Blackdown House, Haslemere, England

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

An early to mid-19th-century garden, with surviving 18th-century and possibly earlier features and with early 20th-century additions, set within mid-19th-century parkland.

LOCATION, AREA, BOUNDARIES, LANDFORM, SETTING

Blackdown Park lies about 4km south-south-west of Haslemere, midway between the villages of Fernhurst, to the west on the A286 and Northchapel, to the east on the A283. The registered site comprises qround 7 hectares of formal and ornamental gardens around Blackdown Park and within Blackdown Copse and about 47 hectares of surrounding parkland with several small woods.

The site lies on the lower, south-facing slopes of Black Down, a high sandstone promontory which projects southwards, affording panoramic views over the Rother valley to the South Downs. On its eastern side the parkland is cut by a shallow, south-east-running stream valley.

A narrow lane running west to east beneath the steeply rising wooded slopes of Black Down forms the site's northern boundary. To the west, agricultural fencing and boundary tree belts enclose the site from the wooded farmland beyond while to the south and south-east the parkland merges into farmland with hedges and copses. A belt of pasture and the buildings of Blackdown Farm abut the eastern boundary with woodland on rising ground beyond.

REFERENCES Used by English Heritage

Gardener's Magazine 5, (1829), pp 579-81

D G C Elwes, A History of the Castles, Mansions and Manors of Western Sussex (1876), p 141

Victoria History of the County of Sussex IV, (1953), pp 72-3

I Nairn and N Pevsner, The Buildings of England: Sussex (1965), p 106

Sussex Archaeological Collections 105, (1967), p 46

Maps

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

C and J Greenwood, Map of the County of Sussex from an actual survey ..., 1" to 1 mile, surveyed 1823-4

Tithe map for Lodsworth parish, 1841 (West Sussex Record Office)

Tithe map for Lurgashall parish, 1840 (West Sussex Record Office)

OS Old Series, 1" to 1 mile, published 1813

OS 6" to 1 mile: 1st edition published 1874-8; 2nd edition published 1895; 3rd edition published 1913

OS 25" to 1 mile: 1st edition published 1875; 2nd edition published 1895; 3rd edition published 1912

Archival items

Sale catalogue for Blackdown Estate, 1950 (E460), (West Sussex Record Office)

Photographs of house, c 1870s (E460), (West Sussex Record Office)

S H Grimm, Mr Yalding's house on Blackdown nr Farnhurst, (Add Mss 5675 fos 1, 2 & 5; 7, 4 & 6), (British Museum)

Newspaper article, October 1969 (copy on EH file) 

Description written: July 1997

Amended: January 2000

Edited: June 2000