Smallack Kitchen Garden

Summary

A walled garden, thought to date from the C18, built to serve Smallack House.

Reasons for Designation

Smallack Kitchen Garden, of probable C18 date, is listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons:

* Historical: as a walled kitchen garden, thought to date from the C18, built to serve a substantial farmhouse, built in a 'polite' manner;
* Intactness: despite some rebuilding, in particular the replacement of much of the coping, the garden walls remain substantially intact;
* Group value: with the C18 Smallack House listed at Grade II (National Heritage List 1386392) which the walled garden was created to serve.

History

The walled garden at Smallack was constructed to serve Smallack House (listed at Grade II), built as a farmhouse in the C18, and later becoming a small country house. Though the fields which surround Smallack have now largely been built over, the land to the south-east remains open. The farm complex remains largely legible, though the agricultural buildings standing to the east of the house have been converted to residential use. The walled garden, which stands on a south-facing slope to the north-east of the house, is thought to date from the C18, the walls having undergone some restoration and repair over the course of their history. In the late C19 Smallack House became home to Richard Ridson, a miller and corn merchant, who became Lord Mayor of Plymouth in 1900. The garden was abandoned during the Second World War, and became overgrown, until its rediscovery circa 1980. The garden is now in separate ownership from Smallack House.

Details

Walled kitchen garden, thought to have been constructed in the C18.

MATERIALS: constructed of local shale, with slate coping.

PLAN: the walls form a rectangle, on a south-west/north-east axis, with the longer sides to south-east and north-west. The garden measures 27.5 metres by 21.3 metres. The garden is entered by an opening at the centre of the south-west wall.

DETAILS: the walls vary in height, but reach to an average of about 2.25 metres. The walls are strengthened with shallow buttresses. The slate coping, much of which has been replaced to the original design, slopes to a ridge. The piers at the entrance to the garden are plain, and square on plan, surmounted by an additional level of coping; a small element of carved stone was inserted into one of the piers in the late-C20. In the south-west corner a small roofed building has been constructed in the late C20, making use of the garden walls.

Sources

Other
Smallack Farm: The building history and development of the present farmhouse at Crownhill, Plymouth, Devon,

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