National Heritage Lottery Project

a very secret garden

One of the aims of the heritage project was to discover more about the history of the greenspace at Sudley, in particular the walled garden which was a bare bramble-edged field when we started working there. This photograph above may be the only surviving photograph of the original walled garden, taken near the top gate. It’s hard to believe this photographer didn’t take more photos, of the entire garden behind them. But after years of searching, and a team of history detectives and archivists to help, this is the only image we’ve found. Contrary to our original assumptions that the walled garden was a kitchen garden, this seems to suggest an ornamental and recreational garden. The maps we discovered show glasshouses and beds on the other side of the walls, so we now believe most of the food was grown near to the stable block.

We know that glasshouses ran the length of this garden, and that there was a summer house at the end, but no photographic evidence has been discovered except a very long distance image of the summer house from Britain Above in 1937. You can just see the white summer house on the left. A photograph of people ploughing the field is probably the Harper’s Dairy family, though this has not been confirmed.