Walled Garden to Kinlet Hall

Reasons for Designation

The walled garden to Kinlet Hall is designated at Grade II for the following principal reasons: * The walled garden retains its original character as an C18 walled garden to a country house. * It has features of historic interest such as heated walls and bothies, including graffiti. * It makes an important contribution to the setting of the Church of St John the Baptist (Grade I), and to the interest and grouping of Kinlet Hall (Grade I). * It is a rare survivor of two phases of an historic park and garden that has otherwise been compromised through farming.

Details

KINLET

823/0/10115 KINLET 17-SEP-09 Walled Garden to Kinlet Hall

II G.V. Walled Garden to Kinlet Hall, dating from mid-C18 (incorporating an early-C18 churchyard wall).

MATERIALS: The building is constructed from red brick including sandstone copings. The west wall is red brick bonded with rubble sandstone sections. The north and east walls have red brick buttresses, and all garden doors are timber. There is a cast iron stove in the bothy, which has a clay tile roof.

PLAN: Loosely rectangular walled enclosure with spur wall to the south-east. The rectangular form of the walled garden deviates slightly at the south-east corner.

EXTERIOR: The walls are approximately four metres high and predominately built of red brick in English Garden Wall bond. The east wall has slender, single-stepped buttresses. The north wall has a high brick plinth with sandstone coping and multiple-stepped buttresses, the latter possibly C19. There are entrances with timber doors at the south, west and north-west corners. The east wall has slender stepped brick buttresses and raised brick panels with scorch marks at the corners, where heated air presumably escaped from the wall's internal flues. A collapsed section of the east wall (approximately 12 metres) reveals soot blackened internal bricks. The north wall has sandstone coping on multiple-stepped buttresses and a plinth. The west wall is constructed of a mixture of limestone rubble and red brick. There is a collapsed section of approximately 15 metres. There is ramped coping to the south wall, which has no buttresses, but has a brick dentil course beneath the coping at the east end.

In addition, there is a section of connected wall to the east that forms a southern boundary to the churchyard. It contains bothies, with lean-to clay tile roofs that are set against the north side of the wall. The roof of the accommodation has largely collapsed and there are windows and doors to the south and east. There are the vestigial remains of former glass houses to the south of the garden but these are not of special interest. Some fixings remain in the south wall, along with some brick foundations and water tanks. There is a doorway through the bothy wall to the churchyard.

INTERIOR: The interior of the garden contains no structures, and the former pathways cannot be distinguished in the long grass. A depression in the ground near to the centre may indicate the position of a dipping pond.

HISTORY: A settlement was established at Kinlet by the Conquest, and the parish church is C12. The former manor house was rebuilt as Kinlet Hall (Grade I) in the early C18 by William Lacon Childe, the Lord of the Manor, to the designs of Francis Smith. The neighbouring medieval village was demolished to form estate parkland. A tall rubblestone wall was built around The Church of St John the Baptist in a pleasure ground known as The Shrubbery (circa 1830). Kinlet Park was subsequently remodelled in the spirit of the later-C18: the formal straight drives and geometric planting were replaced with 'naturalistic' sweeping pastures, pools, and clumps of trees instead of rigid avenues. By this time (1782), the churchyard wall had been rebuilt, largely in brick, as a walled garden, separate from the consecrated area, and subdivided by paths. A square tower, possible a belvedere, may have stood in the south-west corner of the garden, which is no longer in situ, and the south-west corner has been rebuilt, possibly in the early-C19. Throughout the C19 the Kinlet Estate was an abundant supplier of food, and graffiti on the bothy walls lists fruit harvests exported to London and Birmingham.

During the Second World War, the estate was intensively farmed for the war effort. Moffats School, a public school, moved in to the hall in 1945 and bought the estate in 1986. The garden stands unused in the early C21 and two sections are fallen: approximately 12 metres in the east wall and 15 metres in the west wall. The bothies are also in a state of partial collapse and the glasshouses, some of brick construction, have been removed or have collapsed.

SOURCES Stamper, P. Historic Parks and Gardens of Shropshire, 1996, 30 & 41-42 The Kinlet History Group, Kinlet: The Life and Times of a Shropshire village, 2007, 84-95

REASONS FOR DESIGNATION The walled garden to Kinlet Hall is listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons: * The walled garden retains its original character as a mid-C18 walled garden to country house. * It has features of historic interest such as heated walls and bothies, including graffiti. * It makes an important contribution to the setting of the Grade I listed Church of St John the Baptist, and to the context and grouping of Kinlet Hall (Grade I). * It is a rare survivor of two phases of an historic park and garden that has otherwise been compromised through farming.

Legacy

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

Legacy System number:

506588

Legacy System:

LBS

Sources

Books and journals
Kinlet: The Life and Times of a Shropshire Village, (2007), 84-95
Stamper, P, Historic Parks and Gardens of Shropshire, (1996), 30,41-42

End of official list entry

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