Monument record MDO38517 - Gardens at Seaborough Court, Seaborough

The gardens of Seaborough Court, built in 1877 to replace a sixteenth-century house destroyed by fire. The most significant features of the garden are early twentieth-century additions in Italianate style, which have been attributed to noted garden designer Harold Peto. Some traces of earlier gardens have been identified, but none appear to be contemporary with the original house.

Seaborough Court was built in 1591 by Hugh Martin <1> and owned by the Martin family until the early nineteenth century. The surviving stables are described as probably having been built in the seventeenth century, but are much altered and with eighteenth-century components <2>. They have been converted to private residences. No documentary evidence has been located relating to seventeenth- or eighteenth-century gardens on the site, and it is clear that any earlier gardens will have been much disturbed by later work. In a conveyance dated 9 July 1750 between Adam Martin and John Notley, the estate is described as being 180 acres including a water/corn mill, a pond, and a watercourse <3>. The Dorset Gardens Trust identify the pond in the conveyance with a pond described as a fishpond on the tithe map (1839), which shows very few trees, with pasture and meadow beyond the house and gardens <4>. The house, called ‘Seaborough House’ on the tithe map, was owned by Mr Foster Maynard. By 1875 it was owned by John Studley. A fire in 1877 led to the demolition of the house. The same year the present house (re-named Seaborough Court) was built by T Wyatt on a site to the north of the original house. The original walled kitchen garden survived, and is situated to the south west of the present house. Various pieces of ornamentation from the original house were re-used, including the porch which was removed to the West Lodge and pillars and globes to the entrance used by the West Lodge, and finials from the roof which were re-used at the entrance to the south drive. The 1888 Ordnance Survey map shows an avenue curving from near the West Lodge to north of the present house; it is presumed to have been of elm, as the stumps of elm trees have been noted on this line. Another avenue curved from the front of the present house to the north west then swinging east to run along the northern boundary to join the road at the north-eastern corner of the rather small park around the house. An estate map (an annotated version of the 1888 Ordnance Survey map) shows a walled garden with greenhouses, with kitchen gardens to the south, the surviving stable buildings, a pond running west-east in the southern part of the grounds, south of the site of the original house. This map also shows a pheasantry north of the present house, and gardens around the house that are more extensive than today. The 1903 Ordnance Survey map <6> shows the pond very much as it appears on the estate map. It has a sluice near the western end of the south side, and a footbridge towards the eastern end. The 1929 Ordnance Survey map <6> shows the walled garden with glasshouses, but with some internal divisions gone. In his book ‘Historic Gardens of Dorset’ <8> Timothy Mowl refers to Harold Peto having been commissioned in 1907 to work on the house and grounds of Seaborough. It should be noted that the Dorset Gardens Trust has not been able to find any documentary evidence to support the supposition that Peto was commissioned to work at Seaborough, though he had links with the property. Seaborough was owned by the Mitchell family, and Mrs Mitchell was Harold Peto’s sister. Peto is known to have visited and, stylistically, the work is very typical of his work <9>. Mowl acknowledges the uncertainty over the degree of Peto’s involvement. Work attributed to Peto includes creation of a formal Italianate garden to the south west corner of the house. It appears that what had been two grass terraces on the southern side of the house were turned into more formal terraces by the addition of stone walls and step. On the upper terrace, a gravel path ran from an ornamental rectangular lily tank (small, shallow, to break up the area near the house) and stone seat at the eastern end to a conservatory/winter garden and loggia at the western end. The now roofless conservatory is situated on the southern side of the house between the south-west corner of the house and the loggia, and facing south. It has large now glass-less windows on either side of an entrance reached by a short flight of steps from the terrace on the south, with pilasters with ornamental capitals and a pierced ornamental balustrade across the top. The original conservatory/winter garden was built around 1888 (when Seaborough Court was owned by Captain R C Batley and his wife Mabel Terry-Lewis); the windows were glazed and it had a glass roof with skylight. There is a circular pond in the centre of the conservatory, where the heating ducts are visible. The loggia has three arches to the south and one on its western side. The arches have simple mouldings and are supported by plain round columns. The balustrade continues across the loggia, but is solid. The loggia has undergone some restoration, with grant aid from the Dorset Gardens Trust. The back of the loggia is a curved rubble wall, with a central door leading to narrow steps down to the ‘domestic’ courtyard of the house. The Dorset Gardens Trust feel that the loggia has been created through modification of an earlier domestic building, perhaps a game larder. More steps run in stages to the south. The terrace walls have an irregular and slightly rustic, rather than ashlar, finish. The central flight of steps from the south terrace has a descending set of stone tanks running between the steps and the balustrades, and are punctuated by square stone pillars topped with stone urns. The remnants of a water garden are situated in a boggy area on the northern, shady side of the house; these water gardens cover quite an extensive area, and have within them small canals and bridges of brick and stone. A photograph dated 1928 <10> shows the hunt meeting at the front of the house. This part of the garden seems quite plain, with a gravel drive crossing the front of the house from the north leading to a larger gravelled area at the front door. It is surrounded by a lawn, and a single stone globe is set on the edge of the lawn, at the corner of the main drive running eastwards away from the house. The 1903 Ordnance Survey map <6> shows the drive to the north going north west then curving round to the north then north east across what are now fields but may then have been more formal parkland to join the road north of Higher Farm. The map shows lines of large trees on either side of this drive. An vertical aerial photograph taken in 1947 <11> shows the elm tree drive before Dutch Elm Disease, and a tributary of the river Axe flowing to the lake/fish pond; this was re-routed in the 1950s.

Record last edited

Aug 11 2016 12:30PM