Goodnestone Park

Goodnestone Park has a 14 acre garden set in a park, with fine old specimen trees, around a Queen Anne period brick-built Palladian-style mansion (Photo 1). It has been owned continuously, and still is, by descendents of Brook Bridges who bought the property on his retirement and had the mansion built in the early eighteenth-century. He was the son of Colonel John Bridges of Harcourt Hall in Worcestershire and from 1672 had held the prestigious position of Auditor of the Imprest under King Charles II. His son was created a Baronet in 1718 by King George I. The garden and park contain evidence of three radical forms. Today they consist of four principal areas, the Parkland, the Terraces and Parterre, the Woodland Garden and the Walled Garden. A stroll around the property broadly follows these areas.

We enter the estate through the small village of Goodnestone (pronounced 'Gunstone'), with church, pub (Fitzwalter Arms, since 1702) and estate houses strung along a leafy lane. This brings us to the red-brick stables block, which was built to house the horses and carriages of earlier members of the family. Passing through a gate in the wall into the garden, we walk towards the original front of the mansion.

Terraces and Parterre
Here we come upon the parterre on the lower of two terraces from which a broad flight of steps leads up to the elegant front façade of the house which was built by Brook Bridges between 1700 and 1704. The date of the house is scratched on a brick on the main front. However the parterre was laid out in 2000 to commemorate the millennium, to a design by Charlotte Molesworth. The pattern of box hedges, gravel and planted enclosures was influenced by a view of the garden in an early-18th century book.
From the parterre the view extends out over the village cricket ground (Photo 2) immediately below and to parkland beyond. At the far end of the terraces are fine three- to four-hundred year old specimen trees of Sweet, or Spanish Chestnut (Castanea sativa). The birds eye view of the garden, probably by Johannes Kip, published in Dr William Harris' History of Kent (1719) is interesting. It shows the original layout of the park on a steady gradient as it was soon after the house was built. It was similar to that surrounding many stately homes of that time, influenced by the power-defining formal style developed in France by Le Nôtre first at Vaux-le-Vicomte and later at Versailles.
Fashions changed in the late 18th century and the formal gardens here, and over most of Britain, were swept away in what became known as the English Landscape Movement, championed by royal gardener 'Capability' Brown. This was again recorded in a view, this time a watercolour scene by Anthony Devis, which was engraved for Hasted's History and Survey of Kent.

In 1765 Sir Brook Bridges, 3rd Baronet, married Fanny Fowler who was a co-heiress of the ancient Norman barony of FitzWalter. It subsequently lapsed as there were no heirs. Their daughter, Elizabeth, married Edward Austen in 1791, brother of the famous author Jane Austen. Edward Austen and his young wife spent their early married life in a house on the Goodnestone estate. Elizabeth was a favourite relative for Jane Austen (her daughter Fanny later became one of Jane's favourite correspondents) and Jane was a regular guest at Goodnestone during their years there. It is significant that she began writing her first novel, Pride and Prejudice, immediately after staying at Goodnestone in 1796.

The next period of important alterations to the property came during the 1840s. Sir Brook William Bridges, 5th Baronet, decided to change the entrance to the mansion, adding the imposing Doric portico to what had been the back and to which a new approach drive swept down from both sides. Within the curve of the drive he made a series of ampitheatre-shaped grass terraces with three central flights of stone steps. At the other side of the house, where the entrance had previously been and the site of the present parterre, he terraced the lawns between the house and park which he divided from the garden with the present wall.

Towards the end of the 19th century a sister of the last baronet, married a member of the Plumptre family and in 1924 their son, Henry Plumptre, successfully claimed the ancient FitzWalter barony, after being in abeyance for 168 years. Between the two world wars his wife Emmy FitzWalter, made significant improvements to the garden, and developed a woodland garden. During World War Two the house was requisitioned by the military. In 1955 when Brook Plumptre, the 21st Lord FitzWalter and his wife Lady Margaret FitzWalter, sister of the journalist and politician Bill Deedes (Lord Deedes of Aldington), moved into the house the gardens were in a derelict state. Recovery did not begin in earnest until the mid-1960s and the restoration and expansion to their present standard has primarily been the work of Lady FitzWalter. Lord FitzWalter died in October 2004, aged 90 and their eldest son, Julian succeeded to the title.

