Burley House, Burley on the Hill

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Burley on the Hill has the remains of 17th- and 18th-century formal landscaping around the house and in the parkland and woodland, including a 17th-century avenue and bowling green. Humphry Repton produced a Red Book for the estate in the late 18th century. The site is now in multiple private ownership and the house has been converted to apartments. The walled kitchen garden is now a private residence called Tower House.

  • Brief History

    1694 – 1705: the current Burley House was built for Daniel Finch, the 2nd Earl of Nottingham to replace an earlier building, which was fired in the Civil War. The stable block from the earlier house survived and was incorporated into the new layout.

    1795: George Finch, the 9th Earl, used Humphry Repton to modernise the house’s surroundings, which resulted in a characteristic ‘Red Book’ of his recommendations.  A principal feature of these was the replacement of a series of south facing terraces (built around 1697 according to Pearl Finch (Finch, 1901)) with a single terrace and associated stone retaining wall, extending 30 m from the house and 256m long.  This required the removal of an existing kitchen garden, which seems to have originally been a C18th melon ground, from the west end of the old terraces.

    A fruit garden of around one acre was subsequently created around the original melon ground, below the west end of the new terrace.

    1990s: Burley House was split up into individual apartments and around the same time Tower House was built within the walls of the kitchen garden.

    Two new houses were also built on the site of the fruit garden.

  • Terrain

    Burley House lies 500 metres south of the village, on the crest of a hill which drops sharply away to the west and south.

  • Walled Kitchen Garden

    The 1884 first edition OS map shows a walled kitchen garden of 2.825 acres to the west of the house’s west wing, behind a small plantation near the western boundary of the grounds. This enclosure remains substantially intact. There are mature trees sheltering the W and S sides, which also impose shade on the lower (southern) end of the garden.

    The overall shape may be described as an irregular trapezoid on a N-S alignment – presumably to suit the terrain and the confines of the plot.  The gently sloping area to the N and E of the site contains two glasshouses, with cultivated plots in front and the modern residence beside.  A further brick building built into the N garden wall at the W end has been converted for accommodation. The garden wall between this building and the entrance has a ‘crinkle- crankle’ outline and appears to be original.

    The ground to the S and W slopes away with progressive steepness and is currently laid to lawns and flowerbeds.

    The Journal correspondent refers to a small flower garden, called the Lower Terrace Garden, at the west end of the main terrace but at a lower level. This may be a remnant of one of the C18th terraces and in1874 contained standard roses, peaches and figs against the walls and an old vinery set against the terrace wall. The correspondent suggested this contained vines planted a hundred years previously.  A glasshouse is shown in this position in the 1884 OS map and is also shown on the 1903 and 1930 revisions.  A photograph from the 1930s shows this garden still planted in very similar fashion and an aerial photograph of 1954, recorded in Britain from Above (although the photograph is reproduced from a reversed negative), shows a structure in the same position as the old vinery and the flowerbeds much the same as in the 1930s. The vinery is recorded as ‘derelict’ in 1983 (Burley Estate Site Plan, 1983).

    Below the Lower Terrace, the 1884 map shows a further enclosed garden of around 1 acre having a range of hothouses, 130 feet long, against the south-facing terrace wall with cold frames beyond them.  A pump is marked near the southern boundary. This area appears to be the fruit garden recorded in 1874. The article notes that the range included a 50 feet long peach house, with peach trees trained against the terrace wall and young flat-trained trees in front, a 30ft long vinery with Muscat grapes, and a smaller greenhouse in between for growing cut flowers. The cold frames were used for growing on bedding plants for the many flower gardens and borders around the House – allegedly up to forty thousand per year.  The remainder of this garden was given over to plum trees, gooseberries and raspberries.  The full range of glasshouses is shown on all OS maps from 1884 to 1930 and the 1983 site plan shows all bar a small structure at the western end still remained.

    The area is now taken up by two private houses with domestic gardens.

