The Forgotten Gardens of Easton Lodge

The following is from the Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest with additional information from The Gardens of Easton Lodge Preservation Trust.

For the most up-to-date Register entry, please visit The National Heritage List for England (NHLE):

Location, Area, Boundaries, Landform and Setting

The gardens designed by Harold Peto in 1902, incorporating a late 17th/early 18th century grove. This was one of Peto's finest works and the only one in the East of England. The Japanese gardens were the largest he created. He also created an Italianate garden with a large pool and a cobbled courtyard and fountain by the house.

The Gardens were untended from the 1950s, until restoration of the front gardens and the remaining wing of the house started in the 1970s. Restoration started later in the rest of the Gardens. In the Glade an area was planted as the Stirling Walk, to commemorate the bomber crews of World War II who were stationed on the airfield and never returned.

The remaining wing of Easton Lodge (Warwick House) is not open to the public.

Easton Lodge lies just to the north of the A120 Bishop's Stortford to Braintree road, on the west side of the B184 which links Dunmow to Thaxted. The site here registered covers an area of c 17ha, bounded to the north and east by farmland and to the south and west by former parkland carriage drives, now farm access tracks. The gardens are set in an area of generally flat land, in a developed part of the Essex countryside.

Entrances and Approaches

Easton Lodge is approached from the east, along a concrete drive laid down by the Services during the Second World War, on the line of a C19 drive. The drive leaves Little Easton village, passes Easton Manor and enters the former park midway along the eastern boundary, c 750m south-east of Easton Lodge, running north-west in a straight line before turning north-east into the gardens to arrive at the south-east front of the Lodge. The drive also continues past Easton Lodge to a second turn north-east into the former stable courtyard. A brick archway gatehouse (C17, remodelled in the C18, listed grade II; outside the area here registered) survives on the southern boundary of the former park, c 2.65km south-south-east of the Lodge, although the drive through the park which connected it to the main house was removed during construction of the airfield.

Principal Building

The remaining wing of Easton Lodge stands to the north of centre of the former park. The red-brick and tile T-shaped house, with stone mullion windows and diaper-work details, is an early C20 building by the architect Philip Tilden. The Elizabethan house was almost completely destroyed in 1847 by a fire and the central wing was rebuilt by the architect Thomas Hopper who also made extensions in the Gothic Revival style. In 1884 the architect William Young made further additions but in 1918 these, together with the surviving Jacobean wings, were lost in a further fire, resulting in the rebuilding of only the west wing by Tilden for Lady Warwick. The remains of Thomas Hopper's Victorian building were pulled down by the owner, Maynard Grenville, in 1950. in 1950.

To the west of the Lodge stands the late C19 stable yard cottages (listed grade II), stables, former coach house and washhouse, as well as the red-brick water tower (listed grade II) and a servant's house.

Gardens and Pleasure Grounds

The gardens at Easton Lodge surround the house but lie predominantly to the south-east, north, and north-west of the house. Some 70m to the east of the present Lodge stands the platform of the Victorian house, planted in the 1950s as a silver birch grove. To the south-west of this, originally in front of the Victorian house, are a series of terrace beds set in gravel, designed by Peto and reconstructed in 1995. The terrace beds descend south-west to parallel long borders focused on the entrance to Easton Lodge at one end and a formal pool and pavilion at the other end, standing c 100m to the south-east of the Lodge. The pavilion was constructed in the 1920s, possibly to a design by Philip Tilden, although its setting and the long borders are late C20. The terraces look south onto a lawn where a box and yew sundial and a replica of Shakespeare's borders (laid out by Lady Warwick at Stone Hall, located on the western edge of the former park, and outside the area here registered) have been planted (1990s). Beyond the pavilion and south lawn, the south-east corner of the gardens is covered by The Bosquet, an area of ornamental shrubbery and woodland which, according to early maps and engravings, is contemporary with the Elizabethan house. Since that time its arrangement of paths has altered, its planting added to by Peto, but it retains its character as a wooded garden cut through with paths.

Harold Peto's commission in 1902 focused mainly on the area to the north of the house where he added a formal lawn, twin pergolas flanking a croquet lawn, a sunken Italian Garden, and a Japanese Garden, all of which survive in part. To the north-east of the site of the Victorian house is a formal lawn with eight brick-edged square beds filled with planting. The central four are by Peto, the outer four added in the 1920s, probably by Tilden. A double row of clipped yew hedges divide this lawn from the croquet lawn beyond it to the north-east. Peto bordered the croquet lawn with large, elaborate pergolas which no longer survive. On the north-east side of the lawn stands the sunken Italian Garden, the centre point of which is a formal oval pool edged with balustrading and surrounded by paving, with borders below the retaining walls. It was reached by sets of steps on each side, those to the south-east being the only ones which survive.

Running north-west and then north from the sunken garden is an area of lawn, planted with trees and lined with lime, which was planted by Harold Peto as a Japanese garden. The central wide grass walk leads to Perryfield Ponds, two pools divided by a narrow causeway at the northern boundary of the gardens. These were used by Peto as the termination of his Japanese Garden, but they are of earlier origin, being shown on the Chapman and Andre county map in 1777 as one large body of water. The planting and decoration of the walk, together with the treatment of the ponds, has been much simplified in the late C20, following their lease to the Dunmow Fishing Club.

Immediately to the north-west of the house is a large, enclosed paved courtyard, with a central balustraded octagonal pool and fountain basin, all laid out by Peto. The floor of the courtyard is decorated with a wide range of paving materials, including cobbles, bricks, and tiles on edge. Beyond the courtyard to the north-west is an L-shaped fishpond (late C20), at the southern end of which stands the late C17 square red-brick dovecote.

Park

The former park at Easton Lodge survives only in outline and lies outside the area here registered.

Kitchen Garden

The walled kitchen garden lies to the north of Easton Lodge, on the site shown to have been used for walled gardens in the early C18 (Skynner, 1732). It is divided into two compartments, that to the east being laid to grass and planted with trees as the grounds of a private house created (late C20) from the surviving Servant's House. The walled garden to the west continues to be cultivated for the production of fruit and vegetables. On the outside face of the north wall stands the Shelley Pavilion, moved to Easton from Maresfield Park, Sussex in the 1920s for use as the west porch. It was later re-erected as a summerhouse in its present position, facing north towards the Japanese Garden.

Maps

• R Agass, Map of Ugley, Tilty etc, 1593 (Essex Record Office)
• Survey of the Maynard estate, 1730 (D/DMg P1), (Essex Record Office)
• J Chapman and P Andre, A map of the county of Essex from an actual survey ..., 1777 (Essex Record Office)
• Survey of the Maynard estates, 1811 (D/DMg P2), (Essex Record Office)
• Tithe map for Little Easton parish, 1839 (D/CT 126B), (Essex Record Office)
• Survey of the Maynard estates, c 1850 (D/DMg P8), (Essex Record Office)
• OS 6" to 1 mile: 1st edition published 1876
• OS 25" to 1 mile: 2nd edition published 1897
• 3rd edition published 1920

Illustrations

• T Skynner, Engraving of the house, gardens, and park, 1732 (copy held at Easton Lodge Museum)

Archival items

• Photographs of the Peto garden, 1907 (in CL 1909)
• Many of the estate papers are held at the Essex Record Office (D/DMg).

Description written: August 2000

Amended: January 2001

Edited: October 2021