We continue our tour up the three central flights of steps in the middle of the terraced lawns to a yew-hedged walk beyond which is a lime avenue. This follows the original early-18th century main axis of the garden. Red-twigged limes, Tilia platyphyllus 'Rubra', were planted in 1984 to recreate the original vista and to mark Brook FitzWalter's 70th birthday. In 1991 a large stone urn on a pedestal was positioned at the top of the avenue as an eye-catcher, and to celebrate Brook and Margaret FitzWalter's 40th wedding anniversary.

The Arboretum and Gravel Garden
Between the lime avenue and the Woodland Garden, originally an area of rough pasture has been transformed into an arboretum with a collection of ornamental trees. Mown paths wind between areas where the grass is left unmown for spring bulbs and later flowers to thrive, such as snake's-head fritillaries. The collection of trees is notable for the different varieties of birch, sorbus, malus and robinia.
An old tennis court was turned into a gravel garden in 2003. This brings a contemporary note to Goodnestone, with its path leading between bold plantings of perennial grasses and other striking foliage perennials such as euphorbias and eryngiums, all growing out of gravel. Towards the centre a paved area and seat have been placed from which to contemplate the view towards the house and the park beyond.

Woodland Garden
Through an opening in a beech hedge, we enter a mature woodland garden containing a pool surrounded by giant blocks of York stone with a shrubbery of rhododendrons, azaleas, camellias and hydrangeas all brought in by Emmy FitzWalter in the 1920s. Winding paths reveal a rich array of trees, shrubs and smaller woodland treasures: especially good collections of witch hazels, snowdrops and hellebores in spring, dogwood, camellias, cornus and magnolias in early summer, then in late-summer banks of hydrangeas produce a mass of deep blue flowers and tall evergreen eucryphias are covered in white flowers. The woodland garden contains more enormous sweet chestnut and oaks, as well as a magnificent southern beech, Nothofagus fusca. There is a majestic free-standing evergreen magnolia, Magnolia grandiflora, and two other rarities Abelia triflora, and a cut-leaf alder, Alnus glutinosa 'Imperialis', all planted between the wars by Emmy FitzWalter.

Emerging from the woodland we meet the ancient cedar of Lebanon, Cedrus libani, which stands on a raised lawn to the north of the house's entrance front. It almost certainly dates from around the time that the house was built and as well as having had its top blown out in a storm half a century ago it has lost many branches to the weight of winter snow.

Besides the many varieties in the Arboretum, notable trees planted during the last thirty years include a fine tulip tree, Liriodendron tulipifera, an unusual cut-leaf copper beech, Fagus sylvatica 'Rohanii', and an outstanding example of the variegated Cornus controversa 'Variegata'.

The Walled Garden
Entering the walled garden we come upon a classic 'borrowed landscape'. A succession of three interconnected, exuberantly planted, mellow brick-walled enclosures borrow the adjacent church tower as an eye-catcher on their central vista (Photo 3). The succession of enclosures leads from the old fashioned rose garden, underplanted with hardy geraniums and other perennials, to the summer garden with borders planted for mid to late summer flowering, and finally to the kitchen garden where flower borders mix with an array of fruit and vegetables. Some of the walls are older than the house and having been carefully restored through the 1960s and 1970s they are now hung with a range of climbers and wall plants including clematis, jasmine, solanum, roses, Fremontodendron 'California Glory' and Carpentaria californica. As well as these main areas the Walled Garden has other secrets to discover: the now huge wisterias planted before the war by Emmy FitzWalter that cover the far wall in front of the church tower; the alpine garden where raised beds and sinks are planted with gentians and other tiny treasures; or the ornamental greenhouse overflowing with exotic tender plants.

This is a garden with an abundance of historical, horticultural, artistic and literary interest, which makes it a fascinating visit. Find out more about the house, park, garden and their owners on the Goodnestone Park web site

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