Walled gardens between the gatehouses and stables at Newton Park

Summary

Remnants of a 14th century formal garden associated with the fortified manor house owned by the St Loe family, reconfigured and extended in the 18th and 19th centuries to create two walled gardens as part of the remodelling of the estate for the Langton family, and again in the 20th century for university use.

Reasons for Designation

The walled gardens between the gatehouses and stables at Newton Park are listed at Grade II* for the following principal reasons:

Architectural interest:

* as an early formal garden or forecourt associated with the medieval manner at Newton Park;
* for their retention, reorganisation and re-use in the C18 as a walled garden following the remodelling of Newton Park by the Langton family;
* for their good survival, reflecting the quality of construction and materials and the status and prestige of the estate throughout this period.

Historic interest:

* as a surviving element of the earliest estate owned by the St Loe Family in the medieval period;
* for their survival following the construction of Newton Park House and inclusion in the remodelling and reimagining of the parkland by the Langton family during the C18 and C19.

Group value:

* for their close visual relationship with other highly graded listed buildings of the Newton Park estate, including the Grade I Castle Keep, Grade I listed Gatehouse 35 metres to west of the Castle Keep, Grade I Newton Park House and Grade II* Stable Block and Coach House, and as one of the key historic features at the heart of the estate.

History

Newton Park developed from a medieval manor recorded in the Domesday Book. It was originally held by the St Loe family from the C12 – C14 as a castle and then developed into a fortified manor house before passing through several noble families and being bought by Joseph Langton (1637-1719) in 1666. The Langton family were prominent and wealthy Bristol Merchant Venturers, and Newton Court, as it was initially known, provided them with a country seat. Langton immediately enclosed and began to improve the estate and create a formal landscape, which then became known as Newton Park. In the 1760s his grandson, also Joseph (d1779), commissioned Stiff Leadbetter to build a Palladian mansion and employed Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown to transform the grounds (a Grade II* registered landscape). The estate matured through the C19 under the Gore-Langton family before being sold to the Duchy of Cornwall in 1941. From 1945 the house and core of the landscape became home to a teacher training college and in 2005 became Bath Spa University.

The creation of the teacher training college involved substantial development of the grounds and existing buildings, with the majority of new buildings designed by the Bath architects practice Alfred J Taylor and Partners. Alfred Taylor’s daughter, Molly Gerrard (1909-1988), was responsible for much of the post-war design work at Newton Park, though did not sign the drawings. Gerrard trained as an architect at the Royal West of England Academy School of Architecture in Bristol and joined her father’s practice in 1931 as a junior partner. She became a Registered Architect in 1939 and was nominated for RIBA membership in 1944.

The walled garden is located to the west of the main house at Newton Park and divided into two parts. The northern garden is situated between the stable block and gatehouse and is most likely to have originated as the forecourt of the former C14 manor house between two surviving medieval gatehouses, as shown on the Thorpes Survey of the City of Bath, 1742. The southern garden appears to have originated as a paddock in 1761 and later possibly an orchard, before being formalised as a walled garden.

Around 1789, following the construction of Langton’s new house and the re-modelling of the parkland by Brown, the manor house was largely demolished, and the northern garden created with a quartered layout utilising the building now known as the stable block (listed Grade II*) as its western boundary and including the medieval gatehouse (listed Grade I) in the south-east corner. A painting by S H Grimm entitled ‘The Inner Gateway of the Old Mansion of St Loes’ dated 1790, and the 1840s Tithe Map shows this layout had been developed by this time, and it is likely that the northern walls and the summer house had been introduced.

The gardens were reconfigured between 1869 and 1886; the northern garden became known as the Italian Garden and the southern garden was enclosed for the first time. The Italian Garden was made larger by the relocation and rebuilding of its southern wall further south and the introduction of two circular pools. The southern garden then included a group of seven mature trees, possibly large orchard pear trees. To its west is the frame-yard, also referred to as the ‘Pinery’ garden, which predates 1840, becoming the garden to Kewstoke Cottage (an extension to the Stables), by 1886. In 1877 a large new conservatory by Stothert and Pitt of Bath was built outside its eastern boundary. By 1903 an additional small glasshouse had been constructed along the return wall with the Italian Garden.

