Eastern Gazebo, Walled Garden, Preston Hall

Eastern Gazebo, Walled Garden, Preston Hall

Designed by Robert Mitchell in 1795, this structure forms part of an ambitious walled garden complex at Preston Hall, which also includes a Gardener's House, a pair of three-storey octagonal gazebos, glasshouses, and associated backsheds. The whole ensemble is listed as part of a group with the Stables, Temple, Preston Hall itself, and the Lion's Gates. The garden was laid out during a general improvement of the estate at the end of the 18th century.

The walled garden is nearly square in plan, with an additional canted north wall. It is built in brick with polished ashlar dressings, buttresses, and long and short quoins. The formal quadrant layout of the main garden survives, with a sundial at the centre.

Walled Garden and Gardener's House

The garden walls are brick throughout, with flat ashlar coping along the top. Some sections have been lime-washed or rendered where glasshouses once stood against them.

The north and west external walls are plain brick. The rear of the Gardener's House occupies the centre of the north wall, with a pair of small outhouses adjoining the wall to the left and a further outhouse to the right. The west wall has a doorway to the left.

The Gardener's House is a harled single-storey, three-bay building with sandstone ashlar dressings. It has a central door flanked by windows, raised Dutch-gabled sides with a window to the east (extended to the west), and gablehead stacks. To the rear, there are three regularly placed bays, the third of which has a bipartite window. An extension adjoins to the right — including a former store — with a door to the left and windows to the right. Glazing is in 8-, 9-, and 15-pane arrangements.

South Wall (remodelled 1888)

The south wall features a formal stylised-arch entrance with decorative wrought-iron gates. A large central round-headed plaque — inscribed with the initials JC and decorated with carved swags, fruit, and a bird, with a carved datestone within a shield below — breaks the wallhead and is held by decorative stone supports. The plaque is also decorated on the interior face of the elevation. Flanking the entrance are stepped ashlar buttresses surmounted by lion statues: the left lion holds a shield bearing three billets arranged two over one, and the right lion holds a shield with a clasped dexter hand. These buttresses terminate in low wing walls holding rounded Italianate planters. The remainder of the elevation is plain brick with regularly placed supporting ashlar and brick buttresses, alternately headed with a large carved rose or thistle finial. The interior of the wall is plain, with a carved foliate panel above the arched entrance.

East Wall

The east wall is plain brick with low doors to the left and right, each door surround having ashlar long and short quoins and an ashlar lintel. Above the now-damaged timber panelled right door is an inset undated armorial panel. The left doorway appears plain from the outside, but the interior reveals a re-used roll-moulded surround with a lintel carved with the inscription "16 C (heart shape) IB 90" and a cornice above; the door itself is now missing.

Internal Wall, Sheds, Gazebos, and Glasshouses

The south elevation of the internal wall is brick with thin ashlar copings, standing higher than the boundary wall and curving down to meet it. At the far right, where it joins the east wall, there is a large rectangular arch. The remainder of this elevation formerly carried full-length lean-to timber glasshouses, of which remains survive. A pair of doors at the centre leads to the interiors of the gazebos.

The north elevation presents single-storey, ashlar lean-to style terraces of sheds to the left and right, irregularly fenestrated but retaining their original functions as a potting shed, stores, fruit room, and boiler room. At the centre is a one-and-a-half-storey, five-bay store, possibly a former garden office, with three-storey hexagonal gazebos rising at the outer bays. The central bay has a door with a bipartite wallhead dormer breaking the eaves, and single windows to the flanks.

The Gazebos

Steps lead to a two-leaf timber panelled door at ground level. The ashlar first floor has a window. The main access to the brick second floor is through a semi-glazed entrance door on the south elevation — facing south-west on the left gazebo and south-east on the right — with a rectangular fanlight above featuring spiders-web glazing. The remaining bays have alternating plain and aediculed windows. Each gazebo has a pyramidal roof behind a low solid parapet, surmounted by a wrought-iron weather vane made up of crossed rods indicating compass points with a directional arrow.

At first-floor level, the two pavilions were formerly linked by a catwalk with a stone balustrade, now collapsed. A carved stone eagle flanked each end of the catwalk, with an architraved armorial plaque at the centre.

Glazing throughout the gazebos and backsheds is 12-pane in timber sash and case windows. The garden office has paired 4-pane timber windows and partially glazed timber doors with fanlights above. The gazebos have pyramidal piended grey slate roofs with lead ridging. The Gardener's House and lean-to outhouses have pitched roofs. Painted cast-iron rainwater goods are used throughout. The Gardener's House has harled low stacks with ashlar neck copes and later chimney cans. The glasshouse and conservatory structures have timber and multi-paned glazing.

Interior

The east gazebo has a stone-flagged floor with timber tongue-and-groove panelling to an uncertain height at ground-floor level. A hexagonal stone staircase with plain iron balusters and a mahogany handrail rises through the open-plan interior. The west gazebo contains rooms but was not inspected at the time of the 2001 survey. Both gazebos formerly had weather vanes projecting down through their interiors to show wind direction from within; the grilles for these survive.

Sundial

At the convergence of the garden paths stands a sundial consisting of a carved classical base supporting a large brass armillary sphere.

Historical Context

The garden was created as part of the general improvement of the Preston Hall estate carried out at the end of the 18th century. The concept of ornamental turrets from which to view the garden was fashionable at the time, and this pair are considered good examples of the type. Usually built in pairs flanking or terminating a terrace, these gazebos are distinguished by having glasshouses attached to the adjoining catwalk, which was considered exceptionally innovative at the time. One of the gazebos was designed to serve as, in the language of the period, "a fruit room, tea-room, library or small horticultural museum." The weather vanes were also functional indoors, projecting down through the ceilings so that occupants could read wind direction without going outside.

The design was not without its critics. The writer J. C. Loudon complained: "The Modern Method of Carrying summerhouses above hothouse as at Preston Hall has a very bad effect on scenery, besides their incongruity, when considered as overlooking the kitchen garden which certainly, like the kitchen itself, is not an object intended for beauty." By 1842, however, The Gardener's Magazine described it as "an excellent and superiorly designed kitchen garden" in which over 40 different varieties of fig were cultivated.

A watercolour by J. White dating from 1794, held in the National Monuments Record of Scotland, shows the walled garden before the gazebos were added. A plan by John Lauder surveyed in April 1806 shows the new layout of the estate, and an 1842 lithographed estate plan by Thomas Carfrae records the layout of the gardens and parks.

The kitchen garden retains its original quadrant layout. The section near the Gardener's House still has forcing greenhouses. The eccentric shaped entrance in the south wall, with its buttressed lions and rose finials, dates from the 1888 remodelling and gives the garden a formal character. A formal rose garden with a classical marble statue is sited nearby, and a slip garden surrounds the whole complex.

The walled garden was latterly operated as a chrysanthemum nursery until 1972, after which it was used for growing vegetables. It was disused at the time of listing.