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The
water garden at Westbury Court was created between
1697 and 1705 by Maynard Colchester I, co-founder of the Society
for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge.
His
layout in the newly fashionable Dutch style is still largely
as it was originally planned and not to be swept away by the
ideas of 'Capability' Brown and Humphrey Repton and the vogue
for 'natural landscaping'.
An
engraving of Westbury by Kip, dated 1707, shows a house of
some size with assoctiated outbuildings and a church. In
the grounds were long canals, an elegant two-storey pavilion,
a parterre and hedges and many rows of little formal trees.
The
church with its tall spire still dominates the area but no
trace remains of the Palladian mansion that replaced the Elizabethan
manor or the 19th century house that succeeded it.
By
1960 the gardens had fallen into quiet decay -the canals were
full of silt, the hedges had either died or become trees and
the gardens were hidden under brambles, nettles and thistles.
In
1960 Westbury Court was purchased by a speculator but Gloucestershire
County Council bought the property and offered the garden
to the National Trust in 1967.
An
extensive programme of renovation was launched, using Kip's
engraving as a guide. The lawns that had become fields were
resown and new hedges planted.
Fortunately
Maynard Colchester's orignal planting records survived and
only plants from these lists and in cultivation at the time
have been introduced.
Westbury
Court is laid out on a level site in the water meadows by
the River Severn, wth hedges fringing the still water of canals,
topiary pyramids, red-brick pavilions and formally planted
beds. The tall dignified two-storey pavilion, crowned with
a cupola, faces down the canal.
A
second T-shaped canal , with a statue of Neptune riding a
dolphin, is overlooked by a brick gazebo. On the other side
of the gazebo is a small walled garden with box-edged beds
planted with old roses and plants known in England before
1700.
Closeby
is a simple parterre partly surrounded by old varieties of
fruit trees, including quinces and medlars, arranged in a
quincunx pattern.
Few
of the original trees in the garden have survived but at the
end of the T-shaped canal is a holm oak which was planted
in the early 1600's and is thought to be the oldest in the
country.
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Westbury Court Garden
