The English Garden – September 2019

SEPTEMBER 2019 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 29

HAMPTON

COURT

CASTLE

At summer’s end, the gardens at

Herefordshire’s Hampton Court Castle

just keep on giving, offering a melee

of formal and informal and warm and

cool flowers and foliage

WORDS JACKY HOBBS

PHOTOGRAPHS CLIVE NICHOLS

N

ot to be confused with ‘the other Hampton

Court’, the historic Grade I-listed Tudor

manor house of Hampton Court Castle

in Herefordshire precedes Henry VIII’s

Surrey palace by over 70 years. Hampton

Court Castle was built in 1427 by Sir Rowland Lenthall; its

encircling gardens, like the castle itself, changing according

to fashion and finances over the centuries.

Originally the castle gardens would have been planted

with ornamental, productive and medicinal plants, with the

surrounding 1,000-acre wood dedicated to hunting. In the

18th century, fashionable Italianate gardens were added by

eminent designers London and Wise, only to be erased in

the 19th century by a more formal English landscape design.

It was during this period that the current walled garden

was built and a small glasshouse attached to the castle. In

1810 Richard Arkwright bought Hampton Court Castle

and for three generations the gardens enjoyed renewed

embellishment and investment. Joseph Paxton built a

formidable, independent glasshouse and a fernery (now the

Sunken Garden). The wisteria arch was planted in 1860 and

one of England’s first tennis courts was built in 1880, in the

spot now occupied by the Dutch Garden. Its pavilion is still

ev ident to d ay.

Sadly, the property and gardens fell into decline during the

war and frequently changed ownership. Its fortunes were

revived in the 1990s, when, under the stewardship of the

American businessman Robert Van Kampen, garden designer

Simon Dorrell breathed new life into the gardens, which

Growing

HOT &

COLD