Newton Don, Nenthorn

http://portal.historic-scotland.gov.uk/hes/web/f?p=PORTAL:DESIGNATIONS:0

Type of Site

A well-preserved, secluded country seat in the lower Tweed valley developed at great expense during the late 18th to early 19th century. It is a park and woodland landscape, with excellent panoramic views, associated policy fields, and good estate architecture, including a sizable stable courtyard, lodges and walled garden.

Location and Setting

Located just over 2 miles (3.5km) north east of Kelso, Newton Don is set within the open, rolling farmland of the Tweed valley lowlands. Sheltered policy fields occupy the western half of the designed landscape, while the house, main parks and woodlands are located towards the east. Within this core area, the Eden Water meanders through a wooded, steep-sided ravine. Downstream from the waterfall at Stichill Linn, it is recognised as part of the Tweed Special Area of Conservation on account of its value as a habitat for riverine flora and fauna. The house of Newton Don itself occupies a higher bluff above the watercourse from where long-ranging views extend southwards from the parks and woods and across the Tweed valley towards the more distant Cheviots. The policy woodlands and parkland trees are prominent components of the designed landscape and offer a substantial contrast to the surrounding bare arable lands. The main road from Kelso towards Lauder (A6089) forms the western edge of the designed landscape, while minor roads define the southern and eastern boundaries. The Eden Water, and in part, the woods on its northern bank, form the northern boundary of Newton Don. The total area of the designed landscape measures 215ha (531ac).

Landscape Components

Architectural Features

Newton Don is a largely unembellished Neo-classical house constructed in 1817-20 to designs by Robert Smirke. It comprises a central, 3-storey block flanked by 2-storey, bow-fronted wings and partially incorporates the fabric of an earlier, 18th-century house. Leading from the entrance court by the west elevation, a garden gate with the inscribed date 1779, and brought from Balgonie Castle in Fife, is notable for its ornamental arch topped by a unicorn. An 18th-century stone lion rampant, meanwhile, forms a striking pedestal for a sundial on the south lawn. To the north east of the house, a late 19th-century rustic summerhouse with patterned timber and bamboo panels is orientated to afford views towards nearby parkland. The substantial stables are of probable early 19th-century date with late 19th-century alterations. They are arranged around a courtyard accessed through a pedimented pend surmounted by an octagonal two-tiered clock tower. The adjacent, roughly rectangular walled garden was built c.late 18th to early 19th century and features two ornate cast iron gates, one dated 1907 and the other 1888-1913, to commemorate the silver wedding of Lady Nina and Charles Barrington Balfour. Power for the estate formerly came from a generating house by the waterfall on the Eden. With a castellated upper storey and crow-stepped porch, the present stone structure was built in the late 19th century to replace an earlier pump and 'filtering apparatus'. The two main entrance points to the designed landscape are flanked by a gabled West Lodge, built 1892, and, on the B6364, an earlier East Lodge, built c.1815 to a 'Greek-Doric' design, also by Robert Smirke, and linked to curved screen walls and the square-capped, ashlar gate-piers of the entrance gateway. A coped boundary wall encloses much of the core, eastern area of woodlands and parks around Newton Don house. Just beyond this wall, close to the mid-19th-century Mid Lodge, is a burial aisle. Used by both the Don and Balfour families, it consists of a roofless, rubble-built structure partially built from stones from an older chapel structure; almost certainly that associated with the former village of Little Newton. The cluster of buildings at the nearby Home Farm includes a rubble-built 19th-century steading, now used for workshops and offices. A path to the north-east leads into woodland and close to a sizable, semi-subterranean, rubble-built ice-house that features a dressed stone, square entrance, a long passage with brick-lined roof, and a circular domed chamber.

Drives and Approaches

Two approaches to Newton Don follow routes established by the early 19th century. Smirke's c.1815 Greek revival lodge and gateway marks the east entrance from where a rhododendron-lined drive meanders gently through mixed woodland. As in the 19th century, a stone bridge over a burn (and former water garden) marks a fairly dramatic moment of transition as this secluded approach suddenly gives way to impressive open parkland views dominated by Newton Don house, visible above on the crest of the hill. The west drive, meanwhile, is longer and traverses the western policy fields of the designed landscape. Unusually high beech hedges line the drive, and further on, a tunnel below the drive conceals a section of a narrow service track, probably used for driving livestock. From here, the west drive proceeds to sweep through parkland and links up with the east drive before arriving at the principal west front of the house.

