The hanging gardens at Owlpen are an unusually complete survival of an early formal garden on a manorial scale. Sir Geoffrey Jellicoe has described it as possibly the earliest domestic garden in England remaining in anything like its original form. Certainly, many visitors find the medieval atmosphere and sense of romance and mystery, “like a witches’ coven”, are overwhelming, with yew rooms, hanging terraces linked by gravel paths and uncomfortably steep steps, all set in a remote and picturesque valley in the Cotswold hills, impending sheer at its back. Today, with its Stuart terraces and restrained Edwardian development, it has been described as “the quintessence of the Old English style”.

Over the centuries, the manor house has acquired the outbuildings which form with it an unusually complete and changeless manorial ensemble. It lies “folded among terraces” in a “narrow, hand-carved valley”, as the poem [1978] of Ursula Fanthorpe describes it, with the Court House (1620s), Grist Mill (medieval, rebuilt in 1728), Tithe Barn (mid-15th century) and Church (recorded by 1260, rebuilt in 1828 and 1874). The group is entirely enfolded by hills, writes Geoffrey Jellicoe, “as though the design has grown from the hillside … similar to the idea of growth in Gothic architecture … for this early garden is better related, in its romantic setting, than that of any other period to the countryside in which it stands.”

The medieval garden is enclosed within coped stone walls, suggesting still the hortus conclusus of a semi-fortified manor of the fifteenth century emerging into an age of increasing peace and prosperity. The present manor house is Tudor, dating from about 1450 to 1616. The gardens, probably laid out on hanging terraces by Christopher Daunt in the early 17th century, are rare in having been continuously kept up and cultivated. Other early survivals, such as Chipping Campden House and Raglan Castle, known to archaeologists, are revealed as humps of earth today.

We know from surviving account books that further works were carried out by Thomas Daunt V in the early 18^th century. They are well documented from 1721 to 1730, when the early Stuart garden was reordered and classicized, and the terrasses and platts were laid out with strong axial symmetry. The main axis leads up from a flight of fine segmental steps, through panelled gate piers (which were flanked by the original wooden palisade until the 1940s), to the centre gable of the main (south) front. Thomas Daunt’s plantings included box edging from Boxwell nearby, many varieties of pinks, Catherine peach, fool’s coat tulips, a dutch herb and a holly tree. He recommends: “for ye pile, ye herb linaria [toadflax] prepared as an ointment.” He bought a pair of “garden shiers” (and scythe) for 4s. 6d. also in 1723, no doubt to trim the maturing yews.

The Yew Parlour (also known as the ‘Ballroom’ or ‘Wilderness’), a mysterious room in cut yew, is an “unusual feature”, wrote Gertrude Jekyll, “the result of many years of growth and patient tending.” It may be part of the seventeenth century scheme, when the yews would have been accents in a formal parterre. It already has its present form on the first engravings of the early nineteenth century. The twelve yews of the Yew Parlour were said to represent the Apostles, like those at Packwood, and the seven terraces the “seven gardens of paradise”. Commentators extended such correspondences in a manner which today seems whimsical. It is set by the loggia of the Court House, also known as the Summer House, a gazebo or small banqueting house where sessions of the manorial court leet are said to have been held.

The manor was abandoned in the early 19^th century, when a new Georgian mansion known as Owlpen House (or Park) was built high on the Cotswold hills, with Reptonian prospects, evergreens and clumps, a mile away, at the other end of the estate. But the gardens were kept up, in an age of plentiful labour. We find the ‘old manor’, as it came to be called, described as a “Sleeping Beauty”, a “garden house”, with only a caretaker/gardener occupying a few dilapidated back rooms of the east wing, giving the topiary yews their annual tonsure and maintaining the walled kitchen gardens, with their superior soil and fertility, for the ‘Big House’.

Algernon Charles Swinburne, poet, aesthete and dreamer, visited in the summer of 1894, when he was shown round by Henry and Hester Grimes. He described the couple to his close friend William Morris: “the housekeeper is the quaintest old body (I bet) you ever saw: but her husband, who has charge of the garden, would be cheap at £1000 a year as ‘the proud’ gardener of ‘a ducal coronet’:

If the (surely inviting) name of Owlpen conveys not no association to you, I can only say that it ought. My sisters say that £20,000 and Mr Morris would make a paradise incomparable on earth of the ruinous little old manor–house: I say a ‘fipunnote’ [five-pound note] & a contented mind would suffice.

True, the floors & stairs are all in holes, but [the gardener] keeps the old hanging gardens of the 16th or 17th century tidy & sweet & splendid out of pure love of them, for the millionaire beast who now owns the place never comes near it. Only one poet could describe it—& his name is decidedly not, (Yours affectionately), A. C. Swinburne

Victorian photographs show the yews neatly trimmed, the garden carefully tended as a destination for picnics and house-party excursions. Four yew pylons in front came to overwhelm and conceal the manor house. When they were removed in the 1950s, the architectural historian Christopher Hussey wrote a doggerel verse to the owner, Mrs Bray, lamenting the passing of the “introverted Owlpen of yore . . . I do love yew, but I love you even more”. 

