Orchards, Guildford, England

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

An example of a late 19th-century house and garden in the Surrey vernacular style, resulting from a collaboration between Edwin Lutyens and Gertrude Jekyll.

LOCATION, AREA, BOUNDARIES, LANDFORM, SETTING

Orchards is situated 2km south-east of Godalming, on Munstead Heath Road which runs from south-west to north-east linking the settlements of Munstead Heath and Shalford. The roughly six hectare site comprises formal gardens around the house, merging into woodland to the west and south, with meadows to the north-east. The site is enclosed by wire fencing. Miss Jekyll described the setting thus: 'On the sandy soil of the west Surrey hills, where one of their many valley-folds runs up to the edge of a half-mile wide, well-wooded and sheltered plateau, is this newly built house. The twenty-six acres of land on which it stands are for the most part of open forest character, with groups of well grown oaks ... Eastward is an open view towards Dorking and Leith Hill over a rough field, at whose further end the stone for the house has been quarried.' (Country Life 1901).

REFERENCES Used by English Heritage

Country Life, 10 (31 August 1901), pp 272-9; 23 (11 April 1908), pp 522-31

L Weaver, Houses and Gardens by E L Lutyens (1913, repr 1998), pp 23-34

G Jekyll, Garden Ornament (1918, repr 1994), pp 146, 293, 396-7, 424

F Jekyll, Gertrude Jekyll A Memoir (1935), pp 160-3

J Brown, Gardens of a Golden Afternoon (1982), pp 56-8, 163

J Brown, Lutyens and the Edwardians (1998), pp 32-5

S Festing, Gertrude Jekyll (1994), pp 159-62

Maps

OS 6" to 1 mile: 2nd edition published 1897; 3rd edition published 1919

OS 25" to 1 mile: 1st edition surveyed 1871, published 1878; 2nd edition published 1897; 3rd edition published 1916; 1936 edition

Archival items

Lutyens drawings, RIBA Library

Jekyll Notebook No 15 (Godalming Museum)
 

Description written: June 1999

Edited: October 2002