Monument record MDO37824 - Gardens around Leweston Manor, Leweston

The gardens around Leweston House. The present house was built in the late eighteenth century to replace an earlier house known to have been standing in 1774. Earlier gardens were re-designed in the early twentieth century by Thomas Mawson, who added features such as ‘The Allée’ and ‘The Belvedere’. The house became a school in 1948; additions and alterations in connection with this use have had some impact on the gardens, particularly in the immediate vicinity of the house.

Gardens and landscape park around Leweston House. The present house is thought to have been built around the end of the 18th century for William Gordon, replacing a house known to have been standing in 1774. <1>

In his book on the historic gardens of Dorset, Timothy Mowl describes the garden designed by Mawson with enthusiasm, and feels that it deserves wider recognition. According to Mowl, one illustration of Leweston (unnamed) appears in the first edition of Mawson’s book The Art and Craft of Garden Making (1900) and seven in the fifth edition (1912). Mawson’s patron was G Hamilton Fletcher, who bought Leweston in 1906. According to Mowl ‘For forty years previously it had been tentanted successively by Sir Richard Glyn, Robert Whitehead and the Duke of Hamilton, all wealthy men, tempted presumably by its three Vinery Houses, Nectarine House, Peach House, Palm and Orchid House, rockery and fishpond: all the sign of a swagger gentleman’s establishment. One of these tenants had begun a perversely ambitious terrace garden quite unconnected with the main house and intended, apparently, to look out to the north-west over the usual Victorian regiments of predictable flower beds; none of these, however, had been laid out.’ <2>

It has not been possible to identify the location of all the features listed. The Palm and Orchid House were most probably located close to the house, for ease of access. The vinery, nectarine and peach houses were more likely to be situated within or in the close vicinity of the walled kitchen garden, to the north of the house. The 1887 Ordnance Survey map shows glasshouses, and some buildings are thought to survive. The site(s) of the ‘rockery and fishpond’ cannot be identified on the evidence currently available. The ‘terrace garden’ may have been on the site now occupied by the bigger and more open Menagerie Terrace; this certainly looks to the north west, and the 1887 Ordnance Survey map seems to show a terrace in this location.

One probable earlier feature has been noted from the 1887 Ordnance Survey map, and identifed as a ha-ha on a site visit by the Dorset Gardens Trust. This feature runs southwards from the top corner of Leweston Wood along its north-eastern edge, between the wood and the more formal gardens around the house.

A riding ring is situated to the north of the house, with Ring Cottage adjacent on the north west side. The ring has a stone wall and a thatched roof supported by posts on the inside. North of the stables is the coach house, which is not shown on the 1st epoch Ordnance Survey map, and a walled garden. To the west of the walled garden is another walled garden area that tapers to a point. The Dorset Gardens Trust suggest that this triangular area may have been for growing soft fruit. This isn’t on the Ordnance Survey map either, but there is a larger area, square at the bottom and tapering to a point at the north east corner; this area appears to be walled on the north, south and east sides, and possibly also on the western side where it coincides with the parish boundary. This area has a pond in the south-western corner and paths – a broad path running north-south and another running east from this to the wall, where there may have been a gate to the large walled garden. The large walled garden has paths around the edges and two which cross in the middle, dividing the area into four, the western part narrower than the eastern. This area appears to be open to the riding ring and stables on the south side. The Ordnance Survey map shows another pond south of the southern wall of the walled garden and east of the riding circle. <7>

The large walled area is also open at the northern end of the eastern side, where there is a building, called the Garden House on current Ordnance Survey maps. It is presumed to have been the gardener’s house. The 1886-7 Ordnance Survey map shows numerous small buildings in a yard to the east of this house. South of the garden house and east of the large walled garden are two smaller square walled gardens. The northern one has (on the 1886-7 OS) map) a large rectangular glass house in the centre, with paths around. The southern garden has a glass house against the north wall and paths around and crossed paths. There is a narrower open area, also walled, to the east of these gardens, with a short northern end at the yard-like area near the gardener’s house. The larger open area near the stables ‘funnels’ to this area. On the 1886-7 Ordnance Survey map there is what appears to be an area of shrubbery or woodland along the southern and eastern sides of this stable/garden complex.