    Repton, in 1795, made various suggestions for a location for a new kitchen garden, his preferred being one behind the stables to the east (location D).  He listed their respective attractions thus:

    ‘Various situations have been thought of for the kitchen garden, these I shall describe by reference to the map. The spot A, is too much exposed to the west winds, another at B is less objectionable, but it would be too far from the house, and not easily concealed from the plain. The spot at C, is still less objectionable, because it would be totally invisible from every direction and grow well embosomed and sheltered by wood....but the more I have considered the subject, the more strongly I am convinced that the best place for a kitchen garden is the spot marked D. The soil, the aspect, the shelter from west winds, contiguity to the stables, and easy distance from the house, together with its admirable connection from the door on the terrace, seem to render this in every respect the most eligible’. (Repton, 1795)

    As he predicted in his Red Book, his suggestions were not taken up and a new walled garden was built in location A to the west of the house (and well out of sight).

    Serpentine, or crinkle-crankle, walls were popular in Suffolk and Norfolk in late C19th due to influence from Holland, where they probably originated. They were supposed to create mini-suntraps for the fruit trees and offered more wall per yard of length, but a more prosaic benefit may have been that they saved a third of the bricks needed to build them, thus reducing the costs incurred by the Brick Tax of 1784-1851. It is also interesting that a form of crinkle-crankle wall was used in Italy for training melons.

    Current Use

    Tower House and its courtyard stands on the upper level near the current entrance. The adjacent land at the N end of the site contains a freestanding glasshouse and a south-facing lean-to vinery with a brick bothy range behind. Both glasshouses are currently used for growing on tender plants. The northern crinkle-crankle wall has some espalier fruit trees trained against the south-facing side.

    To the S and W of the house, a grassed area has a few fruit trees and a pump-fed rill running down to a pond near the west boundary. There are open cultivated beds below the glasshouses and the current interior paths generally follow the original 1884 quarters style layout.

    Extract from 1884 OS map showing walled kitchen garden to W of the west wing of the house and the fruit garden to the SW below the terrace
    Crinkle-crankle wall showing old entrance and coverted bothy beyond
    View of bothy range with vinery behind and mushroom house at far end
    The interior of the vinery showing the central partition and weights along the back wall that are part of the original mechanism to open areas of the roof
    A half-span glasshouse, now used to grow on tender plants. It was probably the N facing side (a stove house, perhaps) of a full-span glasshouse referred to in the 1874 “Journal of Horticulture”, since rebuilt with modern materials.
    Messenger window adjustment
    Messenger window adjustment
    Messenger window adjustment
    Messenger window adjustment
    Messenger window adjustment
    A small trench through to the outside ground. There are others visible from the outside with arches over them. They were used to train vines into the glasshouse whose roots were planted outside - a fairly common feature of the time. This allowed them to feed the root systems well and to have a raised bed against the back wall for training peaches etc. - not a normal Messenger feature but carried over from the earlier house it replaced.

    See our full research report on the Walled Kitchen Garden here
    Burley House, Burley-on-the-Hill

    <Back to Walled Kitchen Gardens Register

  • Detailed Description

    The following is from the Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest. For the most up-to-date Register entry, please visit the The National Heritage List for England (NHLE):
    Formal, terraced gardens of 17th- and early 18th-century date modified by Humphry Repton in about 1796, and a landscape park associated with a country house.

    Location, Area, Boundaries, Landform, Setting

    The park lies south of Burley village, 5km north-east of Oakham. Burley House lies 500m south of the village, on the crest of a hill which drops sharply away to the west and south. To the north-west the park is bounded by the B668 Cottesmore Road and to the north-east, where the park has a low stone wall, by Exton Lane. The south edge of the park now largely follows the A606, a modern road built along the north shore of Rutland Water, to replace an earlier line 500m to the south lost when the reservoir was created in the mid C20. The area here registered is c 300ha.

    Entrances and Approaches

    There are two approaches from the north. Church Road, lined with mature trees, runs 400m south from Burley village to its church; it runs down the west side of the Burley House complex. In the 1990s a new drive was made to the House from a gateway on Cottesmore Road c 300m north-east of Burley village.

