GRACEFUL & REFLECTIVE

Majestic and colourful stems and mirror-glass water features add to the magic of Chippenham Park’s frosted winter landscape

- JACKY HOBBS

Chippenham Park is graced with, but not gripped by, history. Its winter frosted landscape outlines classic and contemporary design equally, the Midas-touch sunrise gilds both ancient and modern. The neo-Queen Anne house sits on a crest overlooking the gardens and parkland, which blend seamlessly with outlying rural Cambridgeshire. Formality brushes closest to the house with topiaried terraces, parasol willow oaks, the yew-encased Millennium Fountain and mown lawns. Avenues of ancient trees and ribbons of fragmented former canals are all that remain of Chippenham Park’s 17th-century Anglo-Dutch design. Subsequent centuries overlaid more naturalistic, Capability Brown-style landscaping, which remains evident.

Descending westwards, lawns and topiary slip into bulb-spangled meadow, shrubs and solitary ancient trees, halting abruptly at the vast serpentine lake, a former 17th-century canal. Beyond lie tamed wilderness and woodland and a secreted walled garden, Hare Hall, harnessed by Anne Crawley who, as a young woman, in 1985, inherited the family estate. Today her daughter Becca and Becca’s husband, garden designer Hugo Nicolle, continue her legacy. ‘My mother had no former interest or experience in gardening, Chippenham sparked in her a passion which lasted a lifetime,’ says Becca. ‘For 25 years she clawed back and incorporated lost areas of the garden, designing new schemes and planting thousands of plants. She introduced contemporary designs, which sit harmoniously in the classical setting.’