Woodrow High House

None recorded

Park or garden

Coherent areas of land designed and/or managed for leisure purposes.

Asset type

Eighteenth and nineteenth century park and gardens surrounding Woodrow High House

Rarity

The grotto and dell are significant features possibly surviving from the earlier C18 gardens.

Architectural and Artistic Interest

Architectural interest: The site is focussed on the C18/early C19 Regency‐style house (listed Grade II). Other estate structures are typical ancillary buildings including the garden walls and the service structures. The most notable structure is the unusual sunken grotto (listed Grade II) which, although neglected, retains much of its structure, character and complex and unusual internal decoration in its original setting. The origins of the grotto are unclear and it may be of C18 or early C19 construction. Artistic interest: A typical example of an early‐mid‐C19 villa landscape surrounded by a variety of formal and informal gardens and pleasure grounds, modest park and kitchen gardens, whose notable mature tree planting includes a variety of ornamental species including a large specimen yew. The climax is a pleasure ground comprising a dell, with a fine sunken grotto, leading to a raised Yew Walk affording views within the site. The grotto is typically placed in a sunken setting, intended to be encountered as a surprise in a gloomy wooded dell before returning to the wider views along the Yew Walk. The garden was designed in the early‐mid‐C19 when villa gardens were becoming a major part of garden design, both in rural and urban situations. At this time the prolific writer JC Loudon published much advice for the expanding middle classes on designing villa gardens at various scales, principally emulating at small scale the pleasure grounds of country house landscapes. In his The Suburban Gardener, and Villa Companion (1838, pp.170‐71) he set out four classes of villas and how the gardens of each should best be laid out. Woodrow corresponds to the first class, which varied in area from 10 acres upwards including a lawn and pleasure‐ground and also a park (or farm) with the house standing at some distance from the entrance gate.

Group Value

One of a group of Chiltern villa gardens including Brands House and Castle Hill House (Wycombe Museum).

Historic Interest

The documentary evidence for the C18 and C19 development of the design is of considerable interest. There is a strong geographic link with the adjacent Shardeloes Park, but it is unclear how close the historic and design links were.

Archaeological Interest

The identified archaeology is of local significance as far as it is understood to date. The site has been occupied since at least 1600. The ditch on the western boundary of the garden may be a pre‐existing enclosure ditch that was reused in the ornamental design, which may continue to the north, east and south. Archaeological potential exists for lost ornamental features including former approaches south of the house, also garden paths, walls and other built elements.

11 Jan 2023

11 Jan 2023