Athelhampton garden

When Alfred Cart de Lafontaine bought the manor house in 1891 he commisioned the 26 year old Fancis Inigo Thomas to design the gardens. The property is surrounded on three sides by the River Piddle and using the water supply Thomas created a series of linked gardens with ponds and small fountains. The sound of water is ever present. A stone terrace overlooks the Great Court. It has a pavillion at each end, one for summer, the other winter, as depicted in stone above each doorway.

From the steps of the terrace you can look down and across the Great Court through the gateway into further garden rooms.

The walled rooms and raised terrace required considerable stone. Forty thousand tons of it, quarried in Somerset, was used in their construction. It is a wonderful place to wander as each room leads on to another. There is a kitchen garden of about an acre with a 60 metre long greenhouse. Nothing much is happening there - what I would do with a space like that!

Family waited patiently while I took my photographs!