Three Ornamental Pavilions On The Canal Pond, Kearsney Court

Three ornamental pavilions on the Canal Pond, Kearsney Court

Two bridge-pavilions and a boathouse-pavilion of around 1900, designed by Thomas Mawson. Built in brick with red tile roofs.

The three garden buildings stand on a long Canal Pond that runs east to west at the southern end of Kearsney's original grounds, now part of Russell Gardens. The bridge-pavilions are positioned at either end of the canal, serving as both access points across it and as eye-catchers within the landscape.

The western bridge-pavilion comprises a low red brick bridge with a level parapet and a small semicircular arch at its centre. A semicircular stepped cascade carries the stream into the Canal Pond. Rising above the centre of the bridge is a pavilion with a hipped red tile roof, supported on brick piers with tapered square-sectioned columns that form an arcade. A balustrade is supported on brick columns and squat balusters. Chains drape from either side of the pavilion to the sides—a simplification of Mawson's original design, which featured a brick-columned pergola flanking both sides of the pavilion.

The eastern bridge-pavilion is effectively identical, though without the cascade steps.

The boathouse-pavilion stands centrally on the south side of the Canal Pond, positioned at the bottom of the main north-south axis of the garden. It is a truncated version of the bridge-pavilions, with just a pair of columns in place of a full arcade and an almost pyramidal hipped red tile roof. Low scooped flanking walls stand to either side.

Kearsney Court, which stands in Temple Ewell on the north-west fringe of Dover, was planned in 1899 for Alfred Leney, a brewer and drinks manufacturer. The project was soon sold to Edward Percy Barlow, owner of Wiggins Teape, a paper manufacturer. Original plans for a severe gothic house were amended and softened by the Dover architects Worsfold and Hayward. The house was completed around 1900, and the grounds were laid out by Thomas Mawson (1861–1933), perhaps the leading and certainly the most prolific landscape designer of his era. Several set-piece photographs of Kearsney and its garden buildings were included in Mawson's main account of his life's work, The Art & Craft of Garden Making, which appeared in five editions between 1900 and 1926.

On Barlow's death in 1912, the property passed to Mr Johnstone, a London newspaper proprietor. It later became a nursing home and, during the Second World War, a military hospital. Around 1950 the estate was bought by a development company; the main house was divided into seven residential freeholds, and several new houses were erected off the main drive. Part of the grounds, including the lowest third of the formal gardens where these three buildings stand, was acquired by the local authority for a park, now known as Russell Gardens.