Summary
Naturalistic Japanese stroll garden constructed around 1910 for Lord and Lady Furness, including two ponds linked by a stream set within a ravine, featuring very high quality rockwork that convincingly imitates natural rock faces and outcrops.
Reasons for Designation
The Japanese Garden at Grantley Hall of early-C20 date, is included on the Register at Grade II for the following principal reasons:
* Design: a garden that follows authentic Japanese design principles rather than being an example of the more typical Japanese pastiche approach;
* Rockwork: although artificially constructed, this is generally of such high quality that it appears to form naturally occurring rock faces and outcrops;
* Layout, features: the high quality of the design manages to incorporate a wide range of views and points of interest in a relatively small area, making the garden seem to be larger than it is in reality.
History
Grantley Hall (listed Grade II*) is thought to have late C17 origins, but was greatly enlarged, initially by Fletcher Norton (1717-1784), with further enlargements and alterations by his descendants. Although Norton took the title Lord Grantley when made a hereditary peer in 1782, Grantley Hall was never a principal residence, but was mainly used for hunting parties and other entertainments. In 1900 the estate was sold by the 5th Lord Grantley to Sir Christopher Furness (a shipping industrialist from Hartlepool) who was raised to the peerage as Baron Furness of Grantley in 1910. Sir Christopher is thought to have extensively remodelled the house and grounds, with the Japanese Garden probably created under the direction of Lady Furness sometime around 1910, certainly after 1908. Grantley was bought in 1925 by another industrialist Sir William Aykroyd, but the estate was broken up after his death in 1947, with the hall becoming a council-owned adult education college.
The Ordnance Survey 1:10560 maps surveyed in 1849, 1891 and 1908 shed light on the evolving nature of Grantley’s formal park and gardens. The first map suggests that the formal park had shrunk from its C18 extent, and that it had evolved via general piecemeal estate management rather than being the product of a deliberate overall landscape design. There is no known landscape designer associated with Grantley, although John Carr of York is thought to have worked on the house. The current landscape is considered to be largely a product of renovations and alterations made by Sir Furness, incorporating earlier elements dating to the C19 and C18.
The Japanese Garden at Grantley post-dates the 1908 survey by the Ordnance Survey. It was almost certainly the product of a skilled designer, but their identity is currently unknown. The suggestion that it was designed by the influential writer on rock gardening, Reginald Farrer (1880-1920), is considered unlikely. An alternative suggestion is that it was the work of Backhouses of York, although this is not substantiated. Interest in Japanese gardens in England developed in the Edwardian period following the publication of Josiah Conder’s ‘Landscape Gardening in Japan’ in 1893. Although many gardens merely imported the odd Japanese feature, many were more authentic, some being the work of designers from Japan. The Japan- British Exhibition at White City, London, which was visited by over 8 million people over six months in 1910, promoted further interest in Japanese gardens and may have prompted the creation of the example at Grantley.
The Japanese Garden at Grantley was well established when it was photographed in 1919 as part of sales particulars for the estate. In form it is a naturalistic stroll garden that clearly alludes to Brimham Rocks, a striking natural landscape five miles SW of the hall which was part of the wider estate in the early C20 and is thought to have been the source of the stone used for the garden. Analysis of the garden, particularly of the rockwork, suggests that the outer bund to the N and parts to the W were later additions or modifications, possibly after ownership passed to North Yorkshire County Council after 1974. The bridge across the northern pond certainly dates to this period, being a late C20 replacement of an original bridge which paintings and photographs show was a red lacquered timber bridge reminiscent of the red bridge at Nikko, Japan. Early illustrations also indicate that a tall stone lantern adjacent to the central pond has been lost and that the boardwalk bridge at the northern end of the stream ravine was originally a low arched bridge which had informal, low growing planted borders rather than parapets.
Details
LOCATION, AREA, BOUNDARIES, SETTING
From the exterior, the Japanese Garden appears to be a dense area of shrubbery on the northern edge of the level, now mainly grassed gardens extending E from Grantley Hall. It is centred 100m to the NE of the principal entrance to the hall, but does not have any particular visual relationship to the building: it is neither aligned with, nor overlooked by the hall. It occupies a rounded, roughly rectangular area some 70m N-S by 55m E-W, outlined by an earthwork bund whose outer face is covered in shrubbery, mainly laurel and rhododendron. It is set at the base of a shallow E-W valley, immediately S of a canalised water course, N of the main river channel of the River Skell which is also canalised.
ENTRANCES, LANDFORM, LAYOUT, PLANTING
The garden has three entrances, being gaps for paths through the bund, to the NE and SW corners and slightly N of the centre of the W side. The general level of the paths and open areas are lower than the original ground surface, and certainly lower than the encircling bund which effectively provides a sense of enclosure. The southern two thirds of the garden has a network of meandering, interconnecting paths between raised areas of rockwork, most of which convincingly imitates rock strata, so that the paths appear to follow natural gullies and ravines. Off-set to the W of the centre of this area is an irregular pond fed by a waterfall that curtains a small, shallow cave. A gently flowing stream course flows N from the E end of this pond, filling the base of a deep ravine, to flow into a larger pond that forms the central feature of the more open northern part of the garden. The length of this stream-filled ravine is traversed by a path of irregular stepping stones. Just beyond the northern end of the ravine the stream is crossed by a simple late C20 boardwalk bridge (a replacement for a low arched bridge) and flows over a low weir to enter the northern pond. The paths, which are mainly naturalistically gravelled, are not all level, the lowest part of the garden being a small sunken area to the SE accessed by three paths incorporating natural rock steps. This dell includes an eroded Japanese stone lantern and is overlooked by a specimen tree. On the western side of the garden there is a designed view of the central pond framed by jutting rocks. A little further S from this view, the path passes beneath a rock slab forming what appears to be a natural arch.
The northern third of the garden is more open in character, but still with an enclosed, inward-looking feel because of the outer bund. It features a large naturalistic pond, encircled by an informal path and spanned by a timber bridge, originally of Japanese design but replaced with a lower quality bridge in the second half of the C20. The pond is fed by the stream from the ravine and also via a piped supply to the NW imitating a spring. Its piped outflow is concealed. In the western part of the pond is a Japanese stone lantern. The rockwork to the N and W of the northern pond, and parts further S on the western bund, is less convincing as natural outcropping, with rocks placed with little attention to bedding planes and the position of neighbouring rocks.
The garden is thought to retain some of its original planting including conifers, maples, and other small trees and shrubs. Moss and ferns are also well established in naturalistic appearance. At the time of survey, some areas were overgrown with, for instance, bamboo dominating some areas on the eastern side.
