Landscape record 1251601000 - Gardens at Shrub's Wood

Originally described by Pevsner as a 1930's house '..beautifully placed amongst the trees of an old estate, is fine additional planting.' AP's show the property to be covered in trees and no detail can be seen. The 1:10000 map shows no detail of formal gardens only a wooded area (B3).
The grounds of a mid-1930s country house which is of great significance as Modernist interpretation of the traditional English country house and is an important example of “mature” Modernism. The garden is typical for this sort of progressive house of the 1930s with an attached formal terrace encouraging the integration of indoor and outdoor life, surrounded by informal lawns with shrub beds and specimen trees set within the late C18 parkland of Newland Park (q.v.). The enclosed approach through Chiltern woodland, Shrubs Wood, is a key feature. The house was from 1949 owned by Bridget D’Oyley Carte, owner of the D’Oyley Carte Opera Company, for nearly 40 years who developed the garden. The layout survives intact and is comparable with others in this idiom such as the pioneering High and Over, Amersham (1929, q.v.), The Homewood, Surrey (Patrick Gwynne, 1938-39) and Royal Lodge, Windsor. See report for detail (B4).