Hope End, Ledbury, Herefordshire, England

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

A picturesque landscape by J C Loudon associated with a country house, later largely demolished, which he designed at the same time. That landscape lies within a larger and older deer park, with Victorian over-planting.

LOCATION, AREA, BOUNDARIES, LANDFORM, SETTING

Hope End lies about 4 kilometres north of Ledbury in the lee of the Malvern Hills 3 kilometrs to the east. Locally the landscape is one of valleys and woods, and Hope End Hotel, on the site of and incorporating parts of the 18th- and early 19th-century houses, lies at the intersection of a Y-plan arrangement of small valleys with the foot of the Y to the south-east. The valleys and the Cradley Brook, which rises as a spring to the north of the Hotel, drain in that direction.

The 18th- and 19th-century park was bounded to east and west by the minor roads which meet at the hamlet of Petty France to the south. To the west and north the park was defined by topographical constraints, with the ground falling away steeply into woodland (Raycomb and Berrington woods). The northern limit of the park was Oyster Hill (211 metres), from which panoramic and distant views north and west are obtained, as well as back south over the park itself. In the late 19th century the summit of the hill lay outside the park; originally it probably lay within.

The registered area, essentially the late 19th-century park, is roughly 100 hectares.

REFERENCES Used by English Heritage

Country Life, 144 (19 September 1968), pp 715- 17

D Whitehead, Notes on Hewell Grange [noting Hope End Quarry Garden] (copy in EH file)

Maps

OS 6" to 1 mile: Herefordshire sheet 35 NE, 1st edition 1886; sheet 36 NW, 1st edition 1886; sheet 36 SW, 1st edition 1891

OS 25" to 1 mile: Herefordshire sheet 36.9, 2nd edition 1904

Archival items

Survey, 1791 (F84/21); Plan, 1848 (K19/1), (Herefordshire Record Office)

Copies of early 19th-century drawings of house and grounds and 1832 sale particulars held at Hope End Hotel.  

Description written: 1998

Edited: August 1999