Parkland

Newton Don house is encircled by small, attractive parks that are integral to both the setting of the house, and the scenic value of the designed landscape as a whole. The sloping landform, the good quality, grazed grass sward, and numerous mature broadleaf specimens, all serve to enrich landscape views from both in and around Newton Don. The present parkland structure was developed from the later 18th century onwards, when the old village of Little Newton was cleared away, and former land divisions near the house levelled and smoothed over. Early 19th-century maps, which show the completed parkland design, refer to Lawn, Canal, Bog, Stable and Orchard parks (RCAHMS C46538-CN (1828); NAS RHP9356 (1833), and while the tight, circular clumps of trees depicted in these parks have gone, the larger clumps of the policy fields to the west remain in place. Similarly, although many of the impressive individual veteran trees recorded and measured over a century ago have since been lost, new saplings planted at the end of the 20th century and opening decade of the 21st, will eventually perpetuate the long-established parkland character.

Woodland

Thick, curving strips of mixed woodland enclose the core parks and stretch along the steep, enclosing banks of the Eden Water valley. Minor perimeter strips also shelter some of the western policy fields. Like the parkland, the structure of the plantations was mostly established by the earlier 19th century and the range of species present lends texture and interest to views from in and around Newton Don. Sycamore, oak, birch, beech and lime, with some later conifers, characterise much of the woodlands, with some discrete 20th-century commercial forestry stands, such as in Jubilee plantation to the north-east of the house. More recent plantation work has focused on replacing areas of woodland decimated in the 1987 gale. There are a number of paths that wind through the Newton Don woodlands. The Madeira Walk, for example, leads from the house and summerhouse overlooking the park, to the Jubilee Plantation. The longer, riverside path through the woods on the south bank of the Eden Water, which had been suffering from erosion, was restored and improved in 2008.

The Gardens

A garden terrace along the south-east front of the house features a number of box hedges, clipped into dome shapes, and central stone steps that descend onto a lower gravel walk, lined by rose bushes. Views from here extend southwards across the parks, woods and beyond as far as the Cheviots. Apart from this terrace, the grounds immediately around the house are largely free of embellishment and the simple lawns, punctuated only by ornamental trees, ensure an emphasis on the impressive longer-ranging views. Many of the ornamental trees, including variegated hollies, yews and cedars, are remnants of a 19th-century garden scheme that also included the cultivation of several areas of shrubberies to the south-east and north of the house, and the development of luxuriant flower and herbaceous beds, captured in photographs of the 1890s, and of the 1950s, before they were grassed over in the later 20th century. Another former garden space, of which only remnants are now left, was the water garden to the south of the house. A minor tributary burn of the Eden Water was manipulated probably sometime in the early 19th century to create three long ponds or canals. Perhaps originally intended as ornamental parkland features, these ponds were later the focus for planting by the Balfour family sometime during the late 19th to early 20th century. While the ponds themselves have silted up, and the immediate area now overgrown, clumps of bamboo, rhododendron and gunnera still grow along the banks.

Walled Garden

The walled garden was developed on its present site c.late 18th to early 19th centuries. Today, it remains a functioning, cultivated enclosure, and is let on a commercial basis for plant wholesales. Although the interior is now dominated by polytunnel structures, some of the former structural and garden elements remain in place, including the gatepiers and ornate early 20th-century wrought iron gates, a glasshouse, and old fruit trees that still grow on the brick-lined inner walls. Otherwise, the first and second Ordnance Survey editions together with historic photos and magazines are the best source of evidence for the estate walled garden of the 19th and early 20th century (1855-7 OS; 1896-8 OS; RCAHMS). Originally divided into four quadrants, with glasshouses on the central axis and near the north gate, the garden featured elaborate ribbon and colour-themed borders. Helena, 'Nina' Balfour, who lived at Newton Don from the late 1880s, won several horticultural medals and was especially known for her collection of Malmaison carnations (Journal of the Royal Horticultural Society 1901). To the south east of the walled garden, there was a further semi-circular area of flower beds, which judging from the map evidence, was mostly grassed over by the close of the 19th century.