Barton St Mary

Description

The design of Barton St. Mary was governed by the existence of a walled kitchen garden which was retained and given one of Miss Jekyll’s finest schemes for flower edges to the vegetable plots. Though the garden now exists as a shadow of its former self, the surviving planting plans are remarkably complete. The triple avenue of trees between the house and road consist of a grand selection of dessert and cooking apples, pears, medlars and quinces. The entrance drive was bordered with rectangular beds of shrubs, rosa lucida, cassia, weigela, scotch briar, forsythia, laurel, broom and golden privet. The dry stone walls of the gravel entrance court were hung with ferns, pinks, valerian, catmint, aubretias, columbines and candytuft. To the South and East of the house there was wild planting of holly, rambling roses, amelanchier, rhododendrons, perfumed yellow azalea pontica, with groups of white broom, arbutus and water elder in the damp patches. In kitchen gardens vegetables and flowers were always divided by espaliers of apples and pears. Flower borders taking a quarter of the width of the plot would be at their best in high or late summer (her own vegetable garden at Munstead Wood was trimmed with great sweeps of Michaelmas daisies), but Barton St. Mary’s has an edging of santolina, white pinks and dicentra eximia (white) with African marigolds, snap dragons, coreopsis and lychnis chalcedonica backed by delphiniums, hollyhocks and rudbeckia (Golden Glow). (Amery et al., 1981, cat no. 147)

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.

Also Cited In

Williamson E, Hudson T, Musson J, Nairn I (2019) Sussex: West. The Buildings of England. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Gradidge, R. (1982) Edwin Lutyens: Architect Laureate. London: Allen & Unwin.

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

BARTON ST. MARY, EAST GRINSTEAD. 1912. Country Life (Archive : 1901 – 2005), 31(800), pp. axxiii, axxiv, axxvii.

Listing Grade

II

Listing Reference

1249133

Client

Sir G Munro Miller