An estate map dated 1904 shows: trees in rows and depicted in a style which suggests that there was orchard in the wedge-shaped area; beds in the large walled garden; and beds in the two small square walled gardens, which still have their glass houses as shown on the 1886-7 Ordnance Survey map. The walls are less distinct on this estate map, but the Dorset Gardens Trust report that they are still extant, and built of brick.
The estate map shows an avenue on the line now occupied by the terrace with statuary. Both the 1886-7 Ordnance Survey map and 1904 estate map show a curving entrance to the front part of the stable yard. The earlier map suggests a lens-shaped border, depicted in a way which suggests it may have been a shrubbery, on either side of the entrance. These are not on the current (2010) digital Ordnance Survey map and these borders and the layout of paths in this area appear to have been altered.

Sale particulars of 1906 describe: ‘… winding and shady walks that lead out on to A Stately Terrace with rare speciment [sic] trees interspersed with Italian Statuary including large and boldly sculptured stone flower vases, benches, troughs, a pair of Newfoundland dogs, a grazing sheep, a goat and a wild boar … beautifully executed and in excellent preservation.’ <4> Mowl reports that all this statuary has survived, and goes on ‘What is disturbing about the Menagerie Terrace is its incompletion. The best display of Victorian bought-in statuary in the county commands, anticlimactically, a very ordinary field and a large water tower disguised as a windmill, and how housing holiday accommodation … At the end of this terrace steps lead back into a half circle of grass and rose beds which has been cut out from thick woodland. The survival of the statuary etc has been confirmed more recently in 2008 by the Dorset Gardens Trust. When the house was turned into a school the half circle of grass and rose beds became known as The Nuns’ Garden.

The water tower is not shown on the 1886-87 Ordnance Survey map. It appears to have been incorporated into Mawson’s design to serve as a landmark and a viewing point, as well as serving as a water tower, and is now converted to holiday accommodation.

The 1906 sale particulars also say ‘Close by [to the terrace] a Pergola leads to a large sculptured stone seat occupying a very secluded and sheltered position.’ Mowl reports that the pergola has gone but that ‘… the mysterious throne, supported on its arms by the owls of Athene, is still there in the shades’ and comments that ‘It was this odd semicircle in the woods that seems to have taken Mawson’s perverse fancy as it is from this point that his axial layout, ‘The Glade’ … takes off.’ <2>

Mowl discusses which features of the present garden might be attributed to Mawson, and describes them thus: ‘First on the left or east side of the house lies a banal, municipal-style rose garden, and this, according to the plans, is definitely Mawson’s and unrelated to anything else. Next comes what is now a directionless, undulating vacancy of grass studded with trees and shrubs. As Mawson designed and laid out this sector of the gardens there was a large circular flower bed with rose pergolas backed with what the caption in his book calls ‘A Small Range of Glasshouses’, in reality a centrally domed conservatory with substantial side wings linking it to the ‘Fountain Pond’, which has survived in an altered state. A semi-circle of exedra of box hedges has been carved into the edge of the woodlands. Six statues of cherubs, each representing one of the arts, stand on plinths around a paved area with a circular pond. A central opening in the hedges leads temptingly through into the woods, but disappointingly only to aimless winding paths.’ Mowl says that the feature, despite exhibiting ‘a delightfully mawkish sentimentality’, could easily have been created by Mawson but points out that ‘as illustrated in 1912, this feature was entered between twin pillars of topiary, each topped with a topiary bird, and another bird, a bronze crane, stood in the middle of the pond. There is no sign of the cherubs, just one ‘Acrolith’, a favourite device of Mawson, a slim pedestal topped by a bust, stands centrally in the box hedge exedra’ which suggests that the cherubs are later additions. ‘Then with a frightening statue of a huge wild pig, a replica of the Florentine Boar, the whole tenor of Leweston tightens up. The boar stands next to the Nun’s Garden, Mawson’s starting point for his serious work. From the boar on his high plinth a long straight avenue, ‘The Glade’, dark and unrelieved, cuts through the woods to two towering pylons and a brightness of clear sky. At the end of this gloomy walk there is a splendid sudden surprise opening out into a circular Belvedere that commands a great sweep of open Dorset fields and hills… Twin four-bay classical garden houses with seats and cupboards … form a half-circle at the back of the Belvedere and a Venetian wellhead is set as its centpiece (sic). To the left and right alleyways between beech hedges lead to circular clearings, one with a statue of Ceres, the other with a statue-less plinth. From this last clearing is a curious piece of parallel planning, another straight avenue runs alongside The Glade, but back to the Menagerie Terrace, at the far end of which, behind an enormous classical urn, there are steps down to the service area of the house. Both the Glade and the Belvedere are supposed to have been inspired by the Villa D’Este, but there is no evidence for this in Mawson’s writing.’

