Endsleigh

Endsleigh, in Devon, was one of Humphry Repton’s last commissions, and, as noted by the Head Gardener in 2023, is ‘quite unique in that most of the original design was carried out and has been left largely intact’. A Picturesque mix of formal terraces and lawns, an arboretum, a valley garden, and a very generous scattering of complementary structures, with the River Tamar at its base, it is a delight of a garden. As Repton himself observed about Endsleigh in his Fragments on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening (1816), ‘the Climate and South Western Aspect of a mountainous district will expose it to the rains, winds and fogs which are the natural concomitants of all lofty and picturesque stations’, and there was certainly rain on the day of my visit – whilst the rain held off for the most part, it did of course descend in full force at the furthest point of the garden from the house, down by the river: a splendid lunch in the shelter of the ‘rustic verandah’ overlooking the valley proved very restorative. This post reports on both pre- and postprandial wanderings.

The House

Endsleigh Cottage (later Endsleigh House) was designed in 1810 for the Duke and Duchess of Bedford as a holiday home, rather different in character from the family’s primary residence, Woburn Abbey. The foundation stone confirms both the Picturesque intentions for the estate, and the involvement of both the Duke and Duchess:

Endsleigh Cottage was built and a residence created in this sequestered valley by John Duke of Bedford the spot having been previously chosen from the natural and picturesque beauties which surround it by Georgiana, Duchess of Bedford….

In his Fragments on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening, Repton reflected on ‘the artificial character by which [this picturesque landscape] is made habitable’, noting that, in determining ‘what style of house will best accord with this Landscape’, the Duke was ‘directed by what he saw’ on arrival:

An irregular farm-house, little better than a cottage, backed by a hill and beautiful group of trees… an object so picturesque, that it was impossible to wish it removed and replaced by any other style of building that architecture has hitherto invented… not one of which could have been so convenient and so applicable to the scenery as this cottage, or rather group of rural buildings…. The design and outline are so truly picturesque that I must regret my inability to do them justice.

The southern elevation of this curving house overlooks the River Tamar and of course a significant portion of the gardens, of which more below. Designed by Sir Jeffry Wyatville as a cottage orné, and now listed at Grade I, it was sold in 1853, after the death of the twelfth duke. After considerable time in the ownership of a local fishing syndicate, the house and 108 acres of gardens and woodlands were purchased by Olga Polizzi in 2004, and the estate opened as Hotel Endsleigh in 2008.  

The Gardens

Humphry Repton had produced his own design for the cottage, but this was not selected by the Duke and Duchess; happily, though, he was more successful with his plans for the gardens. The landscape is now on the Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in England, at Grade I.

As outlined in the Register entry, Repton was consulted in May 1814, visited the site in August, and presented his proposals to his client in a Red Book later that year (he then addressed them further in Fragments on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening). As in his other Red Books, the ‘before and after’ views were important in making clear his vision.

The registered landscape today is around 120 hectares in total, comprising ‘26ha of gardens and pleasure grounds, c 5ha of ornamental meadows or parkland, and c 89ha of ornamental woodland, walks and carriage drives’.

Having braved the narrow lanes surrounding the estate, the visitor is greeted by an entrance lodge (Grade II), to the south-east of the house. Now one of the hotel rooms, it too was designed by Sir Jeffry Wyatville, in 1810. From there, a long and rather beautiful drive passes the walled garden (with its slip gardens, this was occupied by the Endsleigh Gardens Nursery until 2024, and is also listed at Grade II), fronted by the former gardener’s house, Harragrove (Grade II).

The route around the gardens which is suggested by the hotel starts with the house and stables, and then the rockery and grotto (Grade I):

The rockery provides the setting for a central pond and fountain and contains a network of paths notable for their patterned pebble work. The paths lead downwards to a hidden grotto which in turn connects to the Dairy Dell. Water flows from the rock garden and issues out from the top of a crag of rock below the grotto to form another of the cascades proposed by Repton.

Immediately to the north of the rockery are the remains of a greenhouse, the boiler room that served it, and a brewhouse.  

