Monument record 5633 - Deene Park

Landscape park and formal gardens at Deene Hall. The park is thought to have been emparked before the 1560s and enlarged in 1612, and by 1624. Formal parterres are shown in of surveys of 1601 and 1630. In 1715 Van de Meulen was consulted and created walled gardens and adapted moated gardens, constructed after 1704, into a formal canal in 1717-18. The main gardens were laid out in 1962, within a framework created during the mid 19th century, and include designs by David Hicks. Additions were laid out in the 1980s.

{2} Adjoining the house is a park. Geroge, Earl of Cardigan, present possessor & heir succeeded 1703 married Lady elizabeth bruc eldest daughter of Thomas earl of Aylesbury & hath a son Geo Ld Brudenell born 1712. Description of the park. Duke of Montague.

{?}Early 18th century formal gardens and late 18th century landscape park. The park had been enclosed by 1580 and was enlarged in 1586. 18th century picturesque layout within area of Rockingham Forest. The formal gardens are to the south and west of the hall, with informal paths and planting to the north and east. There are also terraces and a bowling green with a 19th century polygonal summerhouse. Bridge of post 1746 date of three arches, probably using 1660s balustrades, over serpentine lake; it carries the 18th/ 19th century drive from the park. There are fishponds at the west end of the lake. 1970 chinoiserie bridge and late 16th century kitchen gardens to the north west of the hall. 1716 survey shows moated formal gardens to the south west of the house and a large rectangular pond with an island to the south east. In 1717-18 the moat was straightened into a canal. These works were probably advised by Van den Meulen in 1715. The 1746 survey shows the canal later transformed into the river to the south of the house.

{22} Registered Garden.
Historic Development
In the Middle Ages Deene was part of the estates of Westminster Abbey. It was leased in 1514 by Robert Brudenell, a successful London lawyer, who was building up a midland estate. He made Deene his principal house and was buried here in 1514. The family estate was further enlarged by his son Sir Thomas (d 1549), a friend of the King’s Antiquary John Leland who sometimes stayed at Deene, and grandson Sir Edmund (d 1585) who entertained the Queen in 1566 at what by then had become a fairly substantial house. In 1606 Deene was inherited by Thomas Brudenell (d 1663), a recusant who married Mary, daughter of Thomas Tresham of Rushton. He was created Baron Brudenell in 1528 and Earl of Cardigan in 1660, and despite heavy fines and other outgoings including support for the financially beleaguered Treshams, was able to make further additions to the house and lay out a great garden on its east side. After the death in 1915 of the widow of James, seventh Earl (d 1868), and commander of the Light Brigade at Balaclava, Deene reverted to the descendants of the fifth Earl’s youngest brother, Thomas Brudenell, first Earl of Ailesbury. It remains (1998) in private hands.

GARDENS AND PLEASURE GROUNDS
To either side of the drive leading north from the house is rough grassland with specimen trees. At the southern end of the western block of grassland is the formal Black Garden, created in the late C20. Against the east side of the house is a formal lawn.

The main gardens extend along the south side of the house, and are mainly of 1962 and later within a framework established in the mid C19. They extend between Deene Park and the river-like lake which extends east/west some 75m south of the house. Running along the front of the house is a broad gravel walk. This abuts a parterre with low box hedges created in the 1980s, which extends the full width of the house. South of this a strip of lawn drops via a terraced ramp to a low wall (listed grade II) of limestone ashlar with central steps and polygonal castellated bastions at the corners which serves to contain and define the garden. The eastern section of this is early C19, while the western portion was added following the erection of the ballroom in the 1860s. South of the wall there is a narrow strip of lawn running down to the edge of the lake, which is crossed by a wooden footbridge of 1970.
On the west side of the house is the sunken garden. Further later C20 garden compartments, with lawns, formal hedges, and statuary, extend west of the parterre and south of the kitchen garden, extending beyond (west) into a wilderness area with specimen trees and shrubs. Attached to the south-west corner of the kitchen garden, at the end of the long border, is a mid C19, two-storey, stone, octagonal summer house (listed grade II). Some 75m south-west of that, on the lawn along the north side of the lake, is a limestone monument (listed grade II) of 1794 recording the planting of oak trees in 1757 by Lady Elizabeth Montagu, later Duchess of Buccleuch.

