Abbotswood

Description

An addition to an existing Victorian house, together with the garden and garden buildings. The entrance has an enormous gable nearly reaching the ground, a good example of Lutyens’s habit of exaggeration. The style of the garden buildings very much follows English 16th and 17th century gazebos and dovecotes popularized by Reginald Blomfield’s The Formal Garden in England, 1892. (Amery et al., 1981, cat no.127)

Formal gardens by Edwin Lutyens and Mark Fenwick adjoining a C19 country house remodelled by Lutyens in 1901-1902, with other C19 and C20 gardens and parkland, and an earlier landscape park with C13 origins…Group value: the contribution of the C19 listed buildings and early-C20 garden features (several by Lutyens, complimented by Fenwick’s planting) and scheduled Monuments at Abbotswood enhance the significance of the estate and are important to the understanding of its development….

In 1901 Abbotswood was sold to Mark Fenwick, a keen gardener wealthy from his family’s coal and mineral interests in Northumberland and from the sale of Lambton’s Bank in Newcastle. The house, ‘far too ugly to be lived in as it was’ (Brown, 1996), was extended and remodelled by Edwin Lutyens (1869-1944), whose initial advice to the Fenwicks about the existing house was to ‘blow it up, and start again!’. Instead, from 1902, the existing house was reordered by Lutyens both internally and externally, especially the north and west elevations. The south garden front was changed little, if at all, and instead Lutyens planted it with climbers and creepers. West and south of the house Lutyens designed strongly architectural gardens, with further rockery gardens to the north east. All of the gardens contain Pulhamite features; and Hitchens (2012) suggests that James Pulham the fourth may have been working at Abbotswood from as early as 1901, possibly alongside Lutyens. (Historic England, list entry 1000748)

Bibliography

Amery, C., Richardson, M. and Stamp, G. (1981) Lutyens, the Work of the English Architect Sir Edwin Lutyens (1869-1944): Hayward Gallery London, 18 November 1981-31 January 1982. London: Arts Council of Great Britain.

Historic England. Abbotswood. [Online] Available from: https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1000748

Also Cited In

Weaver, L. (1913) Houses and Gardens by E L Lutyens. London: Country Life.

Verey, D. and Pevsner, N. (1970) Gloucestershire and The Forest of Dean. The Buildings of England. Harmondsworth: Penguin.

Butler, A., 1950. The architecture of Sir Edwin Lutyens: the Lutyens memorial series. Vol 1: Country Houses, Country Life: London and Scibners: New York.

DE NAVARRO, A., 1913. COUNTRY HOMES GRADENS OLD & NEW: ABBOTSWOOD, GLOUCESTERSHIRE. Country Life (Archive : 1901 – 2005), 33(841), pp. 234-241.

DE NAVARRO, A., 1913. COUNTRY NOMES GARDENS OLD & NEW: ABBOTSWQOD.–II. GLOUCESTERSHIRE: THE RESIDENCE OF MR. MARK FENWICK. Country Life (Archive : 1901 – 2005), 33(842), pp. 272-278.

Listing Grade

II*

Listing Reference

1000748

Client

Mark Fenwick