Shrubbery Garden Walls Approximately 175 Metres South Of Rockbeare Manor

SY 09 SW ROCKBEARE RAG LANE 3/118 Shrubbery garden walls - approximately 175 metres south of Rockbeare Manor GV II

Garden walls. C18, enlarged and improved in early C19. Red brick with interlocking tile coping, some limestone ashlar detail and wrought iron-gates. Tall walls enclosing 2 large rectangular gardens, a formal garden with central brick-lined pond at the north end (nearest the house) and kitchen garden to the south. Both now largely disused. The tall walls show different styles suggesting the work of different periods. The oldest part appears to be the section of the southern wall of the formal garden which has a plinth and pilaster buttresses breaking the wall into panels. The walls seem to have achieved their present form in the early C19. The gardens are separated by a tall crosswall containing a large central round-headed arch with plain limestone impost and keystone. It is flanked front and back by pilaster buttresses which rise well above the wall top as small plain-topped turrets. There is another large gateway at the southern end of the kitchen garden. The best entrance however is that in the centre of the northern end, from the house direction to the formal garden. Here the northern wall ramps down in stages towards the centre where quadrant walls break forward to square-section piers which contain bands of limestone projecting from the brick and soffit-moulded caps surmounted by balls. The gates are good quality wrought ironwork. The gate piers are enriched with scrolls and curves. The gate is relatively plain with a dograil of arrowheads and there is fine and ornate overthrow of rich scrolls either side of a central upright. On the southern side is a small doorway with a fielded panel door and sunken panel over filled with wrought ironwork. It was flanked by disused glasshouses with brick corner piers surmounted by stone balls. The centre-piece of the formal garden is a circular brick lined pond containing a small bronze of a small boy with dolphins. Source: C Hussey. Rockbeare Manor, Devonshire, Part I. Country Life, Vol 67 (1930), pp 570-576

Listing NGR: SY0314193740