Monument record MDO37808 - Gardens at Kingston Russell House, Kingston Russell and Long Bredy

The gardens around Kingston Russell House, which stands on the site of and incorporates some elements of a seventeenth-century house. Some elements of the original gardens survive within the present garden. Formal gardens to the east of the house were created in the twentieth century.

Though the Dorset Gardens Trust note the 18/19th century parkland setting of the house, examination of current Ordnance Survey maps and aerial photographs taken in 2005 <3> give little impression of any surviving (or indeed, former) areas of parkland; any ‘intervention’ in the landscape seems to have been confined relatively closely to the house, though no doubt taking advantage of the setting of the house to enjoy views of the wider landscape.

Mowl analyses a map of 1750 (created in connection with a boundary dispute between John Michel Esquire of Kingston Russell and the Duke of Bedford) to show that the entrance and garden fronts of the house had been reversed between 1750 and the present, saying that ‘… Mitchell created it [the west front] to face his garden, a long Bowling Green flanked on each side by yew hedges with no trace of a drive. The east front … now the garden front, faced an entrance court and a public road with cottages. South of the house was a large pleasure orchard divided into two halves by a ‘Filibert Walk’. In the eastern half of the orchard was an irregular ‘Grove of Box’. All the Kitchen Gardens, five enclosures in all, and the service area with stables, ‘Privy’ and a ‘Dwelling House’, were north of these areas and slightly above the principal house’. <4> <5>

The various features such as the bowling green, orchard and filbert walk no longer survive as part of the garden, but examination of modern maps and aerial photographs suggest that the present compartment boundaries ‘mirror’ these elements as shown on the 1750 map; it may well be, therefore, that some of these features survive as below-ground archaeology. The 1750 map shows a dovecote, not mentioned by Mowl, which has also been demolished. A note on the map says that yew hedge to north of bowling green was planted in 1750 by J Wynne. A square area north of the kitchen garden on the 1750 map is called ‘Higher Garden’ , with other compartments beyond – these are presumed to be sub-divisions of the kitchen garden. The 1750 map shows a privy and linnheys (perhaps linhay) north of the house. <5> The north wing of the house was demolished in 1913. The former stables and coach house were situated a little way to the east. <4>.

A number of features of the present garden do not appear on the 1902 Ordnance Survey map; they are thought by the Dorset Gardens Trust to date to the 1920s on stylistic grounds, but there is no documentary or anecdotal evidence to confirm this. These features are situated to the east of the house, and include a semi-circular loggia, a gazebo in the style of a temple, a pergola and various walks and steps in a formal garden with yew hedges, with a central circular pond. A rose garden lies to the south. Kingston Russell features in A G L Hellyer’s English Gardens Open to the Public, published in 1956. This describes a topiary garden with straight-cut hedges, with an occasional miniature tower, enclosing rectangles of turf either side of a wide grass walk from one end of the house to a columned hemicycle. According to Hellyer, the design was conceived and carried out soon after the house changed hands in 1913 <6>. A swimming pool on the site of a lawn and changing pavilion are relatively modern.

The boundary shown on the HER map, is based on the 1750 map. It takes in some surviving (albeit modified) features, such as the lime avenue, but most of the features shown on the 1750 map, particularly to the north of the house, cannot be identified in the present landscape, though some traces of them may survive as below-ground archaeological remains.

Setting: Kingston Russell House is situated in the bottom of a shallow valley overlooked by hills to the north in particular. There are few discernible remnants of any former landscaped park, and it appears that formal landscaping was confined to the creation of avenues and modest formal gardens in the immediate vicinity of the house. The house undoubtedly enjoys good, panoramic views of the surrounding landscape, but there is little sense of ‘interaction’ with this landscape, and the overall impression is one of self containment.

Context: The eighteenth-century gardens appear to have been simple and functional, with no hint of fashionable style. The gardens were those of a working country house with a tenant of relatively modest means – compact and largely functional, with hardly any attempt at simple landscaping, let alone grandeur.

Significance: To some extent the gardens at Kingston Russell are of interest by virtue of their depiction in the 1750 map and link to the associated law case. Some elements of the eighteenth-century garden may well survive as below-ground archaeological remains, and it is this potential which gives the gardens their greater significance. For example, there appears to have been little disturbance to the south and west of the present house, in the areas formerly occupied by the bowling green, filbert walk and orchard. The area of the ‘Higher Garden’ to the north of the house, though now to all intents and purposes a field, seems also to have been relatively little disturbed.

The group of structures of probable 1920’s date to the east of the present house are charming and regarded as being typical of the time, but seem merely to have been inserted into an existing layout. There is no strong sense of an overall intention in terms of composition, and none of the features is particularly unusual or exciting from an architectural or garden history point of view.

<1> Royal Commission on Historical Monuments England, 1952, An Inventory of Historical Monuments in the County of Dorset, Volume I (West), 127 (Monograph). SDO97.

‘ … stands on the site of and perhaps incorporates some of the walling of a 17th –century house and the E. front and gallery were built probably late in the 17th century; the wing formerly projecting at the N. end of this front was destroyed at some uncertain period. The house was remodelled early in the 18th century by John Michel (d. 1739) and to this period belongs the W. front…’

<2> Newman, J, and Pevsner, N, 1972, The Buildings of England: Dorset (Monograph). SWX1290.

‘The house has two façades of distinction, both of Portland ashlar, the earlier facing E. This is of two storeys, with a balustraded skyline, … ‘mid-C17’ … This is all suggestive of remodelling at some time a little before the w. front went up. … The w front is … a straightforward Palladian statement delivered in Vanbrughian tones. … This long slab of a building was made longer and its proportions spoilt by Philip Tilden’s irritating additions of 1913 at the sides… Othewise there are slickly sumptouous C20 interiors. …’

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

<4> Mowl, T, 2003, Historic Gardens of Dorset, 78 (Monograph). SDO12480.

that ‘The grounds of Kingston Russell, as they existed in 1750, are a salutary reminder that, unlike gardens of the county aristocracy … the gardens around the manor house of the average Dorset squire were a pleasant, unpretentious muddle.’

<5> 1750, Plan of Part of the Manor of Kingston Russell belonging to His Grace the Duke of Bedford (Cartographic materials). SDO14467.

<6> Hellyer, A G L, 1956, English Gardens Open to the Public (Bibliographic reference). SDO14468.

Record last edited

Apr 12 2016 4:10PM