    Elements of the C18 avenue approaches from the east and south remain. Some 400m of the east avenue survives east of the House, continuing the terrace axis. The drive from this to the East Lodge with its stone archway (listed grade II*) on the park boundary 1km to the east no longer survives.

    A round-arched gate on the Stamford Road (the old A606), south of an arm leading west from Burley Reach (the name attached to that part of Rutland Water south of Burley Wood) is early C17 (listed grade II); it lies directly on the line of the southern avenue.

    Principal Building

    Burley House (listed grade I) was rebuilt on the site of the C17 mansion destroyed in the Civil War between 1694 and 1700 for the second Earl of Nottingham, who had travelled in France and Italy in the 1660s and may have been his own architect. It is of Clipsham stone, and although it faces south across its park the approach is to the dramatic north side. This comprises a main four-storey block fifteen bays by seven, with central three-bay pediment and slightly projecting two-bay wings. Short, columned quadrant blocks link this to low, seven-bay offices, off which longer and wider quadrant galleries run to outer thirteen-bay stable ranges, that to the east surviving from the C17 house. Overall the style, of what Pevsner (1960) calls a palace, is Palladian, although the House predates by some twenty years the accepted start of the Palladian Revival. At first work was supervised Henry Dormer (d 1727); in 1697 he was replaced by John Lumley (d 1721), who was still working there on the stables in 1705.

    Burley church (listed grade II*) lies 50m west of the west side of the House, and forms an important element of the overall architectural composition.

    Gardens and Pleasure Grounds

    The great forecourt on the north side of the House, 213m deep from north to south, is grassed, with a drive around the edge. An iron screen with paired entrance gates and gate piers, with flanking pedestrian gates and outer piers of 1700 with ironwork by Josiah Lord (all listed grade II*) runs across the north side of the forecourt. The gates were originally flanked with lodges and walling, swept away in 1795 although not necessarily to Repton's instructions. He however was probably responsible for reinstating the railings on the same line as a divide between the forecourt and the park beyond, and for the line of the drives around the forecourt rather than directly across it.

    A 256m long, 30m wide terrace extends along the south front. A low, stone, balustraded parapet (listed grade II*) stands above a 4m high retaining wall containing shallow arched recesses. Two symmetrical flights of steps with stone balustrades with a sweeping stone rail rise to the central projecting section of the terrace. This represents Repton's adaptation of three tiered terraces constructed c 1700, at the bottom of which was a vast semicircular apron containing a parterre. From a distance the terraces formed an important visual base for the building. The terraces of c 1700 were adapted from a flight of three below the C17 house. A plan of c 1680 shows a bowling green and mount west of the topmost of these. At the base of the C17 terraces was a well, beyond which was the central avenue of a patte d'oie.

    Park

    The House stands near the north-west edge of a roughly circular park c 2km in diameter. North of the House is permanent pasture with a ring of parkland trees looping around its northern side. East of this the north half of the parkland is farmland, mostly arable. Home Farm (listed grade II), built c 1795 by John Nash (1752-1835) for the ninth Earl and extended c 1840, stands on the Cottesmore Road c 750m north-east of the House. Within the one large area of woodland, Crow Spinney, there is a moated site. The southern half of the park, sloping down to Burley Reach, is dense woodland, Burley Wood. Much of this is coniferous plantations. This is cut through with rides and tracks, notably a radiating arrangement in the east half of the wood centred on Eight Riding Tree, and running south from the House on the line of the C17 south avenue. That avenue continues for 300m south of the A6006 before being truncated by an arm of Burley Reach. A small continuation of the registered area south of the water picks up the line of the avenue. Three hundred metres north of the A606 is one triangular fishpond and traces of others, part of a large fishpond and canal complex present by the early C18.