In 1954 the Wellow laboratory block (except for its western wall, excluded from the listing) was constructed, taking the place of the earlier conservatory. Its western wall incorporates parts of the late-C18 or C19 garden wall, as evidenced by blocked openings and scars of the smaller greenhouse, which was lost before the 1970s. Between 1959 and 1964 the Twinhoe and the Corston buildings (not listed) were constructed in the south-east corner of the garden, and the south garden wall was reduced to or rebuilt as a dwarf wall.

In 2005 the southern wall of the Italian Garden was altered again including the insertion of the early-C20 decorative iron gates, which were relocated from the entrance to the Corston Drive (listed at Grade II).

Details

Remnants of an early formal garden, substantially remodelled and ornamented in the C18 and extended in the C19 to create two walled gardens.

The 1954 laboratory, Wellow, is excluded from the listing, but its western elevation, built onto an earlier garden wall, is included.

MATERIALS: the garden walls are of rubble limestone and red brick with stone copings and the gate of iron.

PLAN: two roughly square gardens, partly enclosed by walls. For the purposes of this description the boundary with the summer house is taken to represent north.

Italian Garden to the north with walls on the north, south and east, and enclosed on the west by the building known as the stable block. Former gatehouses roughly central on the east and west elevations. Adjoining garden to the south, enclosed on the west, and on the east with a wall which now forms the west elevation of Wellow. A low wall marks the southern boundary. The ‘Pinery’ garden lies on the outer elevation of the west boundary wall.

DESCRIPTION: the Italian Garden is enclosed to the north by a wall, approximately 3m high, of coursed rubble with brick inner lining. It is interrupted by a centrally located stone-faced summer house with a pediment above three Gothic arched openingswith glazed frames, facing into the garden, and a hipped roof. The northern elevation of the wall, beyond the garden, has evidence of hot house piping and several lean-to potting sheds of rubble stone with casement windows. To the east the wall is rubble stone of similar height with coping stones interrupted by the centrally located gatehouse (listed Grade II*). The southern wall, which subdivides the Italian Garden from the southern garden beyond, is lower, being approximately 1m high with swan neck terminations which sweep up in the centre to two brick gate piers with ashlar plinths and caps supporting the relocated iron gates from the Corston Drive. The gates (1902) have railings and piers enriched with scroll, foliate and fleur de lys decorations, and a central cartouche with acanthus leaves. At the eastern end the wall continues past the return to the Italian Garden to enclose the wider southern garden and joins the northern wall of the Wellow building, forming the eastern boundary of the southern garden.

The southern garden is enclosed to the west by a red brick wall, approximately 2m in height, with various blocked openings. Further west, the wall continues to enclose a small area, originally a Pinery or frame-yard. The eastern boundary is the red brick elevation of the Wellow building with pedestrian entrance to its south and remaining return and abutting the Corston building (not listed). This elevation is of brick with a single door to the southern end, a blocked doorway to the northern end which once opened into the now demolished greenhouse and six single-light windows with projecting stone surrounds and four cast iron downpipes have moulded hopper heads. Twinhoe, not listed, stands within the south-east corner of the garden. The southern boundary is marked by a dwarf rubble stone wall with copings and two stone re-sited lion sculptures.

Legacy

The contents of this record have been generated from a legacy data system.

Legacy System number:

32586

Legacy System:

LBS

Sources

Websites
Article: The Sale of Earl Temples Newton Park Estate in 1941 by Kate James, accessed 21 January 2026 from https://historyofbath.org/images/BathHistory/Vol%2014%20-%2010%20-%20James%20-%20The%20Sale%20of%20Earl%20Temple's%20Newton%20Park%20Estate,%201941.pdf

Other
Newton Park Conservation Management Plan, September 2010, Nicholas Pearson Associated
Newton Park Contextual Study by Jane Root, September 2000

End of official list entry

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