Biddulph Grange
Encyclopedia
Biddulph Grange is a National Trust
landscaped gardens, in Biddulph
near Stoke-on-Trent
, Staffordshire
, England.
shrubbery there's a gloomy Victorian
mansion, but behind that lurks one of the most extraordinary gardens in Britain
...it contains whole continents, including China and Ancient Egypt
- not to mention Italian terraces and a Scottish glen."
The "rhododendron
s and azalea
s are spectacular in late spring, but the pinetum and the evergreen topiary provide year-round interest. It's a fantastic garden for children, with its tunnels and rockeries, and there is a children's quiz trail."
The true brilliance of Biddulph Grange "lies in the way that Cooke and Bateman hid the different areas of the garden from each other, using heaps of rocks and thickly planted shrubberies' the design locks together as tightly as a jigsaw or a cross-section of the brain." It contains "a series of Italianate terraces, connected by steps and enclosing small flower gardens' at the bottom, long, buttressed hedges enclose a dahlia walk," In the Egypt
ian part of the garden, "Two sphinx
es guard the mastaba
-like entrance to a tunnel, whose darkness is an invitation to explore. Deep inside is a bloody chamber (lit by a hidden window of red-coloured glass) in which squats the half-spooky, half-comic figure of the Ape of Thoth."
(1811–1897), the accomplished horticulturist and landowner; he inherited money from his father, who had become rich from coal
and steel
business
es. He moved to Biddulph Grange around 1840, from nearby Knypersley Hall
. He created the gardens with the aid of his friend and painter of seascapes Edward William Cooke
. The gardens were meant to display specimens from Bateman's extensive and wide-ranging collection of plants.
Biddulph Grange "started life as a bog-standard rectory, but around 1840 it was bought by James Bateman
...he and his wife Maria had a passion for plants and the money to indulge their interests, and as the house was enlarged they began work on the surrounding gardens. In this they were helped by an artist friend, Edward William Cooke
, who was not just a keen designer but whose father-in-law owned one of the biggest plant nurseries of the day, Loddiges
of Hackney
." The gardens "were designed by James and Maria Bateman. Bateman...bought specimens brought back by the great Victorian plant-hunters and became an expert on orchids."
Bateman was president of the North Staffordshire
Field Society, and served on the Royal Horticultural Society
's Plant Exploration Committee. The gardens "were meant to display specimens from Bateman's extensive and wide-ranging collection of plants." He especially loved Rhododendron
s and Azalea
s. Bateman was "a collector and scholar on orchids," He had a number of notable sons who grew up at Biddulph Grange, including the painter Robert Bateman
.
His gardens are a rare survival of the interim period between the Capability Brown
landscape garden
and the High Victorian
style. The gardens are compartmentalised and divided into themes: Egypt, China, etc.
In 1861 Bateman and his sons, who had used up their savings, gave up the house and gardens, and Bateman moved to Kensington
in London. Robert Heath bought Biddulph Grange in 1871. After the house burnt down in 1896, architect Thomas Bower
rebuilt it.
The post-1896 house served as a children's hospital from 1923 until the 1960s; known first as the "North Staffordshire
Cripple's Hospital" and later as the "Biddulph Grange Orthopaedic Hospital" (though it took patients with non-orthopaedic conditions as well. Under this latter title the hospital's role expanded to accommodate adults, continuing in operation into the mid-1980s.) The 15 acre
(61,000 m²) garden became badly run-down and neglected during this period, and the deeply dug-out terraced area near the house around Dahlia Walk was filled in level to make a big lawn for patients to be wheeled out on in summertime. The Bateman property was (and still is) divided: the hospital got the house and its gardens, and the uncultivated remainder of Biddulph Grange's land became the Biddulph Grange Country Park. http://www.bootsandpaws.co.uk/biddulphcp.html
Until 1991 the house and gardens "housed an orthopaedic hospital, whose managers (understandably enough) were more concerned with their patients than the weird stuff looming out of rocky outcrops in the grounds. For the best part of a century the gardens decayed, visited only by passing vandals and, more rarely, intrepid folly-hunters."
In 1988 the National Trust
took ownership of the property and its gardens, which have now been nearly fully restored, including a long work digging out the Dahlia Walk area archaeology
-style to find forgotten features.