The garden—properly less than half an acre and with few flowers—has been described by some of the twentieth century’s most inspired gardeners: among them Gertrude Jekyll, Vita Sackville-West and Jellicoe himself.

Gertrude Jekyll ‘discovered’ the hillside garden just before the First World War and visited several times, describing the lay-out in detail, with plans, views and sections in the book she co-authored with Lawrence Weaver, Gardens for Small Country Houses (1914). The ‘old’ manor house, by then a picturesque ruin overrun with ivy, was saved and repaired by the Cotswold Arts and Crafts architect, Norman Jewson, in 1926, and became a lived-in family house once more. The garden retained its old-world charm after Jewson’s restoration, soon becoming widely recognised. The American architectural writer, Harold Eberlein, wrote in 1927:

The garden in which Owlpen Manor House is set, and with which it is so inseparably associated, is one of the finest and most satisfying things of its kind anywhere to be found … straightforward and simple and completely convincing in its coherence of form and logical arrangement.

Geoffrey Jellicoe first visited at the same period, moved by the Englishness of the Owlpen garden, with its medieval sense of enchantment, intensified by the yews, and delightful simplicity and scale of plan, carefully recording and publishing a number of drawings and bird’s-eye views as a young landscape architect in 1926.

Vita Sackville-West described the garden between the Wars as “a dream”, one of “the places one has seen and loved”, whose yew rooms were precursors to those in her great garden at Sissinghurst: 

Owlpen—ah, what a dream is there! Owlpen, that tiny grey manor-house, cowering amongst its enormous yews, yews that make rooms in the garden with walls taller than any rooms in the house; dark, secret rooms of yew hiding in the slope of the valley.

The present garden plan has been recreated among open lawns and a field since 1980, with box hedges enclosing quarters of English parterres—having plots of grass—like those in the Stoke Edith tapestries, or Kip engravings. The planting is traditional, with herbs and aromatics, old shrub roses and garden favourites, and the box, holly, juniper and yew replanted, as well as formal features—a stilt hedge and pleached allée—in lime and hornbeam, and sculpture by Simon Verity. The historicist design makes use of old records, suggesting an early garden reordered conservatively at the turn of the eighteenth century—just as the formal tradition was about to be swept away, in fashionable gardens like Cirencester or Badminton, by the landscape garden.

The garden has been extended with a bridge and double steps leading to more grass terraces across the Ewelme stream which runs through it, and the kitchen garden, orchards and mill pond have been slowly restored. A thousand native trees were planted as shelter belts to mark the millennium. A walnut walk leads to a new pear lake in the dell to the east.

From the terraces in front of the house the architectural form of the composition set in the valley can be seen, with the house and garden closely interlinked—the terraces rising in tiers, like a medieval vision of Babylon, edged with box and accented with clipped yew. From here it has a sculptural quality as a whole, which would have been more pronounced before the outsize Yew Parlour obscured the terraces behind.

Over the centuries, the manor house has acquired the outbuildings which form with it an unusually complete and changeless manorial ensemble. It lies “folded among terraces” in a “ narrow, hand-carved valley”, as the poem [1978] of Ursula Fanthorpe describes it, with the Court House (1620s), Grist Mill (medieval, rebuilt 1728), Tithe Barn (mid 15th century) and Church (of medieval origin, rebuilt 1837 and 1874).

The group is entirely enfolded by hills, writes Geoffrey Jellicoe, “as though the design has grown from the hillside … similar to the idea of growth in Gothic architecture … for this early garden is better related, in its romantic setting, than that of any other period to the countryside in which it stands”.

The present garden plan, with box hedges enclosing quarters of English parterres – having plots of grass – suggests an early garden reordered conservatively just before the formal garden was to give way to the landscape garden at grander sites nearby, such as Cirencester and Badminton.

 The gardens – properly less than half an acre – have been visited, admired and written about by some of the century’s most inspired gardeners, including Gertrude Jekyll, Vita Sackville-West and Jellicoe himself.  Gertrude Jekyll visited Uley several times and describes the lay-out, giving details, with  plans   and  sections,  in  the

book she co-authored with Lawrence Weaver, Gardens for Small Country Houses (1914).  Vita Sackville-West described the garden between the Wars as “a dream”, one of “the places one has seen and loved”, whose yew rooms were precursors to those in her great garden at Sissinghurst: 

Owlpen, that tiny grey manor-house, cowering amongst its enormous yews, yews that make rooms in the garden with walls taller than any rooms in the house; dark, secret rooms of yew hiding in the slope of the valley. (English Country Houses, 1941.)

Geoffrey Jellicoe was moved by the Englishness of the Owlpen garden, with its medieval sense of mystery, intensified by the yews, and delightful simplicity and scale of plan, carefully recording a number of drawings, plans and birds’ eye views as a young landscape architect in 1926. 

