Category: Parks & Gardens

Private
The garden was laid out in the early 18th century, and its original concept of a formal woodland garden, with temples, statues and ponds has not changed. Beech hedged allees of the traditional goose foot design fan out from the north front. Parts of the house (the north front) date from the 18th century, while other parts (the southern part) are Victorian. Inside, on the ground floor, can be found some fine painted plaster ceilings in the older part, and some interesting paintings and other objects.
Royalists however will be most interested in the Bowes-Lyon connection. This was the childhood home of Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, a.k.a Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, and the late Queen Elizabeth II also visited here. A photograph of the princesses Elizabeth and Margaret seated on a rocking horse, still in the house, can be viewed here. Other mementoes are in the billiard room.
The extensive gardens are well worth a tramp round. Statues or temples appear at the end of long straight vistas, and flowering bushes can be found among the trees in the western part. According to the guidebook, the garden is planted to display different flowers throughout the year. On my visit in February, camellia bushes in flower were lurking among the trees to the west.
The soil in the gardens is clay, so after heavy rain there is much surface water everywhere with slippery mud underfoot. Suitable footwear is advised.
The house is rarely opened to the public but the gardens open more often – see their website.
If travelling from a west or north-westerly starting point, you are advised to travel via Hitchin to avoid a maze of narrow twisting lanes.

Private
The Wake family has owned the Courteenhall estate since the Tudor period, and the current Georgian house was built in 1792 for Sir William Wake, the 9th baronet. It has changed little since then. The house and adjoining outbuildings and stables stand in extensive parkland designed by Humphry Repton. The family has always been involved in the business of farming.
The house has rooms of handsome proportions on the ground floor, with fine plasterwork, filled with good furniture and many beautiful objects collected over the centuries. Family portraits hang in most of the rooms.
In front of the house, to one side is the Arboretum with an attractive rustic pond. Behind the house there is a small formal garden with pool, and the parkland which extends as far as the Church (not part of the estate) and the listed stable block.
I visited Courteenhall on an ‘Invitation to View’ tour (this one for EH members only.) On arrival we were served tea or coffee and a biscuit, and then our host gave us a lively and informative tour of the principal ground floor rooms. Guests were then at liberty to walk around the grounds.
The estate, positioned between the A508 and the M1 near J15, is relatively easy to find, and well worth a visit. Be aware that the town of Roade to the south has a brand-new bypass.
For those interested in the history of the family, a handsome and substantial hardback volume ‘The Wakes of Northamptonshire’ is available for £20 (collected) or £25 with postage.

Privately Owned
I visited Abbots Ripton Hall under the Historic Houses Association’s “Invitation to View” scheme.
The Hall was built in the 18th century of red and gault brick, with a plain entrance front to the northeast and a garden front to the south-west, with shutters and loggia. The house was altered in the 1850s and again in the 1970s.
The house has some pleasant ground-floor rooms, including a library, containing some good furniture and pictures. The contents were mostly acquired by the current owner. The glory of the property however lies in the extensive gardens. A huge London Plane tree stands close to the house and is contemporary with it. A series of lawns and paths spread out from the house into wooded gardens containing a long double herbaceous border, a rose garden, a rose tunnel and pergola, and other features.
The Abbots Ripton Brook flows through the gardens, feeding a canal near the house, and a lake.
Many of the plants have numbered labels, and visitors are provided with a guide to the plants. I spotted one flower that was the same as a plant in my garden I had never been able to identify (Anemone).
A view across the lake provides a glimpse of a Chinese fishing pavilion (built by Peter Foster in the 1970s, like many of the garden features.)
The gardens in particular are well worth a visit. I would have liked to explore them further but one of our party was on an electric buggy which might have induced our host (Lord de Ramsey) to shorten the tour.
Finding the Hall, near Huntingdon, was straightforward except that my sat-nav took me to a commercial courtyard on the B1090. Exiting from there to the left, the inconspicuous gates to the Hall were about 100 yards further on to the SE, on the same side of the B1090. Hall Lane, shown on the maps, is the road behind the gates. Once one has actually visited the gardens, the main features are clearly identifiable on Google Satellite View.