Understanding Historic Parks and Gardens in Buckinghamshire The Buckinghamshire Gardens Trust Research & Recording Project The garden from the north-east, c.1910, with Thomas Mawson’s pergola and summerhouses. (Buckinghamshire Council) NEWLAND PARK, CHALFONT ST GILES FEBRUARY 2021 Roland Callingham Foundation Bucks Gardens Trust, Site Dossier: Newland Park, Chiltern Area February 2021 HISTORIC SITE BOUNDARY 2 Bucks Gardens Trust, Site Dossier: Newland Park, Chiltern Area February 2021 INTRODUCTION Background to the Project This site dossier has been prepared as part of The Buckinghamshire Gardens Trust (BGT) Research and Recording Project, begun in 2014. This site is one of several hundred designed landscapes county‐wide identified by Bucks County Council (BCC) in 1998 (including Milton Keynes District) as potentially retaining evidence of historic interest, as part of the Historic Parks and Gardens Register Review project carried out for English Heritage (now Historic England) (BCC Report No. 508). The list is not definitive and further parks and gardens may be identified as research continues or further information comes to light. Content BGT has taken the Register Review list as a sound basis from which to select sites for appraisal as part of its Research and Recording Project for designed landscapes in the historic county of Bucks (pre‐1974 boundaries). For each site a dossier is prepared by volunteers trained by BGT in appraising designed landscapes. Each dossier includes the following for the site: • A site boundary mapped on the current Ordnance Survey to indicate the extent of the main part of the surviving designed landscape, also a current aerial photograph. • A statement of historic significance based on the four Interests outlined in the National Planning Policy Framework and including an overview. • A description, derived from documentary research and site visits, based on the format of Historic England’s Register of Parks & Gardens of special historic interest 2nd edn. • A map showing principal views and features. The area within the site boundary represents the significant coherent remains of the designed landscape. It does not necessarily include all surviving elements of the historical landscape design, which may be fragmented. It takes no account of current ownership. NOTE: Sites are not open to the public unless advertised elsewhere. Supporters and Acknowledgements The project was funded by BGT, with significant grants from the Finnis Scott Foundation, the Roland Callingham Foundation, BCC (since April 2020 part of Buckinghamshire Council) and various private donors. Buckinghamshire Council also provided significant funding, and help in kind including current and historic mapping and access to the Historic Environment Record. The project is supported by The Gardens Trust. The Trust thanks the volunteers and owners who have participated in this project and given so much time and effort to complete this challenging and rewarding task. Further information is available from: www.bucksgardenstrust.org.uk 3 Bucks Gardens Trust, Site Dossier: Newland Park, Chiltern Area February 2021 SITE NAME: NEWLAND PARK HER NO: 0410001000 COUNTY: BUCKINGHAMSHIRE GRID REF: TQ 003 923 PARISH: CHALFONT ST PETER STATEMENT OF SIGNIFICANCE Overview Newland Park is an C18 and C19 country house with a park, gardens and pleasure grounds. The landscape was laid out in the late C18 with modifications in the C19 and remodelling of the garden in the early C20 with a formal scheme by the renowned landscape architect Thomas Mawson, 1901‐03. The grounds survive largely intact with much mature ornamental planting and an extensive formal drive from Chalfont St Peter and are a good example of a Chiltern estate. The many later C20 and C21 structures were built for the college in the park where the Chiltern Open Air Museum is also located. While these disparate buildings cluster around the house, drive and pleasure grounds they have left the key ornamental features intact. Archaeological interest The site has the potential for evidence associated with medieval agricultural and woodland uses, particularly relating to the surviving ancient trees, banks, routes, boundaries, and buildings. It has potential for the previous buildings on the site of the present house and associated features, and for former features of the designed landscape from the C18 onwards, e.g. buildings, paths, beds, terraces, boundaries, particularly for the kitchen garden, and lost drives and rides. Architectural interest The house, stable block, service structures, lodges and garden structures form a group of architectural note, built incrementally between the late C18 and early C20, the focus being a notable formal garden framed by terraces, loggias and pergolas by Thomas Mawson, 1901‐03. The numerous and disparate college structures built since the 1940s are sprinkled alongside the main drive and around the pleasure grounds in a variety of styles and the adjacent Open Air Museum contains various historic rebuilt Chiltern structures. Artistic