     The medieval gardens are enclosed within the coped stone walls, suggesting yet the hortus conclusus of the semi-fortified manor of the fifteenth century emerging into an age of increasing peace and prosperity.  As Jellicoe noted, the core of the garden is certainly Tudor, with early Stuart additions:  to the south and west it is laid out on the earliest principle, a repetition in plan of the forms of the façades projected either side onto the ground, with the Yew Parlour set in the angle between them.  

     In the seventeenth century – and, particularly, under Thomas Daunt V from 1719 onwards – the gardens were reordered and classicized: the terraces and raised walks were reformed, and the parterres laid out with strong axial symmetry. The main axis leads up from the flight of semi-circular steps, through the panelled stone gate piers to the centre gable of the south front.  The gates were flanked by the original wooden palisade, costing £3 15s. 4d. in 1723, until the 1940s.  Thomas Daunt’s plantings are well documented for a garden of this size, from 1723 to 1730:  he mentions pinks, Catherine peach, fool’s coat tulips, a dutch herb and a holly tree.  He recommends: “for ye pile, ye herb linaria [toadflax] prepared as an ointment”.  He bought a pair of “garden shiers” (and scythe) for 4s. 6d. also in 1723, no doubt to trim the maturing yews.

     The Yew Parlour (also known as the ‘Green Drawing-Room’, the ‘Ballroom’, ‘Dancing Floor’ or ‘Wilderness’) was probably planted by him, the small yews as accents in a formal parterre below the loggia of the Court House, known then as the Summer House, a Stuart gazebo, or small banqueting house, also overlooking the lane.  It already has its present form on the first engravings of the early nineteenth century. 

Nineteenth Century

The Manor was abandoned shortly after 1815, and a new mansion was built on the hills, with picturesque Reptonian prospects, evergreens, clumps and shelter belts, at the other end of the estate, a mile away.  But the gardens were kept up, when

labour was plentiful, and we find the manor described as a “garden house”, with a caretaker/gardener living in part of the east wing, giving the topiary yews their annual tonsure and maintaining the walled kitchen gardens, with their superior soil and fertility, for the ‘Big House’. 

     Victorian photographs show the yews neatly trimmed, the garden carefully tended as a destination for picnics and after-church excursions for house parties.  Four yew pylons in front came to dominate and conceal the manor house, now “cowering”, as Vita Sackville-West found it, “amongst enormous yews”.  When they were removed in the 1930s, Christopher Hussey wrote a teasing verse to the then owner, lamenting the passing of the “introvert Owlpen of yore . . . though I like yew, I really love you even more”. 

     The garden retained its old-world charm after Jewson’s restoration, becoming widely recognised.  The American architectural writer, Harold Eberlein, wrote in 1927:

The garden in which Owlpen Manor House is set, and with which it is so inseparably associated, is one of the finest and most satisfying things of its kind anywhere to be found . . . straightforward and simple and completely convincing in its coherence of form and logical arrangement.

Today

The present garden plan has been recreated among open lawns and a field  since 1980, with box hedges enclosing quarters of English parterres – having plots of grass – like those in the Stoke Edith tapestries, or Kip engravings. The planting is traditional, with herbs and aromatics, old shrub roses and garden favourites, and the box, holly, juniper and yew replanted, as well as formal features – a stilt hedge and pleached allée –  in lime and hornbeam, and sculpture by Simon Verity.  The design makes use of old records, suggesting an early garden reordered conservatively at the turn of the eighteenth century (like the London and Wise design  of 1706 for Marshall Tallard) – at the same time as the formal tradition was about to be swept away, in fashionable gardens like Cirencester nearby, by the landscape garden. It is hoped to restore the kitchen garden and mill pond.

Symbolism and Design

The theme of the hanging gardens on seven terraces was said to represent the Seven Gardens of Paradise.  The lowest terrace is that by the Ewelme brook, representing the wilderness outside the garden, undifferent-iated, untamed nature.  Each terrace is dedicated to a presiding deity, from Diana (the wilderness below) to Apollo (the churchyard above).  In the enclosed garden proper are five terraces, representing the ordered perfection of nature.

     In the centre of the upper terrace is a gate, the Needle’s Eye, which leads up to the Paradise Garden in which the church stands, ever dominating over the sublunary garden world.  The twelve yews of the Yew Parlour were said to represent the Twelve Apostles, like those at Packwood House: the four that once stood in front of the house were said to represent the Evangelists.  Nineteenth-century commentators, describing one of the later Daunts as a ‘magician’, have extended such correspondences in a manner which sometimes seems whimsical. . .

     The architectural form, with the house and garden closely interlinked – the terraces rising in tiers, like a medieval vision of Babylon, edged with box and accented with clipped yew –  was also intended to be seen as set in the landscape, from across the valley in front of the house.  From here it has a sculptural quality as a whole, which would have been more pronounced before the outsize Yew Parlour obscured the terraces behind.  The group is entirely enfolded by hills, “as though the design has grown from the hillside…similar to the idea of growth in Gothic architecture”.  For this early garden is better related, in its romantic setting, than that of any other period to the countryside in which it stands (Jellicoe).