A walk round Dyrham Park is a delight at any time of year, writes Andrew Swift. But in October, with the trees in their burnished glory, leaves rustling underfoot and pears from its orchards being pressed to make perry, the sights and smells of autumn put an added spring into the step…
Dyrham is justly renowned for its grand and sweeping vistas, but it also has a wealth of hidden corners and secluded spaces. Walking round Dyrham, you’re also reminded, time and again, that you’re walking through history. Dyrham Park is a monument to the taste and ambition of one man – William Blathwayt, a high ranking government official and colonial administrator, who inherited a rundown Tudor manor house – along with ‘a very great fortune’ – through his wife Mary Wynter, whom he married in 1686. He wasted no time in drawing up plans for a new mansion, keeping only the great hall from the old mansion, discreetly tucked out of sight at the back.
By the time the new house was finished, Blathwayt’s career had flourished and he decided something grander was needed. His solution was to commissioned a larger house behind the first one, linked to it by the great hall (pictured, left), creating a mansion like no other, with two fronts and a disorienting internal layout.
But, if his bipartite house was designed to impress, the gardens around it were designed to dazzle. Inspired by the Dutch-style gardens then in vogue, and mindful that England now had a Dutch king, at Dyrham Blathwayt created, on a steep Gloucestershire hillside, one of the most splendid gardens in England. Sadly, after his death they fell into neglect and were eventually landscaped out of existence. Today, the house, which remained in the Blathwayt family until 1956, genteelly fading, is, thanks to a monumental restoration effort by the National Trust, a time capsule of a long forgotten age. The parkland surrounding it, however, can only hint at the glory which has gone, but hints, in a setting as dramatic as Dyrham’s, can be remarkably potent.
There are a multitude of ways of exploring Dyrham’s 274 acres, but the 2.5 mile walk suggested here – with the option of visiting the house partway round or at the end – breaks you in slowly, by setting off along quiet and somewhat unassuming country paths, past a nature-inspired sculpture trail, and leaving the more dramatic sights until later.
Exploring the grounds
Having left the car park and passed through visitor reception, immediately turn left along a grassy track through an avenue of limes, planted in the 1980s to replace elms lost to Dutch elm disease in the 1970s. After 350m, follow the track as it curves right and passes the first of a series of tree sculptures by the Bristol based wood carver Andy O’Neill. Views now open up north-westward over the parkland as you draw nearer to the edge of the escarpment.
After another 400m the track starts dropping downhill alongside a drystone wall, before steepening and curving northward through ancient copses to emerge before the east front of the house. Turn left through a gate beside a cattle grid and head for the orangery, on whose walls hang engravings of the gardens once visible from its windows. They show how the sweeping contours of a Gloucestershire hillside were subdued by the rectilinear formality of avenues, parterres and canals.
Looking through those windows today, though, you can see that nothing has survived, nothing except for a distant statue of Neptune, high and dry atop the grass-grown course of a lost cascade. Go down steps beside the orangery to see, through a gateway on the right, how the great hall joins the two houses together. Through the archway ahead is a courtyard where you find a tea room and a cottage-style garden in an adjoining courtyard to the right.
The archway ahead leads to wide lawns and clipped hedges. To the left is the orchard, ahead lies a large pond, while to the right is the West Garden, recently created but inspired by 17th-century designs. If you want to visit the house, you can either do so now or at the end of your walk – bearing in mind that last entry is at 4pm (3pm from 27 October).
North of the house is St Peter’s Church, atop a high revetment constructed when the ground in front of it was scooped away to make way for Blathwayt’s mansion. The steps to the left of the revetment lead up to the church, where there are some fascinating monuments, as well as to a path along which you will find a doorway leading to ‘Mr Blathwayt’s Lost Terraces’.
These terraces, once lined with flower borders, fountains and statues, were abandoned years ago and were until recently impenetrable. In the past decade, however, the removal of tons of earth, stone and rubble, along with dense thickets of brambles, has opened them up again. Now, this enchanted wooded enclave is one of the highlights of a visit to Dyrham.
At the top of the terraces, go through a gate and head up a grassy track to a toposcope which commands a prospect stretching from the Mendip Hills to the Black Mountains. As you carry on in the same direction, you will see some very different lost terraces running along the hillside to the north – strip lynchets, a legacy of when these upland pastures were ploughed for cultivation in medieval times. Above them, on the summit of the hill, is the site of an iron age hillfort where the West Saxons are believed to have defeated the Britons at the Battle of Dyrham in AD577.
After 350m, turn right alongside a fence and carry on in the same direction for 300m. When you meet a stony track, turn right to head down to the Old Lodge, where there is another tea room and a play area. Turn left here to follow a path steeply downhill.
At the bottom, head straight on uphill following a sign for the car park. After a few metres you will see a culvert on the left. As you carry on uphill, you will see that behind the culvert lies a pond which supplied water for Neptune’s grand cascade.
A little further on, you come to a tarmac drive, with a view of the house, embowered by trees, far below. Here you have a choice of either following the drive down to the house, past some of the oldest and grandest trees in the park, or turning left to return to the car park.
akemanpress.com; all photos courtesy of Andrew Swift