interest The site is a typical Chiltern country house estate comprising park, woodland, garden and pleasure grounds, developed over c.150 years, to reach its zenith in the early‐C20. The layout remains largely intact, focussed on the house, formal gardens to the east and kitchen garden to the south, with many mature trees and fine avenues and belts along the drives. The layout by Thomas Mawson is the most significant ornamental feature, below the main garden front the house. The long, formal south‐west drive framed by avenues and split into two by Gorelands Lane is of particular note, taking in extensive views of the park and estate land. Other estate structures particularly gateways, the garden walls and cottages form incidents along the drives. While the college structures and Chiltern Open Air Museum have damaged a considerable area of the east park where it encloses the pleasure grounds, they have not greatly damaged the key features of the whole layout. 4 Bucks Gardens Trust, Site Dossier: Newland Park, Chiltern Area February 2021 Historic interest The site is associated with the notable landscape designer Thomas Mawson (1861‐1933), who began practising in the late 1880s. This commission came at the height of his career and is a good example of his formal style. It is also associated with Thomas Newland Allen, developer of an area of Kensington east of Earls Court in the early C19. HISTORIC DEVELOPMENT The estate was conveyed to Missenden Abbey as part of the manor of Chalfont St Peter in 1208 and remained part of that estate until the dissolution of the monasteries. The abbey leased to various people ‘all that farm manor and land in Chalfont called Newland ’ (Bennett). In Chiltern place names the use of ‘Newland’ refers to land reclaimed from woodland (Gelling & Cole). The property subsequently passed through several families, of Saunders, Hopkins, and Croke. In 1772 the estate was sold to Sir HT Gott who erected Gott’s monument in 1785 (WSP). The monument was also a signpost for the main entrance to the estate (Bucks Explorer). Gott carried out considerable extensions to the house: the central block of the current building existed in 1772 but he added two wings. Gott was on the committee of the Old Berkeley Hunt. It seems that Gott laid out the park and long south‐west drive, divided by Gorelands Lane, on the former agricultural land, incorporating existing woodland including Shrub’s Wood, and planting new woodland around the park (Rocque, 1760; OSD 1812). An informal pleasure ground surrounded the house. In 1809 the estate was bought by Sir Thomas Allen (d.1829). In 1825 or 26 Allen bought the neighbouring property of The Vache and moved there (Lipscombe). Allen had been a London tailor, of whom tradition has it that his wealth derived from supplying military uniforms on a vast scale during the Napoleonic Wars. Around 1817‐25 he became a major developer of land in Kensington east of Earls Court. (VCH) His son, Thomas Newland Allen (1811‐99), inherited as a minor not only the Kensington properties and income but also Newlands. He established himself as a country gentleman. Known as ‘Squire Allen’ his main interests were hunting, shooting and fishing. In 1840 the house and pleasure ground, kitchen and fruit gardens, orchard, avenue were let to Philip Griffiths (Tithe map). In 1880 (OS) the house had walled gardens to the north and south; the north incorporated a significant stable and farm buildings, the south ‐ orchards. Squire Allen died in 1899 worth some £237,000 (VCH). He left the estate (and the Vache) to his adopted daughter, Mrs Stevens who, in 1903, sold Newland Park to Henry Andrade Harben, son of Sir Henry Harben, founder of the Prudential Assurance Company (Pevsner, VCH). HA Harben, and his son, Henry Devenish Harben, who inherited the estate in 1910, improved the house and the gardens. HA Harben engaged Paul Waterhouse to extend the house. In 1901 and 1903 HA Harben engaged Thomas Mawson, a renowned and prolific landscape architect, to advise on the garden. Mawson designed an extensive formal parterre east of the house including pergolas and summerhouses and described introducing ’many features which added character to the estate’ (Mawson, The Life of an English Landscape Architect). He worked on at least two other significant garden projects in Buckinghamshire, including Poundon House (qv), a smaller country house with terracing leading to an informal garden, 1908‐09, which survives, and around the same time, a small terraced garden at St Bernard’s Gerrards Cross of which little seems 5 Bucks Gardens Trust, Site Dossier: Newland Park, Chiltern Area February 2021 to survive. This was the most impressive of his commissions in Bucks. It is typical of his style, in this case for a formal parterre, which he promoted in the 5 editions of his The Art and Craft of Garden Making (1st edn 1900, 5th edn 1926). Between 1899 and 1921 a Model Farm was built on estate land 475m south of the house on the opposite side of Gorelands Lane (outside the park and historic site boundary).