    There was a park at Burley in Norman times; its boundary may be largely conterminous with the later landscape park. The park was improved by the Duke of Buckingham in the 1620s; large numbers of fir trees were planted, probably under the supervision of John Tradescant the elder (d 1638), and the complex arrangement of avenues shown on later maps and illustrations was laid out. By the end of the C17 the village of Burley had largely been removed, although a few houses still stood immediately north of the north court. After the depredations of the Civil War, work on the geometric layout began again c 1690 and was completed by 1724. This was shown on a painting by Tillemans c 1729 (Harris 1979). It was during this phase of work that a great rectangular fishpond, aligned east/west and 650m long, was laid out across the line of the south avenue c 200m north of the gateway on the Stamford Road. The pond now lies beneath the arm of water leading west from Burley Reach.

    Repton was much impressed by Burley's situation and its park. He recommended removing the approach through it from the south. In 1807 the Sanctuary of the Hermit Finch, a thatched gothic folly, was built 800m south-east of the House. It burnt down in 1965.

    A small deer park was created immediately south of the gardens in the late C20.

    References

    Used by English Heritage
    J Horticulture & Cottage Gardener 51, (11 June 1874), pp 468-70
    Country Life, 7 (24 February 1900), pp 240-4
    P Finch, History of Burley-on-the-Hill (1901)
    N Pevsner, The Buildings of England: Leicestershire and Rutland (1960), pp 288-91
    J Harris, The Artist and the Country House (1979), p 233
    P L Ross, The John Tradescants (1984), p 76
    M O'Hagan, Report on Evolution of the Park at Burley-on-the-Hill, Rutland (1989)
    C Thacker, The Genius of Gardening (1994), pp 125, 130
    L Cantor and A Squires, The Historic Parks and Gardens of Leicestershire and Rutland (1997), p 41

    Maps

    Plan of Burley on the Hill, around 1680 (reproduced in Ross 1984, p 76)
    Plan of Burley on the Hill, 1783 (reproduced in Finch 1901)
    OS 6" to 1 mile: 1st edition surveyed 1884, published 1889; 2nd edition surveyed 1902, published 1905; 3rd edition surveyed 1928, published 1931
    OS 25" to 1 mile: 1st edition surveyed 1884, published 1885

    Archival items

    Humphry Repton, Red Book for Burley (private collection)
    The estate and family papers used by Finch were destroyed in a great fire of 1908 although Leicestershire Record Office has several plans and surveys.

    Description written: August 1998
    Edited: June 1999

  • Features

    Bowling Green, Tree Avenue

  • Photos
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  • Detailed History

    The following is from the Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest. For the most up-to-date Register entry, please visit the The National Heritage List for England (NHLE):

    Sir John Harrington, later Lord Harrington, sold Burley on the Hill to George Villiers, first Duke of Buckingham. Between 1620 and his assassination in 1628 Buckingham built a new house next to the church on the summit of a commanding hill and improved the park to the south and east. The property passed to his son, but in 1644 the house was almost burnt to the ground by Roundheads. In 1694 the estate was sold to the Secretary of State to William III, Daniel Finch, second Earl of Nottingham and, in 1729, seventh Earl of Winchelsea. In 1674 he married Lady Essex Riche and in 1685, after her death, Anne Hatton, the daughter of the second Lord Hatton of Kirby Hall, Northamptonshire (see description of this site elsewhere in the Register). On the death of the seventh Earl, Burley passed to his son Daniel, the eighth Earl (died 1769), who was succeeded by his nephew George, the ninth Earl. In 1795 the ninth Earl called in Humphry Repton (1752-1818) to modernise the house's surrounds, and he produced a Red Book. House and grounds were divided into multiple private ownership in the late 20th century.

  • Associated People

    Humphry Repton
    John Lumley
    Joshua Lord
    Henry Dormer
    Samuel Lapidge

  • Official Designations

    The National Heritage List for England: Register of Parks and Gardens
    Reference: GD1338 Grade: II

  • References

    English Heritage Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest, (Swindon: English Heritage, 2008) [on CD-ROM]
    Historic England Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest
    Pevsner, N., The Buildings of England: Leicestershire and Rutland (Harmondsworth; Penguin, 1984)
    The Buildings of England: Leicestershire and Rutland
    Harris, J., The Artist and the Country House (London: Russell Chambers, 1979), p. 233
    The Artist and the Country House