Registered Park or Garden: Horton Hall (1001316)

Landscape park laid out mainly in the mid C18 as the setting for a country house (demolished 1930s), with the earthwork remains of an early C18 landscape scheme. Historic Development Formerly the property of the Parr family, in the mid 1620s the manor passed into the possession of Sir Henry Montagu, created Earl of Manchester in 1626. An estate map of 1622 shows the Hall to have been surrounded by formal gardens at this date. Horton remained in the Montagu family until the C18. The house was extended with a new wing by George Montagu, created Earl of Halifax (d 1739) in 1715. The Earl seems also to have been responsible for the alterations to the gardens round the Hall, and, in the 1720s, the landscaping of the park. This involved the removal of the part of the village to the east of the Hall. The second Earl (d 1772), called George Montagu Dunk after his marriage to an heiress, Anne Dunk, made further additions and alterations to the house and park, apparently with Thomas Wright of Durham, to whom payments were made in 1754, 1756, and 1757, as his principal architect (Harris 1970). The Hall was demolished in 1936, and housing later extended over much of its gardens and pleasure grounds. The park however remains as permanent pasture with many of its C18 features, as well as a plethora of well-preserved archaeological earthworks. Description LOCATION, AREA, BOUNDARIES, LANDFORM, SETTING Horton Park lies 10km to the south-east of Northampton, to the east of the village of Horton and close to the border with Buckinghamshire. The B526, the old London Road, forms the western edge of the site. To the north, the park is contained by a lane, the road to Ravenstone, which now becomes a track at its eastern end. To the east, the boundary is formed by the stream which crosses from east to west across the site and which is dammed to form the lake, and, south of this, a band of woodland known as the New Plantation. To the south there is no strong divide here between the park and the fields, the park finishing at the perimeter of natural bowl in the bottom of which stood the Hall. The area here registered is of c 115ha. ENTRANCE AND APPROACHES Mid to late C20 houses line The Drive, the Hall’s north drive, which leads south-east from the fork in the B526 at the north end of the village. At the north-west end of the drive is a pair of ornate, mid C19, limestone ashlar lodges (listed grade II), two-storeyed, cruciform, and with giant Ionic pilasters. PRINCIPAL BUILDING The Hall, which stood to the east of the present village, was demolished in 1936 and a number of new houses and bungalows now occupy its site. The Hall saw various rebuildings. About 1550 60 the Parrs built a major new range with panelled parapet, large windows and an octagonal tower. This is shown in Tillemans’ drawing of 1721 (Bailey 1996), as is a tall and narrow wing to one side added c 1700 by (according to Horace Walpole) Daniel Garrett (d 1753). The main formal garden was aligned on the main door to this range. Thomas Wright (d 1786) remodelled the east front c 1760. To the north-west of the site of the Hall stand the C18 brick stables and coach house (converted now known as Captain’s Court). GARDENS AND PLEASURE GROUNDS In 1721 Peter Tillemans drew the main formal parterre garden which lay within a large walled court east of the Hall, which stood centrally across the court’s west end. A broad, axial gravel walk ran down the centre of the court from the door to the wing added to the Hall c 1700, with other walks around the edge of the court and crossing the centre. Running around the edge of the grass plots defined by the walks were clipped cones and globes in the Dutch style. Fruit was grown up the walls of the court. This garden was probably created at the time the new wing was constructed. The parterre was kept in form through to the early C18 at which point its length was reduced and a ha-ha, of which elements survive, built closer to the Hall. West of the Hall in the early C17 was an orchard and fishponds; retained in form into the early C18 but plain lawn by the mid C20, this area is now covered by modern (mid/late C20) development. The canal which bounded the south and west sides of this area however survived the landscaping changes. It is spanned by a single-arched bridge of the late C18 or early C19 (listed grade II) which linked the Hall to its park. The early C17 Cherry Yard, which lay on the south side of the canal running to the south of the Hall, had apparently been cleared by the early C18, although its basic form remained. It was presumably removed as part of the mid C18 landscaping, although the canal was again retained. PARK The medieval village lay south and east of the Hall, but appears to have gone by the early C17 (RCHM(E) 1979). The site is rich with earthworks from the village, which lie either site of the lake, and cultivation remains including ridge and furrow from the open fields of Horton prior to enclosure. This probably took place in 1584 when Robert Lane received licence to enclose a park with a fence and ditch taking in 200 acres (c 83ha) of wood and 300 acres (125ha) of arable and pasture in the south of the parish and including Horton Woods. This park is not related to the registered landscape. The boundaries of the registered park were presumably established in the mid C18 as part of the second Earl Halifax’s landscaping. This was presumably the time when the former field divisions, particularly those close to the Hall, were removed. The stream which supplied the canals was dammed