St. Paul's Walden Bury is an

English country house An English country house is a large house or mansion in the English countryside. Such houses were often owned by individuals who also owned a town house. This allowed them to spend time in the country and in the city—hence, for these peopl ...

and surrounding gardens in the village of

St Paul's Walden St Paul's Walden is a village about south of Hitchin in Hertfordshire, England. The civil parish of St Paul's Walden also includes the village of Whitwell and the hamlet of Bendish. At the 2011 Census the population of the civil parish was 1,29 ...

Hertfordshire Hertfordshire ( or ; often abbreviated Herts) is one of the home counties in southern England. It borders Bedfordshire and Cambridgeshire to the north, Essex to the east, Greater London to the south, and Buckinghamshire to the west. For govern ...

. The house is a Grade II* listed, and the gardens Grade I. A home of the

Bowes-Lyon The Bowes-Lyon family descends from George Bowes of Gibside and Streatlam Castle ''(1701–1760)'', a County Durham landowner and politician, through John Bowes, 9th Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorne, chief of the Clan Lyon. Following the marriage ...

family, it is possibly the site of the birth of

Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother Elizabeth Angela Marguerite Bowes-Lyon (4 August 1900 – 30 March 2002) was Queen of the United Kingdom and the Dominions of the British Commonwealth from 11 December 1936 to 6 February 1952 as the wife of King George VI. She was the l ...

. The garden

wilderness Wilderness or wildlands (usually in the plural), are natural environments on Earth that have not been significantly modified by human activity or any nonurbanized land not under extensive agricultural cultivation. The term has traditionally re ...

, or highly formalized woodland, is a very rare survival, and the "most perfect surviving" English example. It was laid out in the 1730s with straight walks in the old formal style, when these were already becoming rather unfashionable. The house, of red brick with stone dressings and slate roofs, was built around the 1730s for Edward Gilbert (1680–1762). His daughter Mary married

George Bowes Sir George Bowes (21 August 1701 – 17 September 1760) was an English coal proprietor and Whig politician who sat in the House of Commons for 33 years from 1727 to 1760. George Bowes was baptized on 4 September 1701, the youngest son of Sir ...

Gibside Gibside is an estate in the Derwent Valley in North East England. It is between Rowlands Gill, in Tyne and Wear, and Burnopfield, in County Durham, and a few miles from Newcastle-upon-Tyne. Gibside was previously owned by the Bowes-Lyon family. ...

, Durham, and the estate has been in the possession of the Bowes or Bowes-Lyon family since 1720. James Paine made alterations to the house in the 1770s, which was also extended to the rear in the late nineteenth century.

Gardens

The St Paul's Walden Bury gardens' design is largely contemporary with the house, with additional 19th and 20th-century

woodland garden A woodland garden is a garden or section of a garden that includes large trees and is laid out so as to appear as more or less natural woodland, though it is often actually an artificial creation. Typically it includes plantings of flowering shrub ...

areas.

Geoffrey Jellicoe Sir Geoffrey Allan Jellicoe (8 October 1900 – 17 July 1996) was an English architect, town planner, landscape architect, garden designer, landscape and garden historian, lecturer and author. His strongest interest was in landscape and gard ...

(1900–1996), the landscape designer, restored and "improved" the 18th-century work. There are three straight grassed

allée In landscaping, an avenue (from the French), alameda (from the Portuguese and Spanish), or allée (from the French), is traditionally a straight path or road with a line of trees or large shrubs running along each side, which is used, as its La ...

s radiating in ''

patte d'oie The French term ''patte d'oie'' (literally "goose foot", in English sometimes referred to as a "crow's foot") describes a design whereby three, four, or five or more straight roads or paths radiate out from a central point, so called from its res ...

'' ("goose foot") formation from the garden front of the house. The garden is notable for one of the best surviving formal wildernesses. Each allée is flanked by clipped beech hedges. In the 1950s a circular temple designed by

James Wyatt James Wyatt (3 August 1746 – 4 September 1813) was an English architect, a rival of Robert Adam in the neoclassical and neo-Gothic styles. He was elected to the Royal Academy in 1785 and was its president from 1805 to 1806. Early life W ...

was rescued and brought here from

Copped Hall Copped Hall, also known as Copt Hall or Copthall, is a mid-18th-century English country house close to Waltham Abbey, Essex, which has been undergoing restoration since 1999. Copped Hall is visible from the M25 motorway between junctions 26 and ...

, Essex, when that house burned down.Clark, Robert
''Wilderness and Shrubbery in Austen’s Works''
Section 5, ''Persuasions On-line'', The Jane Austen Society of America, Volume 36, No. 1 — Winter 2015 There are a number of other garden buildings and statues, some 18th-century, and an 18th-century walled

kitchen garden The traditional kitchen garden, vegetable garden, also known as a potager (from the French ) or in Scotland a kailyaird, is a space separate from the rest of the residential garden – the ornamental plants and lawn areas. It is used for grow ...

, nearly square and divided in two parts by a further wall. In 1987 the gardens were designated Grade I on the

Register of Historic Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in England 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 ...

References

External links

St Paul's Walden Bury – Official website

St. Paul's Walden Bury entry from The DiCamillo Companion to British & Irish Country Houses
{{Coord , 51, 52, 52, N, 0, 16, 34, W, display=title Houses in Hertfordshire Grade II* listed buildings in Hertfordshire Grade II* listed houses Gardens in Hertfordshire Grade I listed parks and gardens in Hertfordshire Gardens by Geoffrey Jellicoe Woodland gardens