Gardens > England > Dorset > Mapperton Gardens

Mapperton Gardens

A Jacobean manor house (c1660) with an 'Italian' garden laid out in the 1920s. There are some interesting features: an orangery, a croquet lawn, topiary, fish ponds and a shrub garden. Pevsner wrote that 'there can hardly be anywhere a more enchanting manorial group than Mapperton. The garden was used for TV productions of Emma and Tom Jones, and in the filming of Far from the Madding Crowd.

Head Gardener's Comment

Home to the Earl and Countess of Sandwich, Mapperton is a glorious sandstone manor house and romantic valley garden deep in a lost Dorset combe among tumbling hills and unspoiled countryside. Fifteen acres of gardens descend from the croquet lawn, through the formal topiary down to the wild garden.

Photograph © Mapperton

Photograph © Mapperton/George Wright

Photograph © Mapperton

History

The valley gardens at Mapperton reflect at least three periods of history. On the top level is the croquet lawn, where in dry weather the remains of a parterre, possibly 17th century, can be made out. On the next level is the Italianate garden laid out by Mrs Ethel Labouchere in her husband’s memory in the 1920s, complete with grottoes, stone ornamental birds, animals and fountains. An orangery was added by Victor Montagu in the late 1960s, the current Earl of Sandwich’s father. Below the wall and summer house are fish ponds which lead to the wild garden with its wonderful specimen shrubs and trees. Read more at www.mapperton.com