Day visit to Chipping Campden Manor House gardens

VISIT TO CHIPPING CAMPDEN, Glos.

Friday, 23 June 2017, 11am-3.30pm

An opportunity for a privileged and detailed look at the remaining buildings and site of Sir Baptist Hicks’s manor house and important Jacobean gardens. Hicks (1551?-1629), an exceptionally wealthy mercer who provided finance to the king, chose this beautiful small Cotswold town for one of the most spectacular of houses and gardens of the early seventeenth century, constructed from 1613. Only a fragment of the house survives, but the gate and porter’s lodges, and the banqueting houses at each end of the long terrace remain and have been restored by the Landmark Trust. The great terraced gardens, created at the same time as the house, were recorded in a seventeenth century bird’s eye view which is known through some later copies. The terracing and other physical features remain on the ground, providing accurate evidence of the appearance of this important garden, and throwing light on other fashionable gardens of the period. Courtesy of the Landmark Trust, we will be given access to the surviving buildings and the whole site, which included a parterre, an orchard, canal, water parterre, and viewing mount, and hear about further investigation currently being carried out by archaeologists. Our visit will start with a view of the impressive monuments to Hicks and his daughter and son-in-law, Edward Noel, in St James’s church.

PROGRAMME

Leaders: Caroline Stanford, BA (Oxon), MA, MSc, FSA, Landmark Trust, and Paula Henderson PhD, FSA, independent architectural and garden historian.

11am Meet at St James’s Church, Church Street, Chipping Campden, GL55 6JG

for coffee/tea

11.30am View the Hicks monument, attributed to the circle of Nicholas Stone,

and the ‘Resurrection’ monument to Hick’s daughter and her husband

Edward Noel (1664) by Joshua Marshall, as well as the pulpit and lectern

donated by Hicks.

12pm Leave church and visit Banqueting Houses and Almonry on siteof

Chipping Campden Manor House

1-1.45pm Lunch at the Eight Bells Inn, Church Street, Chipping Campden:

sandwiches, strawberries and cream and a soft drink.

1.45pm Walk the landscape, including Juliana’s Gateway, water parterre and Coneygree

3pm Meet representative from Chipping Campden Historical Society on site for report on recent archaeological finds

3.30pm Depart from site of Manor House. Option to have tea in Chipping Campden and/or visit The Guild of Handicrafts Museum house in the eighteenth-century barn.