Summary
C18 walled garden.
Reasons for Designation
The C18 walled garden at South Ormsby Hall is listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons:
* Architectural interest: it is an important element in the C18 landscape garden, pre-dating the proliferation of walled gardens built on many estates in the early Victorian period, and is an unusual adaptation of the typical rectangular plan;
* Level of preservation: it has survived in good condition along with the C19 lean-to sheds which provide important evidence of the ancillary elements necessary for the efficient running of a productive walled garden;
* Group value: together with the Grade II*-listed Hall, other Grade-II listed buildings on the estate and the Grade II-registered park, the walled garden forms an ensemble of historical significance that aptly demonstrates the aesthetic quality associated with the Georgian period.
History
There has been a house of some status at South Ormsby Park since the medieval period. The land was owned by the Skipworth family until 1638 when it was purchased by Sir Drayner Massingberd who started to build a house sometime afterwards. It was extended and altered in the early C18 for Burrell Massingberd, and then re-fronted by James Paine in 1750-52. The house was altered and extended by Peter Atkinson & Sons in 1803, and again by Swann & Norman in 1927.
The landscape around South Ormsby Hall was enclosed between 1650 and 1651. A survey of the manor carried out for Burrell Massingberd in 1716 states that there was a ‘House, gardens, orchard, nursery, motes, the garden, the paddock, walnut yards, stewponds, Garth and […] green’. In 1749 William Burrell Massingberd commissioned plans to redesign the parkland from Edward Gardner of Dunston, although it is not clear how much of this design was carried out. A detailed plan of the estate produced in 1803 depicts the landscape park much as it is today. It is thought to have been laid out at some point between 1750, when Paine re-fronted the hall, and 1774 when a survey records the ‘new park’.
The 1803 plan is the first to show the walled garden. It depicts the beck flowing through the northern part of the garden that feeds into the lake and, just below, what is thought to be a vinery. A glasshouse is depicted in the same place on the Ordnance Survey (OS) map of 1889 which shows the garden divided into four equal sections with a sundial at the centre and trees dotted around the edges. A very small building is embedded in the south-west corner of the garden and a long range is located on the outside of the north wall, at the east end. There is no change on the 1906 OS map but by the publication of the 1951 map, the glasshouse has gone, and another building has appeared on the outside of the northern wall, at the west end. The 1977 OS map shows that the canted north-east section has been slightly truncated as it formed the west wall of a building that has been demolished. The kitchen garden is no longer in production and is laid to grass.
Details
C18 walled garden.
MATERIALS: handmade red brick laid in English garden wall bond.
PLAN: the walled garden is situated to the west of South Ormsby Hall. It has a large rectangular bottle-neck plan and high walls on the north, west and south sides. The east side is formed by a short length of wall at the north end (partially collapsed) and the south end, and in the centre by the rear wall of outbuildings in the stable courtyard. This latter wall is therefore not part of the listing.
EXTERIOR: the walls have flat brick coping surmounted by pantiles and there is a door on each side. The south wall has a round arch doorway of brick headers and a recessed wooden door with Y-tracery in the upper half, flanked by shallow buttresses. There was a similar doorway opposite in the north wall but it was knocked though by a vehicle during the Second World War and was rebuilt as a large square opening with double-leaf wooden doors. At the northern end of the east wall there is a wooden door of vertical planks with long strap hinges under a square arch of brick headers. The doorway in the west wall has a segmental brick arch and a slatted wooden plank and batten door.
There is a low opening with a timber lintel at the north end of the west wall to allow the stream to pass through. To the south of this, on the outside of the wall, a small brick lean-to shed with a pantile-clad roof was added, probably in the late C19/ early C20. The lean-to shed built into the south-west corner has a vertical plank door on the west side, and its roof has collapsed.
On the outside of the north wall, at the east end, is a Victorian red brick lean-to which has a pantile-clad roof and a wooden vertical plank door on the east and north sides. Adjoining this are lean-to sheds with four large openings and central brick piers. The C20 lean-to constructed of brick and corrugated iron at the west end of the north wall is not included in the listing.
