Rodmarton Manor

Rodmarton Manor  is an English Arts and Crafts house and its garden at their best. They were designed by Ernest Barnsley and built for the Biddulph family from 1909. One of the last country houses to be built in the old traditional style, everything was done by hand with local stone, local timber and local craftsmen. It was built over a period of 20 years and most of the furniture, pottery, brasswork, ironwork and wall hangings were made specially for the house, and are directly attributable to the people who made them.
Entering down a drive between immaculately clipped tapestry hedges and two estate cottages, one passes through a services area. The drive then encircles an open apron of grass in front of the wide back of the stone built manor house.

The garden is entered from the drive by a gate in a high stone wall. It is laid out in front and to the side of a stone-paved terrace at the front of the house in rural surroundings. There is a series of garden rooms, which must lend themselves well to entertaining. Walls and hedges of holly, box, beech and yew, form the sides of the rooms. The original garden consisted of borders, lawns, topiary, two kitchen gardens, three tennis courts as well as older trees that were on the site and new plantings principally of lime trees, hornbeam, birch, Portuguese laurel and Irish yew. Anthony and Mary Biddulph moved to the Manor in 1955 and in the years that followed much new planting was done and the garden became very well known.

The garden still has virtually all of its original features; the holly hedges, the limes by the Circle, the beech hedges and the yew hedges. Parts of the Leisure Garden have been replanted. The Winter Garden in the corner by the house, close to the Troughery, topiary and terrace. The path in front of the terrace leads on the left to the Sunken Garden and on the right to the White Borders. The Cherry Orchard (on the left after the white borders) now has many different snowdrops as well as shrubs and roses. The Rockery, which contains plants too big for the troughs and too small for the borders, and Croquet Lawn both date from 1993 and the swimming pool from 1974. The Wild Garden (by the road) is notable for the hornbeam avenue, roses and periwinkle. The Outer Kitchen Garden was grassed over about 1980. A major area of renovation has been the Herbaceous Borders. They have been replanted with some of the original plants and some new ones. There is a large Kitchen Garden with a variety of plants both culinary and ornamental, including a new collection of old and scented roses and the Sinkery.

Rodmarton Manor