a very recent elaboration.

Setting: The house at Melplash is situated at the top of the garden, which runs southwards down the valley of the river Brit. The house is approached by a drive through the park which is situated to the north and west of the house. The drive is flat, and the park is on the gently sloping side of the valley. Though views exist, the landscaping does not revolve around them. There is an avenue of trees to the side of the house.
Context: Lady Diana Tiarks developed the gardens at Melplash from the 1950s to 1975, and the various elements of the gardens reflect a variety of styles in fashion in that period. Lady Diana was a keen amateur garden designer of strong character; she designed no other gardens, and Melplash is very much a ‘one-off’ creation which uniquely reflects her personality and changing tastes in garden design.

Significance: No traces of the seventeenth-century gardens or associated with the sixteenth-century house on the site have been identified. It is possible that some traces survive as below-ground archaeological remains, but the area around the house appears to have been much changed by mid- and late twentieth-century work. Though one or two ‘hard’ elements of earlier gardens survive, such as the seventeenth-century pigeon house, and there is no evidence to indicate that the overall size and shape of the park has changed, the current character of Melplash is derived from work carried by Lady Diana Tiarks from the 1950s to 1975, and developed by later owners.

The gardens are pleasant but generally regarded as being a little eclectic in style. Despite this, there is a natural progression through the various parts of the garden, which work well together and make good use of a tricky site. The existing buildings and the lie of the land are used to best advantage to create a garden which is deemed to be unique and very successful, though heavily dependent on maintenance for effect.

<1> Royal Commission on Historical Monuments England, 1952, An Inventory of Historical Monuments in the County of Dorset, Volume I (West), 173 (Monograph). SDO97.

<2> Mowl, T, 2003, Historic Gardens of Dorset, 172-174 (Monograph). SDO12480.

‘Melplash Court is even harder to absorb as its gardens are laid out on three streams, a lake, a pond, a Tudor house and undulating ground. … Early Ordnance Survey maps show two avenues radiating away to the north and the north-west from the house across the park, with lawns and a Kitchen Garden at the back. … If a garden is large, and Melplash gives at least the illusion of being large, it helps to be directed occasionally, but Melplash rarely directs. There is a grand chestnut avenue, interplanted with young lime trees, leading to the gravelled forecourt. From there the natural direction seems to be clockwise, starting with a pets’ cemetery … the stones presided over by a large stone urn in a spreading laurel clump. … Up steps to the right are ironwork gates and gate piers, and at the corner a tastefully genteel Edwardian Summerhouse, but a high wall conceals the Croquet Lawn, so two small streams, barely trickles in the smooth grass slopes, lead more temptingly down between camellia bushes to a marshy pool by a Regency water hopper. These grounds are alive with neat little bridges. Given a length of water Lady Diana’s [sic] would throw a wooden bridge across it. By the hopper a slightly more formidable streamlet flows out of a primula-planted, bog garden, and on its opposite bank is the one truly defining boundary of this largely open area: a hillside of flowering shrubs and trees climbed by several flights of wooden steps. … these bridges and steps and streams lead to a bend in the valley that has been ‘Japan-ised’ with a Metasequoia, a stone-arched bride and a stone lantern. … up steps, through that elegantly upper class insistence of wrought ironwork that enmeshes Melplash, is the three-star attraction of the grounds, the Walled Potager so bright and adventurous in its colour combinations …’

<3> Dorset County Council, 2005, Digital vertical aerial photographs (Aerial Photograph). SDO12570.

<4> Ordnance Survey, 1864, 1886, Ordnance Survey 25-inch map, epoch one (Map). SDO10239.

Record last edited

Apr 12 2016 3:06PM