Monument record 1156/2/18 - Former Kitchen Gardens

{8} The kitchen garden was uncovered by a major clearance operation as they were extremely overgrown. Many of the buildings had to be stripped of ivy and could not be approached because of trees and undergrowth. Some buildings had collapsed. By necessity some recording relied primarily upon written and photographic records rather than drawn. Eleven buildings were separately recorded within the kitchen garden. Plan.
The site has been well mapped on a number of regularly-spaced occasions from 1781 to 1926, which show the development of the plot. The 1926 map shows the kitchen garden buildings at their maximum extent.
The gardens, and the plot which is the subject of the recording, were laid out in the 1760s or 1770s, as deduced by Foard in 1993. It was certainly before 1781.
All the buildings and structures in the gardens are dateable as they are depicted within reliable maps and surveys form 1781 to 1926. The kitchen garden was laid out before 1781. A small selection of apparently unrelated buidings was erected for horses and other livestock on an adjoining plot [to the south] before c.1850. A possible military-pattern building may have been introduced, but never had a horticultural function (Building 8). The livestock related buildings either went out of use gradually or were converted piecemeal to horticultural use in the early C20th. These were joined by purpose built garden structures by 1926.At this stage there were 7 gardeners employed. After 1926 the garden went into decline, and it is unlikely that any animal-related activity continued after c.1935.
The gardens further dwindled from the 1950s and the last gardener was employed in the 1970s. Some clearance took place in the 1980s, but the plot and its buildings became increasingly overgrown until clearance and recording in 2013. Phase plan.

<1> 1781, Map of Ecton (NRO Map 2119), (unchecked) (Map). SNN54810.

<2> 1830 circa, Modern Redrawing of C19th Estate Plan, (unchecked) (Plan). SNN109739.

<3> 1850 circa, Map of Ecton (NRO Map 685), (unchecked) (Map). SNN57997.

<4> Ordnance Survey, 1885, First Edition Ordnance Survey 25 Inch Mapping Series (45.04), (unchecked) (Map). SNN105210.

<5> Ordnance Survey, 1900, Second Edition OS 25 Inch Mapping Series (45.04), (unchecked) (Map). SNN109737.

<6> Ordnance Survey, 1926, Third Edition Ordnance Survey 25 Inch Mapping Series (45.04), (unchecked) (Map). SNN109738.

<7> Foard G., 1993, Ecton: Its Lost Village and Landscape Park, p.350 (unchecked) (Article). SNN54811.

<8> Soden I., 2014, Building Analysis and Recording Adjacent to The Former Kitchen Gardens of Ecton Hall, Northamptonshire, p.2-5+22-3 (checked) (Report). SNN109626.

Record last edited

Oct 18 2019 11:34AM