Surveys of 1601 and 1630 show a great quartered parterre east of the house and a large rectangular pond with central island south of the church. In 1715 the third Earl consulted the Duke of Montagu’s gardener at Boughton (qv)Van de Meulen (d 1717); he supplied hundreds of fruit trees and probably suggested new schemes. A survey of 1716 shows the parterre and pond unchanged, but there are large walled gardens west of the house and two, linked, moated gardens to the south-west. The moated gardens, probably constructed since 1704, were converted to a long, formal canal with apsidal west end in 1717-18 (perhaps one of de Meulen’s ideas). Curiously this was set well apart from the house, separated from it by a kitchen court and planting. In the mid C18, and probably after 1746, the canal was transformed into the present lake, flowing past the south front of the house to join up with the pond south of the church and crossed by the new bridge.

By 1746 a new road to Deenethorpe was built down the east side of the house, across the site of the parterre. This led from a long north forecourt, which extended up to the public road. Down the east side of the forecourt was a wilderness or shrubbery, through which ran an irregular serpentine path. All these changes post-dated 1716; they may have been further products of de Meulen’s suggestions of 1715.

The present gardens have been laid out and replanted since 1962, with a notable formal parterre on the south side planned by David Hicks.

PARK
From the house the park is entered from the south-east corner of the gardens south of the house via a mid C18, limestone ashlar bridge (listed grade II). This has three segmental arches incorporating mid C17 balusters previously around the terraces on the north and east sides of the house. This part of the park, permanent pasture with specimen trees, represents the area called ‘old park’ in 1630. It is bounded to the north and east by the lake, on the south bank of which, opposite the house, is a terraced earthwork marking the site of a bowling green marked on early C17 maps. The earthworks of a second, early C18, terraced bowling green, c 80m square, lie c 75m to the south-west, on top of a spur of ground from which there is an excellent view over the house and its gardens.

Westward of the spur this section (now known as the Deer Park) of the park extends for c 1km, sloping down from Dibbin’s Wood to the south to the valley-bottom fishponds which lie south-west of, and feed, the lake. On the northern edge of the east end of Dibbin’s Wood is a mid C19 stone keeper’s house. This may have replaced the now (1998) ruinous Venison House, which stands at the west end of the Deer Park. The site on the north side of Dibbin’s Wood of the C17 High Standing, a grandstand-like structure from which the hunt might be watched, was planted with trees in the 1990s. North of the fishponds Cow Park, again permanent pasture with specimen trees, rises to meet the road running west from Deene village. In the early C17 there was a rabbit warren here, and several short mounds presumably represent the remains of artificial burrows. There was the a keeper’s house at the east end of this section of the park; its site is marked today by a low mound, from which there is good visibility, on the north side of the east end of the western fishpond.

The park contains large amounts of ridge and furrow.

There is no record of a medieval park at Deene, and it was probably created shortly before the 1560s when the Brudenells began to consolidate their estate around Deene by exchange and purchase. Part of this phase of improvement was the enlargement of the park, which took in part of Deenethorpe’s open-field land and woodland along its southern edge. In 1612 the whole manor was reorganised, Deene’s open fields inclosed and the park further enlarged, from 183 acres (c 76ha) to 280 acres (c 116ha). In 1624 it contained 350 acres (c 145ha). By now the park extended south and west from the house, and measured c 2km from east to west and c 1km from north to south. Part of its roughly circular north-eastern compartment, crossed by avenues, was called ‘the old park’, and presumably represents its original core. The large, triangular fishponds in the western part of the park were in existence; north of them was the extensive rabbit warren.

In the C17 there was a bowling green in the park, c 200m south of the house. This was still extant in 1704, by when there was also a ‘New Bowling Green’ south-west of Deene village, on or close to the site of the mounded keeper’s lodge mapped in 1601. In 1723 a little ornamental battlemented building (no longer extant) was built next to the bowling green, its roof decorated with flames of gilded wood. Map evidence suggests this may have been sited on the centre of the south side of the third of the bowling greens, that which occupies the spur of ground which overlooks the south front of the house.