In 1995/6 the Wellingtonia
Walk, which had become postmature and badly gappy, was clear felled and in that year and the next replanted.
As at March 2007, the last bit being restored is the Woodland Terrace, whose site a few years ago was at last rid of a hospital ward building and is still intruded on by houses.
The feature known as the Great Wall of China has been rebuilt to cure the effects of long-term subsidence
; the work was finished in 2010-2011 winter.
A meandering walk route called the Woodland Walk was laid out in time for the 2011 season, in the woods to the left side of the Wellingtonia Walk (looking outward).
In 2011 they started planting bulbs and early-summer bedding in Dahlia Walk to cover before the dahlias come into flower.
National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty
The National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty, usually known as the National Trust, is a conservation organisation in England, Wales and Northern Ireland...
landscaped gardens, in Biddulph
Biddulph
Biddulph is a town in Staffordshire, England, north of Stoke-on-Trent and south east of Congleton, Cheshire.-Origin of the name:Biddulph's name may come from Anglo-Saxon bī dylfe = "beside the pit or quarry"...
near Stoke-on-Trent
Stoke-on-Trent
Stoke-on-Trent , also called The Potteries is a city in Staffordshire, England, which forms a linear conurbation almost 12 miles long, with an area of . Together with the Borough of Newcastle-under-Lyme Stoke forms The Potteries Urban Area...
, Staffordshire
Staffordshire
Staffordshire is a landlocked county in the West Midlands region of England. For Eurostat purposes, the county is a NUTS 3 region and is one of four counties or unitary districts that comprise the "Shropshire and Staffordshire" NUTS 2 region. Part of the National Forest lies within its borders...
, England.
Description
"Behind a gloomy VictorianVictorian decorative arts
Victorian decorative arts refers to the style of decorative arts during the Victorian era. The Victorian era is known for its eclectic revival and interpretation of historic styles and the introduction of cross-cultural influences from the middle east and Asia in furniture, fittings, and Interior...
shrubbery there's a gloomy Victorian
Victorian architecture
The term Victorian architecture refers collectively to several architectural styles employed predominantly during the middle and late 19th century. The period that it indicates may slightly overlap the actual reign, 20 June 1837 – 22 January 1901, of Queen Victoria. This represents the British and...
mansion, but behind that lurks one of the most extraordinary gardens in Britain
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
...it contains whole continents, including China and Ancient Egypt
Egypt
Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...
- not to mention Italian terraces and a Scottish glen."
The "rhododendron
Rhododendron
Rhododendron is a genus of over 1 000 species of woody plants in the heath family, most with showy flowers...
s and azalea
Azalea
Azaleas are flowering shrubs comprising two of the eight subgenera of the genus Rhododendron, Pentanthera and Tsutsuji . Azaleas bloom in spring, their flowers often lasting several weeks...
s are spectacular in late spring, but the pinetum and the evergreen topiary provide year-round interest. It's a fantastic garden for children, with its tunnels and rockeries, and there is a children's quiz trail."
The true brilliance of Biddulph Grange "lies in the way that Cooke and Bateman hid the different areas of the garden from each other, using heaps of rocks and thickly planted shrubberies' the design locks together as tightly as a jigsaw or a cross-section of the brain." It contains "a series of Italianate terraces, connected by steps and enclosing small flower gardens' at the bottom, long, buttressed hedges enclose a dahlia walk," In the Egypt
Egypt
Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...
ian part of the garden, "Two sphinx
Sphinx
A sphinx is a mythical creature with a lion's body and a human head or a cat head.The sphinx, in Greek tradition, has the haunches of a lion, the wings of a great bird, and the face of a woman. She is mythicised as treacherous and merciless...
es guard the mastaba
Mastaba
A mastaba, or "pr-djt" , is a type of ancient Egyptian tomb in the form of a flat-roofed, rectangular structure with outward sloping sides that marked the burial site of many eminent Egyptians of Egypt's ancient period...
-like entrance to a tunnel, whose darkness is an invitation to explore. Deep inside is a bloody chamber (lit by a hidden window of red-coloured glass) in which squats the half-spooky, half-comic figure of the Ape of Thoth."
Garden features
The garden is divided into many different areas with themes including:- China
- Egypt
- Western Terrace
- Italian Garden
- LimeTiliaTilia is a genus of about 30 species of trees native throughout most of the temperate Northern Hemisphere. The greatest species diversity is found in Asia, and the genus also occurs in Europe and eastern North America, but not western North America...
