Garden Walls and Gates with attached Orangery and Music Room, Castle Bromwich Hall Gardens

Garden Walls and Gates with attached Orangery and Music Room at Castle Bromwich Hall Gardens

This is an early 18th-century enclosed garden with brick walls, gates, and two attached pavilion buildings forming part of the gardens at Castle Bromwich Hall.

The garden walls run approximately 180 metres north to south and enclose an L-shaped area of nearly five and a half acres in total, situated to the north and west of the hall. They are constructed of brick with sandstone dressings and limestone coping and statuary stones. The gates set within the walls and the railings to the clairvoie are iron.

The north wall is built in Flemish garden wall bond with curved brick coping stones. It starts at its eastern end to the north of the hall, enclosing the north garden which links the hall with the church of St Mary and St Margaret. A further wall to the west of the north garden separates it from the former rose garden. The wall continues west for approximately 200 metres in total, interrupted first by gilded iron gates giving access to the adjacent church. The gate piers to the churchyard gate are in stretcher bond and house niches in their side returns. A second gate now serves as the main garden entrance, before the wall projects out to the north to surround the former herbarium constructed in irregular brick bond. Low ramped walls capped with limestone saddle coping stones divide the former herbarium from the rest of the garden.

The Orangery sits further west along the north wall. It is a small single-storey brick building constructed in Flemish bond with rusticated sandstone quoins and a moulded pediment. At its centre are half-glazed timber double doors with leaded lights and fanlight beneath a semi-circular arch. To either side are leaded casements with central mullion. Above the window openings are two circular niches housing busts of female figures. The pediment displays the Bridgeman coat of arms at its centre with flanking swags. A heraldic lion finial sits above the pediment in front of a glazed roof.

To the west of the Orangery the walls are ramped to accommodate the sloping gardens and are supported by brick buttresses. The wall continues to the north-west corner where it is mounted by a sandstone plinth and moulded base supporting a limestone sphinx. The plinth bears a partly legible inscription warning of the dangers of the sphinx above. Above the inscription are relief carvings of swags, and on the east elevation, skulls and crossbones. Beneath the sphinx, set into the corner of the wall, is a deep niche, likely to have once housed further statuary.

The west wall is ramped at its northern end and continues south with a clairvoie at its centre featuring iron railings. A sphinx sits at the south-west corner with matching swag carvings and corner niche below. Any inscription on the plinth beneath has been lost.

The south wall houses the Music Room at its centre. This building closely matches the design of the Orangery, also in Flemish bond, but features a tiled hipped roof. It houses two male busts in its niches. The pediment displays a carved crest at its centre with flanking swags bearing hanging grapes and fruit. A lion finial matching the Orangery sits above the pediment. The garden wall continues east and then turns north to meet the walls of the former 'Best Garden' to the west of the hall.