Walled Kitchen Garden, Youngsbury

This walled kitchen garden dates to 1768, first appearing on a map that year. It stands to the north-east of the main house and has a rectangular shape with chamfered corners. The walls are constructed of handmade red brick, occasionally incorporating burnt bricks, laid in a Flemish bond pattern. The top of the walls is finished with brick coping, and there are shallow brick pilasters at each corner. Historic repairs to the brickwork are visible in some of the upper courses.

Entrances with segmental brick arches are located on the north-west and south-west sides. The north-west gate features a delicate iron gate with an upper section of arrowhead-shaped verticals and four scrolls forming a concave diamond shape, and a lower section of closely spaced slender arrowhead verticals. The south-west gate has a decorative scrolled central section flanked by arrowhead verticals, and the date ‘1899’ is inscribed near the top. Two former entrances on the south and west corners have been bricked up.

A rustic seat, built against the west corner, has a decorative wooden back panel and is sheltered by a fishscale tile roof, the underside of which is covered in closely packed fir cones, all supported by wooden posts. Near the northern corner are the remains of heating equipment, originally for a glasshouse, currently hidden by overgrowth. These consist of a pile of bricks and heating pipes.

The kitchen garden is now laid to lawn and planted with a few orchard trees. A small knot garden was created within one quarter of the garden in the 2010s.