Avenue - Rhododendron Ground
- The GlenGlenA glen is a valley, typically one that is long, deep, and often glacially U-shaped; or one with a watercourse running through such a valley. Whittow defines it as a "Scottish term for a deep valley in the Highlands" that is "narrower than a strath."...
- Pinetum and ArboretumArboretumAn arboretum in a narrow sense is a collection of trees only. Related collections include a fruticetum , and a viticetum, a collection of vines. More commonly, today, an arboretum is a botanical garden containing living collections of woody plants intended at least partly for scientific study...
- Bowling greenBowling greenA bowling green is a finely-laid, close-mown and rolled stretch of lawn for playing the game of lawn bowls.Before 1830, when Edwin Beard Budding invented the lawnmower, lawns were often kept cropped by grazing sheep on them...
and QuoitQuoitsQuoits is a traditional game which involves the throwing of metal, rope or rubber rings over a set distance, usually to land over or near a spike . The sport of quoits encompasses several distinct variations.-The history of quoits:The history of quoits is disputed...
Ground - CheshireCheshireCheshire is a ceremonial county in North West England. Cheshire's county town is the city of Chester, although its largest town is Warrington. Other major towns include Widnes, Congleton, Crewe, Ellesmere Port, Runcorn, Macclesfield, Winsford, Northwich, and Wilmslow...
Cottage - WellingtoniaSequoiadendronSequoiadendron giganteum is the sole living species in the genus Sequoiadendron, and one of three species of coniferous trees known as redwoods, classified in the family Cupressaceae in the subfamily Sequoioideae, together with Sequoia sempervirens and...
Avenue - The StumperyStumperyA stumpery is a garden feature similar to a rockery but made from parts of dead trees. This can take the form of whole stumps, logs, pieces of bark or even worked timber such as railway sleepers or floorboards. The pieces are arranged artistically and plants, typically ferns, mosses and lichens...
- DahliaDahliaDahlia is a genus of bushy, tuberous, perennial plants native to Mexico, Central America, and Colombia. There are at least 36 species of dahlia, some like D. imperialis up to 10 metres tall. Dahlia hybrids are commonly grown as garden plants...
Walk - Lower, RoseRoseA rose is a woody perennial of the genus Rosa, within the family Rosaceae. There are over 100 species. They form a group of erect shrubs, and climbing or trailing plants, with stems that are often armed with sharp prickles. Flowers are large and showy, in colours ranging from white through yellows...
, VerbenaVerbenaVerbena , verbenas or vervains, is a genus in the family Verbenaceae. It contains about 250 species of annual and perennial herbaceous or semi-woody flowering plants. The majority of the species are native to the New World from Canada south to southern Chile, but some are also native in the Old...
and AraucariaAraucariaAraucaria is a genus of evergreen coniferous trees in the family Araucariaceae. There are 19 extant species in the genus, with a highly disjunct distribution in New Caledonia , Norfolk Island, eastern Australia, New Guinea, Argentina, Chile, and southern Brazil.-Description:Araucaria are mainly...
ParterreParterreA parterre is a formal garden construction on a level surface consisting of planting beds, edged in stone or tightly clipped hedging, and gravel paths arranged to form a pleasing, usually symmetrical pattern. Parterres need not have any flowers at all...
s - CherryCherryThe cherry is the fruit of many plants of the genus Prunus, and is a fleshy stone fruit. The cherry fruits of commerce are usually obtained from a limited number of species, including especially cultivars of the wild cherry, Prunus avium....
Orchard
History
Biddulph Grange was developed by James BatemanJames Bateman
James Bateman was a landowner and accomplished horticulturist. He developed Biddulph Grange after moving there around 1840, from nearby Knypersley Hall...
