Gardener's House, Walled Garden, Preston Hall

Gardener's House, Walled Garden, Preston Hall

Designed by Robert Mitchell and dating from 1795, this is a near-square walled kitchen garden with an additional canted north wall, an integral single-storey Dutch-gabled Gardener's House, a pair of three-storey octagonal gazebos, glasshouses adjoining the internal garden wall, associated back sheds to the north, and further glasshouses to the south. Construction is in brick with polished ashlar dressings, buttresses, and long and short quoins. The formal quadrant layout of the main garden remains in evidence, with a sundial at the centre.

The complex forms part of a group listing alongside the Stables, Temple, Preston Hall, and Lion's Gates. The garden was created during general improvements to the estate carried out at the end of the 18th century. A watercolour by J. White from 1794 held in the NMRS shows the walled garden before the gazebos were added; by 1806, a survey plan by John Lauder records the new estate layout.

Walled Garden and Gardener's House

The garden walls are of brick, some sections lime-washed and rendered where glasshouses have previously stood, with flat ashlar coping along the top. The Gardener's House is a harled single-storey, three-bay dwelling with sandstone ashlar dressings. It has a central door with windows to either side, raised Dutch-gabled ends with an east window (the house has been extended to the west), and gablehead stacks. To the rear are three regularly placed bays, the third of which has a bipartite window; an extension adjoins to the right, incorporating a former store, with a door to the left and windows to the right. Glazing throughout the Gardener's House is in 8, 9, and 15-pane configurations. The roof is a pitched slate finish, with harled low stacks, ashlar neck cope, and later chimney cans.

North and West External Walls

The north wall is of brick, with the rear of the Gardener's House occupying the centre. A pair of small outhouses adjoins the wall to the left, with a further outhouse to the right. The west wall is also brick, with a doorway to the left.

South Wall (Remodelled 1888)

The south wall was remodelled in 1888 and presents the most ornate external elevation. It features a formal stylised-arch entrance with decorative wrought-iron gates. Above the entrance, a large central round-headed plaque breaks the wallhead; it is inscribed with the initials JC and decorated with carved swags, fruit, and a bird, with a carved date stone set within a shield below. The plaque is also decorated on the interior face of the wall and is held in place by decorative stone supports. 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 bearing a clasped Dexter hand. These buttresses terminate in low wing walls carrying rounded Italianate planters. The remainder of the elevation is plain brick, with regularly spaced supporting ashlar and brick buttresses, alternately headed with a large carved rose or thistle finial. On the interior face of the wall, there is 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 has ashlar long and short quoins and an ashlar lintel. An inset armorial panel, undated, sits above the now-damaged right-hand timber panelled door. 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

South elevation of internal wall: This brick wall with thin ashlar coping stands higher than the boundary wall, curving down to meet it. At the far right, where the wall joins the east boundary, there is a large rectangular arch. The rest of this elevation was formerly occupied by full-length lean-to timber glasshouses, of which only remains survive. A pair of doors at the centre gives access to the interiors of the gazebos.

North elevation of internal wall: The brick wall has single-storey, ashlar lean-to style terraces of sheds to the left and right, irregularly fenestrated but retaining identifiable spaces including a potting shed, stores, fruit room, and boiler room. At the centre is a one-and-a-half-storey, five-bay structure, possibly a garden office, with a central door and bipartite wallhead dormer breaking the eaves, and a single window to each flank. The three-storey hexagonal gazebos rise at the outer bays of this range.

The gazebos are approached by steps leading to a two-leaf timber panelled door. The first floor is faced in ashlar with a window. 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 comprising crossed rods indicating compass points with a directional arrow. The two gazebos were formerly linked at first-floor level by a catwalk with a stone balustrade, now collapsed; carved stone eagles flanked the catwalk and an architraved armorial plaque occupied the centre. There are also doors at ground-floor level on the south elevation of each gazebo.

Windows throughout the gazebos and back sheds are 12-pane glazing in timber sash and case frames. The garden office has paired 4-pane timber windows and partially glazed timber doors with fanlights above. Roofs to the gazebos are pyramidal piended grey slate with lead ridging; the lean-to outhouses have pitched roofs. Painted cast-iron rainwater goods throughout. Glasshouses and conservatories have timber frames with multi-paned glazing, many with brick bases and timber upper sections; some glazing survives within the glasshouse ranges.

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 accessible for inspection at the time of survey in 2001. Both gazebos formerly had weather vanes projecting down through the interiors; the grilles through which these passed survive.

Sundial

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

Historical Notes

The idea of incorporating ornamental turrets from which to view the garden was fashionable at the end of the 18th century, and these gazebos are considered good examples of the type. Usually built in pairs to flank or terminate a terrace, here they have glasshouses attached to the adjoining catwalk, and were at the time regarded as exceptionally innovative. One gazebo was intended to serve as a fruit room, tea-room, library, or small horticultural museum. The weather vanes were also functional indoors: by projecting down through the ceiling, they allowed occupants to read wind direction from inside without going out. The design was not without its critics. The horticultural writer J. C. Loudon complained that "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. The original quadrant layout of the kitchen garden survives, with the sundial at the centre. Forcing greenhouses remain in the section near the Gardener's House. The walled portion was latterly run as a chrysanthemum nursery until 1972, after which it was used for vegetable growing. At the time of listing it was disused.