Captivating Culverthorpe
Steffie Shields looks back at Culverthorpe Hall’s significant garden history.
November’s sun, when low in the west, is perfect for strolling around Culverthorpe Walks, a popular 6.5-mile trail open to the public near Sleaford.
An area of medieval ridge and furrow, labelled as water furrows on an early 18th-century survey, may still be spied north of the lake. A sense of history prevails, enhanced by several distinctive, centuries-old trees.
Culverthorpe Hall, a designed park and garden, listed Grade II, is set back on a gentle rise on the quiet, rural borders of both North and South Kesteven.
After becoming MP for Grantham, Sir John Newton, 2nd Baronet (1626-1699) acquired the estate, and built a limestone ashlar house in the fashionable Italian style on the remnant bones of an Elizabethan house. Walkers will discern Newton’s distant mansion overlooking the lake.
Lincolnshire Archive papers provide fascinating fragments of information relevant to Culverthorpe’s estate development. In May 1691, for instance, a William Jackson reported to Sir John Newton, mentioning perhaps an earlier relation of Francis Richardson, a garden designer working mid-18th-century at both Coleby and Normanby.
‘Mr Richardson’s design for the Palisade. Three stone columns in the centre and posts and rails around the edge. The Cyprus [cypress] trees are not doing very well.’
By July, ‘The masons are beginning the garden next Monday [possibly the pentagonal, quartered, kitchen garden and orchard southeast of the hall, demolished after World War II].
In October: ‘Managing gardens. Report on phylandia; firm growing well [possibly Phillyrea latifolia, popular in that period, a fragrant evergreen shrub with dark green leaves]. Quickthorn growing well. Drain is being built near the flower beds. There is a breach in the wall in the backyard. The palisade in fairly good condition. The trees are planted by the fishponds.’
Sir John left his property to his namesake who added an entrance porch, a new staircase, with an unusual, enlarged central window to replace the north entrance. In February 1709, he described: ‘The ground is very wet & stony & difficult for ploughing. The trees in the paddocks near garden doing quite well.’
The first illustration of the estate did not come until circa 1740. Thomas Badeslade (active 1719-1750), a surveyor and engineer working on river improvements and fen reclamation, made his name with bird’s eye, topographical drawings of country houses: ‘the South Prospect of Hather Thorpe, One of the Seats of Sir Michael Newton, Baronet and Knight of the Historic Order of the Bath.’
Family connections
The name Hather, meaning heathland in old English, is thought to derive from nearby Heydour.
Margaret, 2nd Countess of Coningsby married Sir Michael Newton 4th Baronet (c.1695-1743) in 1730.
When her husband inherited, one wonders if she came to reject Hatherthorpe in preference for Culverthorpe, a nearby village dating from Domesday.
She was born in Herefordshire, a county where the surname Culver is said to originate. The influence of her home and garden at Hampton Court Castle probably played a part in the aggrandisement of Culverthorpe Hall.
A breeder of horses, Sir Michael Newton inherited substantial wealth from Sir Michael Wharton, his mother’s uncle, whom he had succeeded as MP for Beverley.
In 1727, Newton was among patrons at the first Grantham Races held in Harrowby Fields. That year, he was returned as MP for Grantham. Since Palladian architect Roger Morris was employed for Newton’s London House, it seems likely Morris was also responsible for pavilion wings, an attic storey and additional garden features at Culverthorpe after 1734, all facilitated by the Wharton legacy.
Early on in George III’s reign, many politicians and former soldiers were influenced by Blenheim.
Stephen Switzer (1682-1745) trained under Brompton Nursery designers, London and Wise, before collaborating with Vanbrugh on Blenheim’s south parterre, a bastion garden known as the Military Garden, as also Grimsthorpe. Two small shreds of evidence suggest Switzer might also have worked at Culverthorpe.
Firstly, garden historian W.A. Brogden, studied the letters of Dr William Stukeley, the antiquarian residing in Grantham who served as Chaplain to the Duke of Ancaster at Grimsthorpe.
Stukeley corresponded with Switzer, gave advice and made drawings of his works. Brogden concluded, ‘To these works may be added in time gardens of the subscribers to Switzer’s “Practical Husbandry & Planter” such as Culverthorpe, Lincolnshire for Sir Michael Newton where a column and circular temple were built in 1728 and an obelisk contemplated.’
Notice that Badeslade’s engraving shows both features east and west of a short canal on the park’s north boundary.
Secondly, a mid-18th-century survey of the park confirms the original ambitious planting scheme with battalions of trees in a geometric, five-point, quincunx pattern of allées north of the house. A walk leads eastwards through a ‘Wilderness’ to a medieval chapel, St Bartholomew’s, on the edge of Culverthorpe village.
This was rebuilt, transformed into a temple, a third eyecatcher, perhaps with discarded building stuff, as the intended colonnade (see Badeslade) linking the hall to its 16th and 17th-century service ranges, flanked either side, never materialised.
A temple was later transferred to a Belton Hall canal garden. Its Ionic portico and pediment remained on site, listed in 1990 as Grade II*.
Rather than an extensive canal, this survey records the series of fishponds as having been dammed and transformed into a naturalised lake with two stretches of water.
An approach road from the west turns north to cross the lake’s causeway towards Park Farm west of the hall. Of all the fields and closes surrounding the park, none are labelled with a person’s name, other than Patman’s Wood. However, beyond the lake, a large 23-acre field is identified: ‘Stephen’s Walk’.
Rural gardening
All the above changes are characteristic of Switzer’s specialisms in rural and extended forest gardening, especially in the more distant parts, and now endure as woodland. Following the late 18th-century popularity of naturalistic landscape gardens, the 1889 25-inch Ordnance Survey indicates no formality to the north, except a rectangular lawn, decoy ponds on the boundary, and many more random park trees.
Conifers feature mostly in the environs of the hall, in the Wilderness and either side of a new ‘West Walk’.
Little has happened since, apart from major change circa 1912. The then owner Brigadier-General Rodolph Ladeveze-Adlercron (1873-1966) commissioned renowned architect Sir Reginald Blomfield (1856-1942) to lay out a formal English country garden.
In September 2023, two Country Life magazine articles featured the hall, its interior reception rooms, and the garden’s newly laid paved terrace above a stone-edged sunken lawn with three ornamental lily pools.
Beyond, a long walk with herbaceous borders leads to a circular rose garden featuring a statue, a satyr playing a flute, against a backdrop of wrought iron gates, framed by a pair of eagles on stone piers, pillars and iron railing, with steps down either side to a pair of pavilions.
Historian Henry Thorold described Culverthorpe Hall, Grade I, as “captivating”.
My first visit came in the 1990s, then in 2006, and recently with Lincolnshire Gardens Trust members, courtesy of the owner.
Mrs Susan Clark is to be credited for restoring and conserving the now mature bones of Blomfield’s design. I will long remember standing at the front door. I contemplated far-reaching views over park and countryside, before turning, to be drawn through the hall to the garden door.
September’s ‘sauterne’ light filtering across the manicured lawns and beautiful borders in this multi-layered historic garden proved a rich, unforgettable experience, nothing less than magical.
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Lincolnshire Life Magazine Newsletter 12/25 - mailchi.mp/lincolnshirelife.co.uk/lincolnshire-life-magazine-newsletter-12-25