The path then leads on into the ‘steep sided dingle’ housing the Edgecumbe stream – a significant feature of this part of the garden, referred to as The Dell, and a key element in Repton’s design. This is best articulated by the Head Gardener:

For Repton the combining of rocky outcrops with the sound of running water was the key to unlocking Endsleigh’s ‘Picturesque Beauty’. The irrigation system that feeds the rills, streams, cascades, waterfalls and fountains still functions as it did and is a masterpiece in the manipulation of water, creating a soundtrack to the garden.

Following the stream up the small valley, the path is surrounded by trees, flowering shrubs, ferns, Gunnera, and signs of the late-nineteenth centiry arboretum and pinetum. There are also gravity-fed rills and small waterfalls throughout, and bridges where needed. At the top of the valley is a waterfall, which the map to the garden describes as ‘something of a mystery’, as it is not part of the Repton design, and ‘first appears in maps around 1920’. Of particular note within this lush and watery landscape are the Crag & Cascade, and Repton’s Waterfall. The crag is a natural rock outcrop ‘which Repton sought to reveal for picturesque effect’, adding a ‘dramatic cascade’ below by diverting water. Repton’s Waterfall is to be found below the rockery: ‘rock was exposed and trees planted clinging to the edge to accentuate the picturesque effect’. As Repton himself noted:

There are many places in which romantic rocks are now totally hid by brushwood; these doubtless require to be brought into view. But of all picturesque objects, there is none so interesting as Water in rapid motion; and it is the duty of art to avail itself of every opportunity to force it into notice….

The Dairy is situated on a mound next to the Pond House: both buildings were purchased by the Landmark Trust in 1984, and restored. The Dairy (listed at Grade I, as the Salmon Larder and Ice House) is believed to have been designed by Sir Jeffry Wyatville, in around 1814, as one of a number of buildings intended to contribute to the Picturesque character of the estate, all reflected in Repton’s designs. As noted in the list entry, the building is ‘5 sided at the east end and built into the slope of the land with an ice-house and cellar below’. The Dairy is ‘lined with white tiles, some with an ivy leaf pattern as a border to 7 recesses in the walls’, and slate sinks were placed around the walls. In its History Album for Pond Cottage and the Dairy, the Landmark Trust describes the latter as ‘a particularly special building’.

The adjoining Pond Cottage was intended to function as part of the same tableau, with its central loggia intended to serve as a cow shed (the whole building is now available as holiday accommodation). It is listed at Grade II* as the ‘Dairy Dell Cottage’, and the History Album has an explanation for its current name, quoting a Director of the fishing syndicate as saying ‘I am afraid we might be responsible for calling it Pond Cottage for short’, understandably, for it lies behind the Dairy Dell Pond.  

Returning to the house, the western wing was intended for the use of the children. This has a trellised arbour on one corner, and is linked to the main house with a rustic verandah, itself framing a raised parterre with central fountain. The retaining wall to this small garden is listed in its own right at Grade I: it is curved, ‘with oversailing capping containing a channel for a small artificial stream’ (shown in the Red Book with children sailing toy boats in it). As the Register entry notes, ‘the rill is fed by a lion’s mask fountain to the west, and in turn feeds a classical mask fountain set in a centrally placed niche’.  

To the front of the house is a lawn, containing a sundial on an octagonal pier (Grade II*). According to the Register entry, the lawns ‘formed part of Repton’s scheme of 1814 which remodelled Wyatville’s ha-ha and bastion’. Repton states that he was ‘instructed to direct particular attention’ to the ‘fence and line of demarcation betwixt the Lawn to be fed and that to be mown and dressed as pleasure-ground’:

The general fall of the ground from the House to the Valley is an inclined plane, with the exception of a small rise in the centre… this left a considerable space to be covered with Flowers and Shrubs; but when I began to mark the situation of clumps and patches, I placed persons at different stations, and found that in every part of the surface of this Lawn beyond the distance of 25 feet from the House, any shrub of six feet high would hide not only the meadow below, but also that line of River which, by an uninterrupted continuity of glitter, constitutes the leading feature of the place.