(1811–1897), the accomplished horticulturist and landowner; he inherited money from his father, who had become rich from coal
Coal
Coal is a combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock usually occurring in rock strata in layers or veins called coal beds or coal seams. The harder forms, such as anthracite coal, can be regarded as metamorphic rock because of later exposure to elevated temperature and pressure...
and steel
Steel
Steel is an alloy that consists mostly of iron and has a carbon content between 0.2% and 2.1% by weight, depending on the grade. Carbon is the most common alloying material for iron, but various other alloying elements are used, such as manganese, chromium, vanadium, and tungsten...
business
Business
A business is an organization engaged in the trade of goods, services, or both to consumers. Businesses are predominant in capitalist economies, where most of them are privately owned and administered to earn profit to increase the wealth of their owners. Businesses may also be not-for-profit...
es. He moved to Biddulph Grange around 1840, from nearby Knypersley Hall
Knypersley Hall
Knypersley Hall is an 18th century Georgian style country mansion at Biddulph, Staffordshire which has been subdivded into residential apartments. It is a Grade II* listed building....
. He created the gardens with the aid of his friend and painter of seascapes Edward William Cooke
Edward William Cooke
Edward William Cooke, R.A., F.R.S., F.Z.S., F.S.A., F.G.S. was an English landscape and marine painter, and gardener.-Life and work:...
. The gardens were meant to display specimens from Bateman's extensive and wide-ranging collection of plants.
Biddulph Grange "started life as a bog-standard rectory, but around 1840 it was bought by James Bateman
James Bateman
James Bateman was a landowner and accomplished horticulturist. He developed Biddulph Grange after moving there around 1840, from nearby Knypersley Hall...
...he and his wife Maria had a passion for plants and the money to indulge their interests, and as the house was enlarged they began work on the surrounding gardens. In this they were helped by an artist friend, Edward William Cooke
Edward William Cooke
Edward William Cooke, R.A., F.R.S., F.Z.S., F.S.A., F.G.S. was an English landscape and marine painter, and gardener.-Life and work:...
, who was not just a keen designer but whose father-in-law owned one of the biggest plant nurseries of the day, Loddiges
Loddiges
The Loddiges family managed one of the most notable of the eighteenth and nineteenth century plant nurseries that traded in and introduced exotic plants, trees, shrubs, ferns, palms and orchids into European gardens....
of Hackney
London Borough of Hackney
The London Borough of Hackney is a London borough of North/North East London, and forms part of inner London. The local authority is Hackney London Borough Council....
." The gardens "were designed by James and Maria Bateman. Bateman...bought specimens brought back by the great Victorian plant-hunters and became an expert on orchids."
Bateman was president of the North Staffordshire
North Staffordshire
North Staffordshire describes an area of Staffordshire, in the West Midlands region of England. It contains the Borough of Newcastle-under-Lyme, Staffordshire Moorlands and the City of Stoke-on-Trent. The Stoke and Newcastle areas make up The Potteries Urban Area, whilst the Moorlands are largely...
Field Society, and served on the Royal Horticultural Society
Royal Horticultural Society
The Royal Horticultural Society was founded in 1804 in London, England as the Horticultural Society of London, and gained its present name in a Royal Charter granted in 1861 by Prince Albert...
's Plant Exploration Committee. The gardens "were meant to display specimens from Bateman's extensive and wide-ranging collection of plants." He especially loved Rhododendron
Rhododendron
Rhododendron is a genus of over 1 000 species of woody plants in the heath family, most with showy flowers...
s and Azalea
Azalea
Azaleas are flowering shrubs comprising two of the eight subgenera of the genus Rhododendron, Pentanthera and Tsutsuji . Azaleas bloom in spring, their flowers often lasting several weeks...
s. Bateman was "a collector and scholar on orchids," He had a number of notable sons who grew up at Biddulph Grange, including the painter Robert Bateman
Robert Bateman (artist)
Robert Bateman was an English painter, illustrator, sculptor, architect and scholar.He was the third son of James Bateman , the accomplished horticulturist and landowner, who built Biddulph Grange and its gardens, in Staffordshire.Robert attended the Royal Academy schools in the 1860s, and from...
.
His gardens are a rare survival of the interim period between the Capability Brown
Capability Brown
Lancelot Brown , more commonly known as Capability Brown, was an English landscape architect. He is remembered as "the last of the great English eighteenth-century artists to be accorded his due", and "England's greatest gardener". He designed over 170 parks, many of which still endure...
landscape garden
Landscape garden
The term landscape garden is often used to describe the English garden design style characteristic of the eighteenth century, that swept the Continent replacing the formal Renaissance garden and Garden à la française models. The work of Lancelot 'Capability' Brown is particularly influential.The...
and the High Victorian
Victorian era
The Victorian era of British history was the period of Queen Victoria's reign from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. It was a long period of peace, prosperity, refined sensibilities and national self-confidence...
style. The gardens are compartmentalised and divided into themes: Egypt, China, etc.
