Arundel Castle, Bognor Regis, England

The gardens had been largely neglected before 1987 until the current Duchess permanently moved to the castle and began a programme of restoration.

There are hot and cool herbaceous borders with contrasting foliage plants, a cut flower border which together with the ornamental Victorian kitchen garden supplies the Castle with fresh fruit, vegetables and cut flowers. A lean-to peach house and vinery, originally built in 1850 by Clarke & Hope, has also been restored and houses exotic fruit and vegetables. The sheltered location of the gardens makes it possible for many of the tender perennials such as cannas and salvias to remain in the ground throughout the winter. The Fitzalan Chapel has its own small garden planted in white and there is also a newly planted rose garden in what was once an 18th Century Bowling Green.

The following is from the English Heritage Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest.

Early and mid-19th-century partly walled pleasure grounds developed from former medieval earthworks and with surviving 16th- and 17th-century features, laid out within and around a castle of 11th-century origin and with, on its north side, an extensive late 18th- to early 19th-century walled park.

LOCATION, AREA, BOUNDARIES, LANDFORM, SETTING

Arundel Castle is situated on the northern edge of the town of Arundel, on the east side of the A284. The roughly 478-hectare registered site, comprising about 24 hectares of ornamental gardens and grounds and about 454 hectares of parkland and woodland, occupies a high, north-to-south-running crest of the South Downs which is cut north to south through the centre by a deep valley and a series of south-east-facing dry combes. On its eastern side, the crest drops in a steep escarpment to the level plain of the River Arun valley. Except for a stretch in the south-east corner (southward from Swanbourne Lake) the park is enclosed by a flint wall erected in the 1790s (Banks Assocs 1989). The west boundary wall abuts the A284 road (separated from it by a varying width fringe of trees) beyond which, and also to the north, lies further wooded downland. To the east, the wall abuts the river at the northern end and open farmland further south, the park enjoying extensive views over the valley landscape of hedge-lined meadows and ditches to the Downs east of the gap. At its southern end, the site abuts Mill Road to the east (built in 1894 to replace Mill Lane which ran about 100 metres further west, close under the Castle escarpment) and the town buildings of Arundel.

REFERENCES Used by English Heritage

M A Tierney, The History and Antiquities of the Castle and Town of Arundel (1834)

Country Life, 36 (5 December 1914), pp 746-54; (12 December 1914), pp 782-90; (19 December 1914), pp 814-22; no 21 (23 May 1991), pp 98-100; no 22 (30 May 1991), pp 130-4

I Nairn and N Pevsner, The Buildings of England: Sussex (1965), pp 91-5

B Jones, Follies and Grottoes (1974), p 400

The Connoisseur 197, no 793 (March 1978), pp 172-85

Arundel Castle, Restoration Master Plan for the Gardens and Grounds, (E Banks Associates 1989)

Arundel Castle, guidebook, (Arundel Castle, nd)

Victoria History of the County of Sussex V pt I, (1997), pp 38-55

Maps

Arundel Castle and Lands adjoining, 1778 (Arundel Castle MS RL5)

A Plan of Arundel Castle with the Grounds, Buildings and Estate immediately adjoining, 1855 (Arundel Castle Archive)

W Yeakell and W Gardner, An Actual Topographical Survey ... of the County of Sussex, 1" to 1 mile, published 1778

W Gardner and T Gream, A Topographical Map of the County of Sussex ...,1" to 1 mile, surveyed 1795

OS Old Series, sheet 9, published 1813

OS 6" to 1 mile: 1st edition surveyed 1875-6, published 1879; 2nd edition published 1898; 3rd edition published 1914

OS 25" to 1 mile: 1st edition surveyed 1874-5; 3rd edition surveyed 1912

Archival items

Album of photographs, c 1880 (Arundel Castle MS MD799)
 

Description written: February 1998

Edited: June 2000