Kitchen Garden Wall And Adjoining Melon/Mushroom House, Formerly To Abbotsworthy House

KINGS WORTHY

148/0/10014 B3047 17-MAY-07 Kitchen garden wall and adjoining melo n/mushroom house, formerly to Abbotswo rthy House

GV II Kitchen garden walls, formerly belonging to Abbotsworthy House (dating to 1836) and probably contemporary with it.

MATERIALS: The bricks of the garden wall are red brick in English Bond and Flemish Bond and they are capped with a red tile coping.

PLAN: The garden wall forms a rectangle.

DESCRIPTION: The walls of the walled garden stand to a height of about 3.1m high and about 0.3m wide, and on the east side of the kitchen garden wall is a low brick melon or mushroom house.

The walled garden encloses an area of about 2,200 sq m. (0.2200 ha). The interior of the walled garden is now the garden of Point Seven and is mainly grass, trees and shrubs, with a small swimming pool in the north east corner of the garden enclosed by a modern brick wall which is not of special interest. There is a gap for an entrance at the south west corner of the walled garden.

HISTORY: The Baring family bought Abbotsworthy in 1801, and in 1836 Abbotsworthy House was built for the Rev. Charles Baring. The Barings were a well known banking family whose banking history began in 1762, when Francis Baring set up a merchant's business in Mincing Lane, in the City of London. Barings The house passed out of the hands of the Baring family, but the family still own large tracts of land in Hampshire. Abbotsworthy House is now a private nursery.

The walls of the walled garden appears to date from the period of the construction of Abbotsworthy House. The bricks of the walled garden measure about 9 x 4 ½ x 3 inches, which is the size of bricks at the time of the 1803 Brick Tax which did not change until the Tax was removed in 1850.

SUMMARY OF IMPORTANCE: The kitchen garden walls was originally part of the grounds of Abbotsworthy House and preserve a link with the historic grounds of the house. It is of special interest as a handsome and essentially intact example of an early to mid C19 wall with a melon and mushroom house on its east side. In addition it has group value with the Grade II listed boundary wall of the house and with the houses The Hurst and Ramblers (No.2 Park Lane) (both listed Grade II) whose gardens abut the wall.