Landscape record 0154004000 - BULSTRODE PARK (G118)

Grade II+. Late C17 formal gardens landscaped in C18 with C19 woodland & exotic development. C17 features possibly designed by Claude Desgots or Henry Wise. In mid-C18 2nd Duchess of Portland undertook varied gardening. Repton called in in 1789 to landscape estate. Mid-C19 formal layout. [Further detail & map](B1,B8).
Axiomatic birds-eye view of gardens in about ?1716 by Bowles (B9).
Watching brief of drainage trench to west of house produced evidence for the backfilling and landscaping of the cellars associated with the Jeffrey's west wing, with an area of made ground matching a spur on the 1784 Bulstrode estate map, and which may indicate a passageway linking the cellars within the main house and the cellars excavated within the west wing. Watching brief of the excavation of a pit for a storage tank west of the Pigeon Tower revealed a structure, from the bricks thought to be contemporary with the Pigeon Tower or Jeffrey's building. It is too far north to be the well-house shown on 1875 OS map and may be a gatekeeper's or gardener's cottage. It was sealed by 1860s remodelling deposits from the garden. The drainage ditch to the south did not provide any evidence for the Jeffrey's south front, the ground level having been lowered. Drainage ditch to the south-east of the house showed landscaping. A wall was found in the road leading to the secondary courtyard entrance and the brick matches the 1861 phase of the house. It was perhaps a low wall leading to the entrance. The ditches to the north-east of the house found evidence of WW2 occupation and a railway, suggesting an ammunition storage area, and post-war landscaping (B13).
Desk-based assessment mentions the gardens. The plan of Jeffrey's house in 1686 shows a wide formal avenue running east to Bull Lane and an orchard to the north-east of the house. Hans Wilhelm Bentinck, 1st earl of Portland, bought the estate in 1706 and built pavilions in the grounds, raised terraces to each end of the south front and an orangery. An engraving by Bowles of 1730 shows an enclosed garden to the west with a pavilion in the middle and four rectangular beds laid out symmetrically round it in the Dutch style. To the north of this was a large area with a pond in the middle and tree-lined paths leading from it like spokes from a wheel, remains of which can still be traced. To the north was a straight canal known as Long Water. Bentinck's grandson married Margaret Cavendish-Holles-Harley and she built up a menagerie and was given seeds from Captain Cook, which may have been grown in the area known as Botany Bay Fields in the park (B14).
Watching brief carried out by Oxford Archaeology in March 2009 during groundworks for installation of a new sewage plant recorded a possible mid-18th century brick retaining or boundary wall aligned E-W and 0.5m thick, possibly shown in Bowles' engraving of c.1730. The wall appears to have been deliberately dismantled and buried during a later phase of landscaping in the 19th century. The current NW-SE ha-ha is of machine moulded bricks and concrete mortar and was possibly constructed after WWII. See report for detail (B16).
After she was widowed in 1768 the noted grotto-builder Mrs Delaney moved back to England [from Ireland] and spent a good deal of time with her great friend, the dowager Duchess of Portland at Bulstrode, the Duchess's country estate in Buckinghamshire, where they built a grotto in the 1770s (demolished in the late nineteenth century). The Duchess, a keen amateur naturalist, collected thousands of local snail shells to decorate the grotto. [Illustration of the grotto shows a large dome-shaped structure faced with rough stonework built into a small knoll planted with several mature deciduous and conifer trees, with recently planted saplings apparently designed to provide a screen to one side of the grotto. The grotto appears to be SW-facing, with a large central romanesque arched entrance flanked by at least one smaller arched entrance on one side and at least three arched niches or possibly windows on the other side. The main chamber appears to be barrel-vaulted with arched entrances to one or two side chambers (B17).
Humphry Repton was consulted in April 1790 by the 3rd Duke of Portland and appears to have been working in the park until at least 1803, and possibly up to about 1809, when the Duke died. Repton is known to have visited in 1790, 1800 and 1801, and may have produced a Red Book. Repton proposed an extensive carriage drive circuit through the parkland, reducing the size of the pleasure grounds, simplifying the gardens, and some landscaping works within the park (B18).