Lyveden New Bield, Oundle, England

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

HISTORIC DEVELOPMENT

The earliest settlement at Lyveden dates to the C10 or C11, and consisted of at least two villages, apparently deserted in the course of the C13. The earthworks of one of these can be seen on mid C20 aerial photographs to the north-east of Lyveden House, the gardens of which were laid out over the ridge and furrow of the open fields. The manor of Lyveden was acquired by Thomas Tresham (d. 1471) of Rushton in about 1468. In the later Middle Ages the practice of law and service at Parliament brought the family wealth and prominence, and over the following century the Lyveden estate was gradually extended. In 1540 a licence was granted to Thomas' grandson, also Thomas Tresham, to impark 120 acres of wood, 250 acres of pasture and 50 acres of meadow, bounded to the north by Harley Way. A well preserved section of the park pale defines the boundary to the south of Lyveden New Bield. It seems that Lyveden House, known as Lyveden Old Bield, had been built by this date, replacing the moated medieval manor house. Linked moats oriented north-north-west, are visible on aerial photographs to the north-west of the later moated orchard, the southernmost of which straddles the line of its unfinished west arm. Lyveden Old Bield, listed at Grade I, is an L-plan building of two storeys with attics, of ashlar with a stone-slated roof, and with large mullioned and transomed windows. The house incorporates a fragment of a C16 building with a very substantial south range added by Lewis Tresham (1578-1639), who inherited the estate on the death of his brother Francis. The early-C17 house was U-plan, facing west. It was reduced in size in about 1700, and again in the early C19.

In 1559, on the death of his grandfather, the family estates passed to Thomas Tresham (1545-1605). Tresham had been brought up in the devoutly Catholic household of the Throckmorton's, and it seems probable that he was a lifelong Catholic, suffering a succession of fines and periods of imprisonment for the cause throughout his life. His first arrest, on the grounds that he had received mass from and given shelter to the Jesuit missionary Edmund Campion, took place only six years after he was knighted in 1575, and he was almost continuously imprisoned between 1581 and 1593. In 1584 he entailed the greater part of his estate to safeguard it from financially punitive penal laws, reserving only Lyveden for himself and his wife.

In 1593 Tresham was released from house arrest, returning home to Rushton. During the ten months of freedom that followed he began planning the lodge at Lyveden (Lyveden New Bield), one of two buildings that he designed as both an expression and a proclamation of his faith. Rushton Triangular Lodge, begun in 1594 and completed in 1597, is a richly symbolic conceit on the Trinity, while the lodge at Lyveden represents the Passion of Christ and the Virgin Mary. It takes the form of a Greek Cross, and is decorated with inscriptions, emblems and complex numerology. Work began on this building in 1595, and by 1597 part of the ground floor was complete. The plan of the gardens was drawn up according to Tresham's instructions by George Levens, Tresham's steward, surveyor, and clerk of works. In 1596 Tresham was again imprisoned until 1600, and correspondence between himself and his keeper John Slynn in 1597 describes the work then begun on the moated orchard, and refers to elm, sycamore, and walnut walks. In a long and detailed letter Tresham gives instructions for the gardens and landscaping around the Lodge, and shows considerable knowledge of the cultivation, grafting and care of fruit trees in his nurseries, as well as their planting out and staking. The planting of the moated orchard and its circular beds is also mentioned, and discussed again in December 1604 in a letter from Slynn to Tresham. In August of 1605 Robert Cecil described Lyveden as 'one of the finest orchards in England'.

Thomas Tresham died in September of that year, and work on the lodge and gardens ceased. In December his son and heir, Francis, died in the Tower of London, a month after his arrest for his part in the Gunpowder plot. Francis' brother, Lewis, inherited the Tresham estates, gaining full possession of Lyveden on the death of his mother in 1615, when he began the transformation of Lyveden Old Bield. He was succeeded by his son William who died childless in 1643. Lyveden passed to William's wife. In 1649 she married another devout Catholic, John Gage. Because of the family's recusancy the estate was sequestered in 1649, and c1657 Major General Boteler, granted responsibility for Northamptonshire by Cromwell, removed the timbers from the roof of the lodge to build his house in Oundle.

In the following centuries the Lyveden estate changed hands several times, and in 1922 the lodge and 11 ha of land were acquired by the National Trust. Following the publication of the survey of the gardens by Chris Taylor and A E Brown, in 1972 efforts were made to improve the gardens, including the reinstatement of the grass plinth around the lodge. In 1995 work began on clearing scrub, restoring the moat and replanting the lower orchard.