in the mid C18 to form the two serpentine lakes which snake through the park. Horace Walpole, writing in 1763, noted ‘a fine piece of water’ at Horton. The lakes are divided by the Green Bridge (listed grade II), 500m to the south-east of the Hall site, a dam constructed in the guise of a substantial rusticated bridge. This presumably carried the drive to the Menagerie. Daniel Garrett (d 1753) was at Horton in 1750 designing ‘Gothic Bridges etc’ (Colvin 1978, 334). The bridge was contrived so that the water would have flowed over a cascade built below the bridge, but the top lake has been drained at least since the 1920s. Originally, it extended east to meet with the north end of New Plantation, where a raised mound formed an island. To the west of the bridge is a ditched plantation, Icehouse Spinney, in which stands the mid C18 icehouse (listed grade II), and, on the shore of the lake, a brick-arched boathouse with the remains of a rusticated fronting. This is presumably the feature shown in the view attributed to James Blackamore of Horton Park c 1760. To the north of the Hall site is a wooded strip known as The Shrubbery; several (late C20) new houses have been built within this area. The estate map of 1728 shows that this follows the line of the triple avenue planted at around that date. This was later made less formal to become the wooded pleasure ground through which ran a serpentine drive. A continuation of the drive and planting along the northern boundary of the park led east to the New Temple (listed grade II). This stands, like The Arches 300m to the south-east, on the high lip of the park; both are prominent features of its landscape. The building has been attributed to Garrett, and is likely to date from the 1740s or 1750s; it has been converted so that the portico now forms the centre of a larger dwelling, Temple House. A second avenue, planted treble near to the Hall then reducing to a double row, led south across the fields, Curtis Meadow and Dryfield, later to become the park, framing the south facade of the Hall. Although still a prominent feature in the early C20, the avenue is no longer extant. The Menagerie (listed grade II), built to the designs of Thomas Wright in the late 1750s, stands to the east of the line of the southern avenue on what was established as the southern boundary of the park. Its main facade, a single storey with corner pavilions and a raised centre with a semi-domed canted bay and a broken top pediment, faces the Hall site. It was restored from a derelict state in the mid 1970s by Gervase Jackson-Stops, the architectural historian, who lived there until his death in 1995. To the south is a 1ha moated enclosure, presumably associated with the animals. Walpole, writing in 1763, makes mention of the feature describing it as ‘a little wood, prettily disposed with many basons of gold fish’. Four circular ponds survive, incorporated in a modern (late C20) garden design. The Stratford-on-Avon to Towcester Midland Junction Railway (disused) cuts through the southern tip of the menagerie enclosure. The Rotunda which stood in the park to the west of the Menagerie was demolished in the 1930s. Extending from the Hall’s east court was a third avenue, which led across the site of the cleared village and over the adjoining fields. It crossed a large pond which lay to the east of the village, a feature which was later (?1740s) landscaped to form an exactly circular pool which survives as a distinct depression. The Arches (listed grade II), an early C19 arched lodge in the form of a tripartite triumphal arch with Ionic pilasters, stands in a small plantation closing the avenue where it met the Ravenstone road. There are other earthworks associated with the landscaping of the park, and particularly the creation of the pool and the park buildings. Some 250m south of The Arches, within the park, is the Manor House. This building is marked on the 1622 map, at which date, and into the early C18, it stood at the eastern end of an enclosure known as the Warren. It is approached from the north by a straight drive with avenue. Few parkland trees survive and much of the southern part of the park is under the plough. A number of mounds surviving around the perimeter of the park however may mark the position of raised plantations, and several circular or semicircular ditched enclosures around the perimeter may also mark former plantings. KITCHEN GARDEN West of the former stables and coach house is the site of the kitchen garden, a feature dating back to the early C17. References J Bridges, History of Northamptonshire (1791), p 367 Horace Walpole, Journals of Visits to Country Seats, Walpole Society 16, (1928), p 52 The Victoria History of the County of Northamptonshire 4, (1937), p 261 J Harris (ed), The Country Seat: Studies in the History of the British Country House (1970) H Colvin, A Biographical Dictionary of British Architects 1600 1840 (1978), pp 334, 934 E Harris (ed), Thomas Wright’s Arbours and Grottoes (1979) Archaeological Sites in Central Northamptonshire, (RCHM(E) 1979), pp 65 70, pls 18, 20 1 D Hall, The Open Fields of Northamptonshire, Northants Record Soc 38, (1995), pp 298 9 B A Bailey (ed), Northamptonshire in the Early Eighteenth Century: The Drawings of Peter Tillemans and Others, Northants Record Soc 39, (1996), p 101 Maps Survey maps of 1622 and 1728 are held in the Northamptonshire Record Office. Illustrations View of Horton Park, c 1760, attrib James Blackamore (Northants Record Office) Description written: January 1999 Edited: January 2000

Record last edited

Sep 6 2023 11:06AM