Eayre and Jefferys’ map of 1791 shows a network of avenues east and south of Deene, around Deenethorpe, and also a great avenue extending out from the west boundary of the park. The latter linked in with the northern avenues and rides of Boughton, the two estates being merged in 1775 on the death of Mary Montagu, the fourth Earl’s wife, who he had married in 1730. The eastern boundary of the park moved east to its present line, from immediately east of the churchyard wall, in or soon after 1794 when the modern A43 was turnpiked. Although this provided space for the new lake south of, and connecting with, the existing waterworks, Bryant’s map suggests it was not dug until after the mid 1820s.

KITCHEN GARDEN
The kitchen garden stands west of the house abutting the Deene road; stylistically the walls (listed grade II), red brick with burnt headers, look late C16. The overall area, roughly triangular, is divided internally by further late C16 walls (also listed grade II) into four compartments. Arched openings provide internal access. Against the outside of the east wall is the Head Gardener’s Cottage (listed grade II), originally probably a C17 one-unit limestone house to which a two-unit brick addition was made in the C18.

In 1998 sections of the gardens continued to be used for horticulture, while the southernmost compartment had recently been laid out as a formal garden with yew hedging by David Hicks.

Description from record 5633/0/7:
{?} 1716 survey shows moated formal gardens to the south west of the house and a large rectangular pond with an island to the south east. (See 5633 for possible sources)

Description from record 5633/0/6:
{?} 1716 survey shows moated formal gardens to the south west of the house. In 1717-18 the moat was straightened into a canal. These works were probably advised by Van den Meulen in 1715. The 1746 survey shows the canal later transformed into the river to the south of the house. (See 5633 for possible sources)

<1> Eyre T. (Revised by Jefferys T.), 1779, Map of the County of Northamptonshire, (unchecked) (Map). SNN1852.

<2> Bridges J., 1791, The History and Antiquities of Northamptonshire, p.299 (unchecked) (Book). SNN77326.

<3> Anthony J., 1979, Gardens of Britain, p.65 (unchecked) (Series). SNN34164.

<4> GOTCH J.A., 1940, Manor Houses of Northamptonshire, (unchecked) (Book). SNN58776.

<5> Evans J., 1813, The Beauties of England and Wales (Northamptonshire), (unchecked) (Book). SNN44614.

<6> Neale J.P., 1820, Views of Seats (1), (unchecked) (Series). SNN54894.

<7> GARDEN, (unchecked) (Uncertain). SNN54840.

<8> 1909, Country Life (1909), 234-44 (unchecked) (Journal). SNN58754.

<9> 1976, Country Life (1976), 610-13; 750-53; 810-13 (unchecked) (Journal). SNN58755.

<10> LEES MILNE A; VEREY R, 1980, ENGLISHWOMAN'S GARDEN, 45-6 (unchecked) (Uncertain). SNN58756.

<11> MORRIS F.O., SERIES OF PICTURESQUE VIEWS, 37 (unchecked) (Uncertain). SNN54823.

<12> 1738, Deene and Deenethorpe NRO BRU map 8, (unchecked) (Map). SNN102465.

<13> Mowl T.; Hickman C., 2008, The Historic Gardens of England: Northamptonshire, (unchecked) (Series). SNN106082.

<14> Speed J., 1610, Map of Northamptonshire, (unchecked) (Map). SNN559.

<15> 1909, Country Life (1909), 13 FEB/234 (unchecked) (Journal). SNN37581.

<16> 1976, Country Life (1976), 11 MAR/610 (unchecked) (Journal). SNN37582.

<17> 1976, Country Life (1976), 18 MAR/674 (unchecked) (Journal). SNN37583.

<18> 1976, Country Life (1976), 25/MAR/750 (unchecked) (Journal). SNN37584.

<19> 1976, Country Life (1976), 1 APR/810 (unchecked) (Journal). SNN37585.

<20> 1610, MAP, (unchecked) (Map). SNN37587.

<21> Steane J., 1974, The Northamptonshire Landscape, (unchecked) (Book). SNN5137.

<22> English Heritage, 1984, Register of Parks & Gardens of Special Historic Interest in England (1984, Northamptonshire), Northamptonshire, revised 28-May-2004 (Report). SNN46781.

Record last edited

Feb 5 2025 6:21PM