A rare thing

The gardens at Somerleyton Hall, near Lowestoft, Suffolk The home of Baron and Baroness Somerleyton Recent restoration works have retained the former theatrical splendours of these gardens and, at the same time, brought them beautifully up to date, finds Tilly Ware

- Tilly Ware

THERE exists a pair of particularly bewitching 19th-century photographs of the Somerleyton Hall gardens. One depicts the gargantuan, glass-domed winter garden: a network of colonnaded rooms, lit by gas and heated to different climates, housing a vast array of palms, citrus and vines. The other shows Lady Somerleyton feeding her pet seal in the pond. Seals do not live in the shrubberies these days, but Somerleyton’s theatrical splendour still resonates, from the Paxton-designed peach cases to the curling metal aloes that top the walled garden gates. The dilemma for Hugh, 4th Baron Somerleyton, and his wife, Lara, when they moved into the hall in 2010, was how to retain that enchantment, at the same time as dealing with modern practicalities, especially when many parts of the 12-acre grounds had become cluttered or severely diminished. They asked landscape designer George Carter to help reframe and guide an overview of the entire garden—and the whole collaboration has been a resounding success.

‘The West Front, reports Lord Somerleyton, ‘was the first thing we tackled and the best thing we've done’. Previously a 17th-century entrance court, it benefits from a sense of grand arrival, although the formal entrance was moved to the east by Sir Samuel Morton Peto in the 1840s. Peto spent a fortune rebuilding Somerleyton Hall in an exuberant mix of French, Italian and Dutch styles and commissioned William Nesfield, Victorian landscaper of choice for grand country seats, to dream up a garden to complement his newly lavish façade. Nesfield was fond of intricate scrolls, curlicues and arabesques of box, infilled with coloured ‘minerals’ or gravel, and duly installed an elaborate parterre on the West Front. He built the Somerleyton maze, too, and, as Mr Carter points out, was ‘heavily involved in the contracts and site management, which is why the land works are so good’. Nesfield’s balustrades and retaining walls still define the garden from the park.