The domed conservatory appears on postcards from the turn of the century, and appears to have been situated to the south west of the house. Mawson’s plans (undated) show the conservatory incorporated into his re-working of this part of the garden. There have been numerous additions to the buildings and alterations to the layout of this area since the house became a school, and it is thought that the conservatory was demolished in the course of these various changes.

The area known as ‘The Glade’ was not created in its entirety by Mawson; it appears as woodland with walks on the 1886-87 Ordnance Survey map. The ‘Nuns’ Garden’ is a roughly circular area of light woodland/shrubbery situated between The Glade and the southern end of the Menagerie Terrace, and appears to pre-date the conversion of the house to a school, since late nineteenth- or early twentieth-century postcards <6> appear to show this garden in a form very little different to the present. A compartment which appears to correspond to the Nuns’ Garden appears on the 1886-87 Ordnance Survey map. Mawson modified the Glade by the insertion of the Allée leading to the belvedere. Mawson inserted a rectangular pond into a sunken formal garden to the east of the house. This garden had been called the ‘Rose Garden’. A late nineteenth- or early twentieth-century postcard of this area shows a lawn with low walls topped with urns. The 1886-87 Ordnance Survey map shows the area without a pond, and there is no reason to suppose the walls are earlier. The Dorset Gardens Trust have drawn attention to the use made of the Chapel of the Holy Trinity (MDO1350) as a landmark to focus the site. Mowl does not discuss this as an element of the design.

The boundary shown on the HER map is conjectural, taking in known elements of the landscaping and to some extent influenced by the current extent of the grounds; no attempt has been made to define the area overlooked from the garden. The map does not represent the full extent of the estate as shown on the estate map dated 1904. The 1886-7 Ordnance Survey map shows ponds at Little Burton (also on the estate map) and an avenue, fairly widely spaced, to the east of the house, running east-west across the park.

Setting: Leweston is situated on a hill and enjoys spectacular views, particularly to the south west, where there is a sharp drop. Mawson’s style generally involved a transition from formal terraces to more natural areas and views (5). This style is displayed in full at Leweston, where the setting is essential to the effect of the landscaping, and the incorporation of ‘views out’ constitutes a central and highly significant element of the design. There are views from the Belvedere, for example, to Rampisham to the south west.

Context: Mawson’s additions and embellishment of existing features are in the Italianate style in vogue at the time and, to a large extent, popularised by him. Mawson also worked at Boveridge, in similar style. The garden at Boveridge is on the Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest, Grade II*.

Significance: Parts of the garden in the vicinity of the house have suffered or been obliterated by the conversion of the house and its use as a school. Nevertheless, the gardens remain an important example of Mawson’s work, showing uniquely dramatic use of existing features and the lie of the land to create a strong aesthetic. The Belvedere is particularly significant; it is thought by the Dorset Gardens Trust (6) to be the only example of a belvedere by Mawson and, as such, is of national importance.

<1> Royal Commission on Historical Monuments England, 1952, An Inventory of Historical Monuments in the County of Dorset, Volume I (West), 133 (Monograph). SDO97.

‘… built probably around the end of the 18th century for William Gordon who died in 1802, replacing an older house which was standing in 1774; shortly before 1938 it was completely remodelled internally.’

<2> Mowl, T, 2003, Historic Gardens of Dorset, 129-132 (Monograph). SDO12480.

‘… most of these pre-1914 gardens … Leweston … are imaginative improvisations on a roughly Jacobean theme, glorious stage sets for a posing twentieth-century gentry.’ … ‘The county was given its second truly Edwardian, rather than Jacobean, garden by Thomas Mawson who drove a most ambitious, almost urban, layout through woodland and a pre-existing garden. This was at Leweston Manor, now St Antony’s girls’ school. Mawson’s grounds here, flawed in concept but fascinating and dramatic, interact with a mysterious earlier garden of unrecorded authorship. The whole complex layout deserves to be much better known, working as it does alongside the early Stuart church of the Holy Trinity and a classical house of about 1790, with a defiantly brash Art Deco interior of the late 1930s. Few gentry houses in Dorset can equal Leweston for variety of stylistic interest.’

<3> Mawson, Thomas, Mawson Archive, WDB/86/L51 (Unpublished document). SDO14480.

<4> 1906, Leweston Sale Particulars, 1906 (Unpublished document). SDO14481.

<5> Symes, M, 2006, A Glossary of Garden History (Monograph). SDO14482.

<6> Dorset Gardens Trust, 2008, Oral: Leweston Manor (Verbal communication). SDO14483.

<7> Ordnance Survey, 1864, 1886, Ordnance Survey 25-inch map, epoch one (Map). SDO10239.

Record last edited

Nov 14 2018 3:14PM