Arley House and Gardens are situated at

Upper Arley Upper Arley () is a village and civil parish near Kidderminster in the Wyre Forest District of Worcestershire, England. Historically part of Staffordshire, the village had a population of 741 at the 2011 census. Amenities The Arley railw ...

, about north-west of

Bewdley Bewdley ( pronunciation) is a town and civil parish in the Wyre Forest District in Worcestershire, England on the banks of the River Severn. It is in the Severn Valley west of Kidderminster and southwest of Birmingham. It lies on the Riv ...

, in

Worcestershire Worcestershire ( , ; written abbreviation: Worcs) is a county in the West Midlands of England. The area that is now Worcestershire was absorbed into the unified Kingdom of England in 927, at which time it was constituted as a county (see H ...

, England. The gardens, arboretum and parkland are listed Grade II in

Historic England Historic England (officially the Historic Buildings and Monuments Commission for England) is an executive non-departmental public body of the British Government sponsored by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport. It is tasked w ...

Register of Parks and Gardens The Register of Historic Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in England provides a listing and classification system for historic parks and gardens similar to that used for listed buildings. The register is managed by Historic England ...

History

The manor of Upper Arley was acquired in the mid 15th century by

Thomas de Littleton Sir Thomas de Littleton or de Lyttleton KB ( 140723 August 1481) was an English judge, undersheriff, Lord of Tixall Manor, and legal writer from the Lyttelton family. He was also made a Knight of the Bath by King Edward IV. Family Thomas ...

, and remained with the Lyttelton family until the death of

Thomas Lyttelton, 2nd Baron Lyttelton Thomas Lyttelton, 6th Baronet, 2nd Baron Lyttelton (30 January 1744 – 27 November 1779) was an English member of parliament, MP and profligate from the Lyttelton family. Life Sometimes dubbed "the wicked Lord Lyttelton" and "bad Lord Lyttelt ...

in 1779; it then passed to his sister Lucy, wife of

Arthur Annesley, 1st Earl of Mountnorris Arthur Annesley, 1st Earl of Mountnorris FRS (7 August 1744 – 4 July 1816) was an Irish peer. He was the son of Richard Annesley, 6th Earl of Anglesey, and Juliana Donovan, Countess of Anglesey, who belonged to the junior sept of the O'Donov ...

, and then to their son

George Annesley, 2nd Earl of Mountnorris George Annesley, 2nd Earl of Mountnorris FRS (4 December 1770 – 23 July 1844), styled Viscount Valentia between 1793 and 1816, was a British peer and politician. Background Mountnorris was the son of Arthur Annesley, 1st Earl of Mountnorris, ...

, who built Arley Castle in 1844.'Parishes: Upper Arley', in ''A History of the County of Worcester: Volume 3'' (London, 1913), pp. 5-10
British History Online. Retrieved 23 May 2022. He died in that year without issue. The manor passed to his nephew Arthur Lyttelton Annesley, who sold it in 1852 to Robert Woodward. It remained in the family until 1959, when it was sold to R D Turner; it was privately owned until 1997. Arley Castle was a sandstone building in

Gothic style Gothic or Gothics may refer to: People and languages *Goths or Gothic people, the ethnonym of a group of East Germanic tribes **Gothic language, an extinct East Germanic language spoken by the Goths ** Crimean Gothic, the Gothic language spoken ...

, situated on high ground near the east bank of the

River Severn , name_etymology = , image = SevernFromCastleCB.JPG , image_size = 288 , image_caption = The river seen from Shrewsbury Castle , map = RiverSevernMap.jpg , map_size = 288 , map_c ...

; it was an enlargement of a 16th and 17th century building. It was demolished in the early 1960s.

Description

The present Arley House, a two-storey building, was built about 1965 on the site of Arley Castle. It was refurbished in 2018, and is a venue for weddings, private parties and corporate events. There are gardens, area about , around the house, laid out in the late 20th century. A lodge near Arley house, formerly part of Arley Castle, has two storeys, a crenellated parapet and corner turrets. It is a Grade II

listed building In the United Kingdom, a listed building or listed structure is one that has been placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Historic Environment Scotland in Scotland, in Wales, and the Northern Irel ...

. A lodge north-west of the house, at the entrance to the gardens and arboretum, has a crenellated parapet and two towers flanking the central entrance; it dates from the building of Arley Castle and is Grade II listed. The parkland, area of about , is on rising ground to the north of the house. It was probably laid out when Arley Castle was built.

Gardens and arboretum

The gardens and arboretum lie to the north-west of the house. Of the four compartments of the kitchen gardens, dating from the 18th and 19th centuries, the south-east compartment was developed in the 1960s into the

Italian garden The Italian garden (or giardino all'italiana () is best known for a number of large Italian Renaissance gardens which have survived in something like their original form. In the history of gardening, during the Renaissance, Italy had the most ...

. The magnolia garden, created in the 1960s, lies to the north of the kitchen gardens. It has twelve varieties of

magnolia ''Magnolia'' is a large genus of about 210 to 340The number of species in the genus ''Magnolia'' depends on the taxonomic view that one takes up. Recent molecular and morphological research shows that former genera ''Talauma'', ''Dugandiodendro ...

. The arboretum, area , lies west of the kitchen gardens, and has more than 300 species of trees. The planting of tree began in the early 19th century; ater 1852, when the Woodward family purchased the property, many more were added. In the 20th century more trees were planted, a laburnum arch was created, also a heather garden and a camelia avenue. The

laburnum ''Laburnum'', sometimes called golden chain or golden rain, is a genus of two species of small trees in the subfamily Faboideae of the pea family Fabaceae. The species are '' Laburnum anagyroides''—common laburnum and '' Laburnum alpinum''� ...

arch, extended to 65 metres in 2013, is said to be the longest in Britain. Particularly notable among the tree species is a ''

Sorbus domestica ''Sorbus domestica'', with the common name service tree or sorb tree (because of its fruit), is a species of ''Sorbus'' native to western, central and southern Europe, northwest Africa (Atlas Mountains), and southwest Asia (east to the Caucasus) ...

'', grown about 1820 from the only specimen recorded wild in Britain."Special Trees"
Arley Arboretum & Gardens. Retrieved 25 May 2022.

References

{{Reflist Grade II listed parks and gardens in Worcestershire Arboreta in England