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The Great Lodge
The
House
The Great
Lodge, Bardfield was built (and partially destroyed!) in the 16th Century.
The rebuilt house, including the surviving East wing is constructed
on 2 sides of a courtyard and is currently the headquarters of a
large rural enterprise, of which a hectare of viticulture plays a small but
important part.
The Grade I
listed barn was constructed for Anne of Cleves one of the more pragmatic wives of Henry
VIII (she agreed to a divorce without argument and was rewarded with
several English properties). The house is reputed to have a ghost, but
no-one is quite sure whose it is.
The existing I7th Great
Lodge 'conversion' is listed as Grade II*. It comprises three storeys and
is L-shaped with principal aspects to the south and west. The C16th barn,
which is approx. 45 metres east of the house, is Grade I and the wall
extending eastwards from the house is Grade II. All are constructed of red
brick and, until the mid C20th, comprised an integral range of buildings,
approx. 225 ft long, which included a clock tower.
The Lumley
mansion was demolished during c18th and the western wing of the
outbuildings became the principal residence. The west and east ends of the
range are still standing but the middle section, which supported a clock
tower, was pulled down between 1921 (when New Series OS shows complete
range still intact) and 1954 when Pesvner wrote about it.
The Modern day
gardens
During 1980's, Rosemary Alexander, Principal
of the English Gardening School, lived at Great Lodge and she produced
design plans for the garden.
Some of this work was carried
out and evidence of it remains today: Her small scented garden, which
was planted by June 1984 with plants in keeping with the period of the
house, still exists to the side of the steps by the south-west comer of
the house. Her hornbeams, planted by July 1985, continue to grow in
the courtyard area although the pleaching regime has not been maintained. Her
wild flower meadow exists to a certain extent to the south of the oval
drive.
The dominant feature is the 'canal' or rectangular pond
that is approx. 285ft long x 49ft wide and is thought to date from the
time of the Lumley mansion but it may be much earlier. It runs W-E,
parallel to the former outbuildings.
It would have provided an
impressive focal point from the east side of the mansion as the present
garden wall (running south from the SW corner of the house) would not have
existed to obscure its view. It is now enclosed within the largest section
of garden to the south of the buildings.
Trees and shrubs grow in
places around it, an attempt, possibly, to soften the straight lines of
the canal?
In the courtyard area there is a narrow formal border
with box edges along the east side of the house. This border was planted
by 1989.
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