Monument record 0420802048 - Haymanger Pond, Deer Park, Stowe Landscape Gardens

The stream between Root-House Pond and Haymanger Pond may well have been rationalised/enhanced into a gentle curve. Haymanger Pond is 270m long, 10m wide and the northern end and 90m wide at the SW end. At the SW end is a well-defined earthwork dam and a scarp to the west and north. The dam has now been breached close to the sluice. A narrow channel to the SW appears to have acted as the overflow. The pond is silted up but the outline of the banks can still be seen. The first reference is in the Abraham Allen Survey of 1632, when it is suggested that the pond was originally a stew pond for the farming of fish. In 1712 there is reference to the carrying of fish to the pond and to its draining. In 1810, further references are made to keeping the pond clear and removing mud. Hence, it appears to have been a fishing lake with both practical and aestethic functions.. The 1739 estate plan by Charles Bridgeman shows a bridge or causeway, and reference is made to two bridges at the head of Haymanger Pond in 1828. A rubble causeway is noted as crossing the stream and this may be the remains of one of the bridges. The dam was still operation in 1920, but was breached in 1942 to gain additional grazing/farmland. The excavation of the sluice proved that it was a complex structure and had been repaired or recontructed numerous times (B18).
Charles Bridgeman's plan of the estate in 1739 shows Haymanger Pond as a much longer and larger water feature linking the Ridings to the park. His plan shows a building in Kennel Field and the pond flanked by an area of trees. Later maps from 1881, show the pond in association with the Kennel Riding - an avenue of trees. A narrow stream which now forms the field boundary runs behind the dam. The north-western end of the dam appears to have been truncated by ploughing. Some coursed stone walling is exposed in the roots of a large beech tree near the dam and lengths of brick and stone walling are visible on both sides of the breach in the dam (B21).
Dendro-dating obtains felling date ranges of 1766-1798 and 1780-1812 for timbers from the sluice (B34).