The solution was ‘removing the fence so much nearer the House’, which enabled the introduction of cattle to ‘animate the Landscape’, and also to ‘shew the distance of Lawn betwixt the House and the Tamar’. The result is striking, even without cattle: the small lawn is sharply contrasted with the pasture below, itself punctuated with occasional shrubs; a further contrast is generated by the massed trees of Wareham Wood on the other side of the river, whose tops lie roughly level with the lawn.

Repton was very conscious of the importance of the river to the landscape and the enjoyment of the property (an importance that is still reflected in the definition of the registered area, which follows the river for some distance to the west and south), and indeed referred to Endsleigh as the ‘Cottage on the Banks of the Tamar’. Whilst he was aware that this term would suggest ‘tranquil Scenery’, he noted that the reality was ‘very different’:

Here, Solitude, embosomed in all the sublimity of umbrageous majesty, looks down on the infant River struggling through its rocky channel, and hurrying onwards with all the impetuosity of ungoverned youth, till it becomes useful to mankind…. The Tamar, like all mountain streams, however it may amuse the eye with its frolic motion, by not being navigable or passable, becomes a barrier….

Repton wished to avoid a bridge across the river, partly because ‘a great bridge announces a great road, and a great road destroys all solitude, both real and imaginary’, and partly because a bridge would terminate the ‘graceful curvature’ of the river at this point, and make it look more like a canal. Instead, he proposed a weir ‘immediately opposite the house’.

The Grass Terrace and Long Border lie to the east of the house, and both look much as they do in the Red Book. The Grass Terrace is a more formalised continuation of the lawn, fenced to the south where the land falls sharply, and walled to the north, to support the Long Border above: the map to the garden advises that ‘the raised border and pierced retaining wall were constructed to Repton’s design’. The retaining wall is listed at Grade II*, and has ‘round-headed rusticated blind arches with keystones, the arches grouped in threes between wide pilasters’. The Long Border is claimed by the hotel to be ‘the longest continuous herbaceous border in England’. Above are the Rose Walk and Yew Walk, parallel walks terraced into the slope. The garden map advises that Repton’s original proposal for what is now the Rose Walk was for a covered walkway.

To the south east, steps from the terraced walks lead through the small quarry to the Shell House (Grade I), described by the Register entry as standing on a ‘cobbled bastion overlooking the river’. Repton’s design proposed the use of the quarry as ‘a ‘grotto-like receptacle for specimens of fossils and ores’, but it is Wyatville’s hexagonal summerhouse (accessed via an adjoining grotto) which was constructed to display various shells, crystals, minerals and fossils – and to provide views to the river. Further to the south-east are some of the oldest trees in the estate’s arboretum, and the Upper and Lower Georgy walks.

Still further to the south east, above the river and south-west of the walled garden, is the Swiss Cottage (Grade I), which the list entry describes as an ‘extremely fine example of a Swiss Cottage’.. Designed by Wyatville in 1810, it was in serious decline in 1977, when (as described in the History Album for the Swiss Cottage), the Landmark Trust recognised that the building was an ‘obvious case of an exceptional building in an exceptional setting, but in imminent danger of collapse’. The property was purchased and restored, and is now available as holiday accommodation. Another contribution to the Picturesque nature of the estate, Swiss Cottage is a two-storey ornate wooden chalet, originally surrounded by an Alpine Garden; the Landmark Trust advises that its thatch is ‘unexpectedly attractive to pheasants’.

Conclusion

Endsleigh is not wholly as Repton as intended. Various elements of the proposal outlined in the Red Book were not implemented, such as a ‘viaduct’ overlooking the river, a cascade and rustic seat across the river in Wareham Wood, and a conservatory and fruit garden above the Long Border. Most of the buildings are by Wyatville (before and after Repton’s death in 1818), but both Repton and Wyatville worked within a shared Picturesque vision for the site, and subsequent changes by successive owners remained sympathetic to this. As noted by the hotel, the result is a cohesive and utterly charming landscape that ‘remains one of the most perfect examples of the Picturesque style’.