Ednaston Manor

www.historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list

Garden and pleasure grounds laid out from 1912 to 1919 by Sir Edwin Lutyens.

DESCRIPTION

LOCATION, AREA, BOUNDARIES, LANDFORM, SETTING

Ednaston Manor lies c 13km north-west of Derby on the north side of the A52 which forms the southern boundary. The northern boundary is formed by the north drive and other boundaries are fences dividing the gardens from agricultural land. The c 11ha site is on level land in an area which is rural and agricultural.

ENTRANCES AND APPROACHES

The main entrance is from the A52 where there are gates, gate piers and a C20 lodge from which the drive runs north-east as a horse chestnut avenue to the west front of the house. A second approach from the home farm (outside the registered area) led to a drive which runs westwards as an avenue on the north side of the house and swings south to the north side of the building. The drive is in use for access to the east side of the gardens but access from Home Farm has been closed off (1998).

PRINCIPAL BUILDING

Ednaston Manor is an H-shaped house and has been described as 'perhaps the most perfect country house' of Lutyens' oeuvre (Butler, quoted in Pevsner and Williamson 1978). It is in Queen Anne style and the east, south and west fronts relate to the gardens. The north side, which contained service accommodation, fronts onto a gravelled courtyard.

GARDENS AND PLEASURE GROUNDS

The west side of the house is fronted by a curved brick wall forming a courtyard. There are three openings, one in the centre aligned with the entrance, and one on each side, which are flanked by brick piers with niches with curved heads on the inner faces. These openings are aligned with avenues of horse chestnut trees, that to the south being the main entrance drive and the other two extending for a distance of c 50-70m into the wooded grounds. Grass paths lead through the grounds to the west and north which are planted with specimen trees and shrubs and divided from woodland to the north-west, which shelters that side of the site, by a clipped yew hedge.

On the south side of the house there is a terrace which extends for the length of the south front between two pavilions. These are situated c 20m south of the house and connected with it by brick walls with openings leading to the east and west sides of the building respectively, so that an enclosed garden is formed. The pavilions have steep roofs and Tuscan columns and are linked on the south side by the retaining wall of the terrace. There are views to the south over open grassland. The terrace is paved with herringbone brickwork and has beds edged with stone.

On the east side of the house there is a balustraded terrace. Stone steps lead down on each side to a secondary terrace which has narrow raised beds closing the north and south ends and a central projection aligned with the east front. Paths with stone paving divide the terrace into three lawns, and they run eastwards on each side of the projection to steps which lead down to a lawn with apsidal ends which is divided from a vegetable garden to the east by a clipped yew hedge.

The structural elements of the garden are much as they appear on photographs of 1923 (CL).

PARK

Some 70m west of the house a curved clipped hedge separates the wooded pleasure grounds from open grassland planted with specimen trees which extends along the north-west side of the entrance drive to the A52. On the south-east side of the entrance drive, south of the house, there is an area of open grassland with a belt of trees sheltering the southern boundary and concealing the line of the A52.

KITCHEN GARDEN

On the north side of the eastern part of the garden, and divided from it by the raised beds, there are a number of glasshouses. A maintenance, storage and plant sales area lies to the north of this along the whole of the north side of the east garden and divided from it by hedges along the north side of the lawn and vegetable garden. The area is concealed from the north drive by tall hedges.

REFERENCES

Country Life, 53 (24 March 1923), pp 398-405

N Pevsner and E Williamson, The Buildings of England: Derbyshire (2nd edn 1978), p 207

J Anthony, The Gardens of Britain 6, (1979), pp 74-76

J Brown, Gardens of a Golden Afternoon (1982), p 172

Description written: October 1998

Edited: November 1999