East Lambrook Manor is a small 15th-century manor house in East Lambrook, Somerset, England, registered by English Heritage as a Grade II* listed building. [1] It is surrounded by a "cottage garden" planted by Margery Fish between 1938 and her death in 1969. [2] The garden is Grade I listed in the Register of Historic Parks and Gardens of special historic interest in England. [3]
The two-storey house, Grade II* listed in 1959, was originally an open hall-house. It was built of Somerset hamstone in the 15th and 16th centuries. [4] It was a disused chicken farm, which had fallen into disrepair until the restoration in the 1930s. [4] [5]
| East Lambrook Manor Gardens | |
|---|---|
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| Type | Cottage Garden |
| Location | East Lambrook, Somerset, England |
| Coordinates | 50°58′00″N2°48′40″W / 50.9667°N 2.811°W Coordinates: 50°58′00″N2°48′40″W / 50.9667°N 2.811°W |
| Area | 2 acres (0.81 ha) |
| Plants | Geraniums, euphorbias, helleborus, snowdrops, roses, rare and unusual cottage garden plants |
| Collections | National Collection of Geraniums |
| Website | http://www.eastlambrook.co.uk/ |
Margery Fish and her husband Walter Fish bought East Lambrook Manor in 1937 for £1000. They had several terraces constructed in 1938. [6] She described the informal planting style as "jungle gardening". [7] She wrote several books on cottage gardens. She laid out the 2 acres (0.81 ha) gardens, which hold the National Collection of Geraniums, [8] and a collection of snowdrops. [9]
Several varieties of plants are named after the garden, including a silver-leafed wormwood, Artemisia absinthium 'Lambrook Silver', [10] a spurge, Euphorbia characias ssp. wulfenii, 'Lambrook Gold', and a primrose Primula , 'Lambrook Mauve'. [11]
The garden has been restored since 1985 into the state it was left at the time of Fish's death in 1969. [12] It was awarded Grade I status by English Heritage in 1992. [13] In 2011, the gardens were opened for a horticulture course, the East Lambrook Diploma in Horticulture, which covers both theoretical and practical gardening. [14]
East Lambrook Manor gardens are open to the public for nine months of the year, usually from Tuesday to Saturday. [15] It is entered through the Malthouse, a stone building within the gardens which also contains a gallery and a café. Behind the Malthouse is an area known as the Ditch, which originally had water flowing through it. There Fish planted moisture-loving plants, but as the water no longer flows through the Ditch, it has been replanted as a sunken garden. To the east of the house is the Silver Garden, which includes Mediterranean plants, often with silver leaves. [16]
The Quantock Hills west of Bridgwater in Somerset, England, consist of heathland, oak woodlands, ancient parklands and agricultural land. They were England's first Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, designated in 1956.
Eythrope is a hamlet and country house in the parish of Waddesdon, in Buckinghamshire, England. It is located to the south east of the main village of Waddesdon. It was bought in the 1870s by a branch of the Rothschild family, and belongs to them to this day.
Kingsbury Episcopi is a village and civil parish on the River Parrett in Somerset, England, situated 9 miles (14.5 km) north west of Yeovil in the South Somerset district. The village has a population of 1,307. The parish includes the villages of West Lambrook, East Lambrook and Thorney.
A galanthophile is an enthusiastic collector and identifier of snowdrop (Galanthus) species and cultivars.
The cottage garden is a distinct style that uses informal design, traditional materials, dense plantings, and a mixture of ornamental and edible plants. English in origin, it depends on grace and charm rather than grandeur and formal structure. Homely and functional gardens connected to cottages go back centuries, but their stylized reinvention occurred in 1870s England, as a reaction to the more structured, rigorously maintained estate gardens with their formal designs and mass plantings of greenhouse annuals.
Tintinhull Garden, located in Tintinhull, near Yeovil in the English county of Somerset, is a small 20th century garden surrounding a 17th-century Grade I listed house. The property is in the ownership of the National Trust. It is visited by around 25,000 people per year.
Barrington Court is a Tudor manor house begun around 1538 and completed in the late 1550s, with a vernacular stable court (1675), situated in Barrington, near Ilminster, Somerset, England.
Newton Surmaville is a 15,129-square-foot (1,405.5 m2) stately home with gardens and a park south of Yeovil, Somerset in the district of South Somerset, in England. It lies just outside the town in the parish of Barwick.
Halswell House is a Grade I listed country house in Goathurst, Somerset, England.
Babington is a small village between Radstock and Frome, Somerset, England, which has now largely disappeared.
East Lambrook is an English village situated in the civil parish of Kingsbury Episcopi, within the South Somerset district of Somerset. It is noted particularly for its manor gardens.
South Petherton is a village and civil parish in the South Somerset district of Somerset, England, located 5 miles (8 km) east of Ilminster and 5 miles (8 km) north of Crewkerne. The parish had a population of 3,367 in 2011 and includes the smaller village of Over Stratton and the hamlets of Compton Durville, Drayton, Wigborough and Yeabridge. The River Parrett forms the eastern boundary of the parish. The village is approximately 2 miles (3 km) from East Lambrook, Martock and Lopen.
Cothay Manor is a grade one listed medieval house and gardens, in Stawley, near Wellington, Somerset. The manor grounds consist of almost 40 acres and include cottages, outbuildings, stables, and 12 acres of gardens.
Cothelstone Manor in Cothelstone, Somerset, England was built in the mid-16th century, largely demolished by the parliamentary troops in 1646 and rebuilt by E.J. Esdaile in 1855–56.
Walter George Fish, known as W. G. Fish, edited a popular English daily newspaper. He and his second wife Margery Fish, who became a noted gardening author and plantswoman, established a cottage-style Somerset garden, East Lambrook Manor, which she further developed after his death. It remains much visited.
Margery Fish was an English gardener and gardening writer, who exercised a strong influence on the informal English cottage garden style of her period. The garden she created, at East Lambrook Manor in Somerset, has Grade I listed status and remains open to the public.
South Wingfield is a civil parish in the Amber Valley district of Derbyshire, England. The parish contains 40 listed buildings that are recorded in the National Heritage List for England. Of these, one is listed at Grade I, the highest of the three grades, two are at Grade II*, the middle grade, and the others are at Grade II, the lowest grade. The parish contains the villages of South Wingfield and Oakerthorpe and the surrounding countryside. A railway built by the North Midland Railway runs through the parish, and the listed buildings associated with it are bridges, tunnel portals, and a station and associated structures. The other listed buildings include a ruined manor house, smaller houses, cottages and associated structures, farmhouses and farm buildings, a church, road bridges, public houses, and a former windmill.