In 1861 Bateman and his sons, who had used up their savings, gave up the house and gardens, and Bateman moved to Kensington
Kensington
Kensington is a district of west and central London, England within the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. An affluent and densely-populated area, its commercial heart is Kensington High Street, and it contains the well-known museum district of South Kensington.To the north, Kensington is...
in London. Robert Heath bought Biddulph Grange in 1871. After the house burnt down in 1896, architect Thomas Bower
Thomas Bower
Thomas Bower was an English architect and surveyor based in Nantwich, Cheshire. He worked in partnership with Ernest H. Edleston at the Nantwich firm, Bower & Edleston, which he founded in 1854. He is particularly associated with the Gothic Revival style of architecture.In 1883, Bower was living...
rebuilt it.
The post-1896 house served as a children's hospital from 1923 until the 1960s; known first as the "North Staffordshire
Stoke-on-Trent
Stoke-on-Trent , also called The Potteries is a city in Staffordshire, England, which forms a linear conurbation almost 12 miles long, with an area of . Together with the Borough of Newcastle-under-Lyme Stoke forms The Potteries Urban Area...
Cripple's Hospital" and later as the "Biddulph Grange Orthopaedic Hospital" (though it took patients with non-orthopaedic conditions as well. Under this latter title the hospital's role expanded to accommodate adults, continuing in operation into the mid-1980s.) The 15 acre
Acre
The acre is a unit of area in a number of different systems, including the imperial and U.S. customary systems. The most commonly used acres today are the international acre and, in the United States, the survey acre. The most common use of the acre is to measure tracts of land.The acre is related...
(61,000 m²) garden became badly run-down and neglected during this period, and the deeply dug-out terraced area near the house around Dahlia Walk was filled in level to make a big lawn for patients to be wheeled out on in summertime. The Bateman property was (and still is) divided: the hospital got the house and its gardens, and the uncultivated remainder of Biddulph Grange's land became the Biddulph Grange Country Park. http://www.bootsandpaws.co.uk/biddulphcp.html
Until 1991 the house and gardens "housed an orthopaedic hospital, whose managers (understandably enough) were more concerned with their patients than the weird stuff looming out of rocky outcrops in the grounds. For the best part of a century the gardens decayed, visited only by passing vandals and, more rarely, intrepid folly-hunters."
In 1988 the National Trust
National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty
The National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty, usually known as the National Trust, is a conservation organisation in England, Wales and Northern Ireland...
took ownership of the property and its gardens, which have now been nearly fully restored, including a long work digging out the Dahlia Walk area archaeology
Archaeology
Archaeology, or archeology , is the study of human society, primarily through the recovery and analysis of the material culture and environmental data that they have left behind, which includes artifacts, architecture, biofacts and cultural landscapes...
-style to find forgotten features.
In 1995/6 the Wellingtonia
Sequoiadendron
Sequoiadendron giganteum is the sole living species in the genus Sequoiadendron, and one of three species of coniferous trees known as redwoods, classified in the family Cupressaceae in the subfamily Sequoioideae, together with Sequoia sempervirens and...
Walk, which had become postmature and badly gappy, was clear felled and in that year and the next replanted.
As at March 2007, the last bit being restored is the Woodland Terrace, whose site a few years ago was at last rid of a hospital ward building and is still intruded on by houses.
The feature known as the Great Wall of China has been rebuilt to cure the effects of long-term subsidence
Subsidence
Subsidence is the motion of a surface as it shifts downward relative to a datum such as sea-level. The opposite of subsidence is uplift, which results in an increase in elevation...
; the work was finished in 2010-2011 winter.
A meandering walk route called the Woodland Walk was laid out in time for the 2011 season, in the woods to the left side of the Wellingtonia Walk (looking outward).
In 2011 they started planting bulbs and early-summer bedding in Dahlia Walk to cover before the dahlias come into flower.
Biddulph Grange in fiction
The novel by Priscilla Masters, Mr Bateman's Garden (1987), is a fantasy set in the gardens.Further reading
- P. Hayden. Biddulph Grange, Staffordshire: a Victorian garden rediscovered. National Trust, 1989.