Bridport Gardening Club

The last garden visit of 2024 and guided by volunteer Mike King through Dartington Hall’s long and tempestuous history. In 1326 the Martin family enclosed a 100-acre deer park, still home to fallow deer, then Dartington was granted to Sir John Holand in 1388 by Richard II, his half-brother. A year after Sir John built a hillside manor house he was executed for treason by Henry IV. History then repeated itself with the estate passing between grants from the crown[…]

Deep mist and heavy rain, wellies left at home, after all it is July. Drip, drip, drip from the overflowing guttering and heavens above, in front of me is a sign about Compton Acres having the invasive Curly Waterweed, it was certainly watery but I couldn’t see many weeds!  Pippa took us on our walk through all the gardens with their many educational notices about protecting and conserving wildlife, birds and woodlands, marine plastic pollution and a happier one about[…]

The formal Edwardian Hestercombe Garden has been described as ‘Lutyens at his best’. Designed just before the First World War, a collaboration between Edwin Lutyens hard landscaping and Gertrude Jekyll, weaving her magic with soft planting: a plan of which she left pinned up in the potting shed and is still used for reference.  The Victorian mansion with its somewhat dour southern Victorian facade is in contrast to the gardens which reside below on three levels.  In the combe north[…]

This Arts & Crafts home built by the D’Oyle Carte family not only displays mid 1920’s craftsmanship from its architectural spaciousness to the tiles surrounding the frilled bedroom sinks but also views down through the garden to the sea.  Filled with minimalist art deco design: furniture, fabulous fabrics, artefacts, even a coat, and a carpet over which, perhaps, soho slinky evening dresses paraded. The house was sold to a Hampstead motor dealer and Torquay hotelier in 1949 but before being[…]