Chenies Manor, (also known as Chenies Place), Amersham, England

The present gardens have been much remodelled by the present owners, and are divided into a number of compartments. These include:

• the sunken garden
• the white garden
• the south border 
• the rose gardens
• the inner court
• the physic garden
• the parterre and yew maze
• the kitchen garden with orchards and penitential maze

The main seasonal plantings are for spring and summer.

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

A small, late 19th-century garden by Edwin Lutyens, thought to be the earliest collaboration between Lutyens and Gertrude Jekyll.

DESCRIPTION

LOCATION, AREA, BOUNDARIES, LANDFORM, SETTING

Chenies Place lies at the northern end of the Chiltern village of Chenies, five kilometres east of Amersham. The site, which covers about four hectares, is bounded to the south by the Chesham to Chenies lane, to the west by a lane leading north to Mill Farm, to the north by water meadows of the River Chess, and to the east by further agricultural land. The site is set on the south side of the Chess valley, with water meadows to the west, north and east, and woodland to the south, and the shallow River Chess flowing from west to east though the bottom of the valley. The land slopes down, south to north, to the mill race of the Chess which runs from west to east through the northern end of the site, with Dodds Mill adjacent to the north-west corner.

REFERENCES

F Dunne, Personal recollections (1888), pp 47-8

Country Life, 39 (17 June 1916), pp 767-8; 176 (22 November 1984), p 1544

L Weaver, Houses & gardens by Sir Edwin Lutyens (1925), pp 7-11

J Brown, Gardens of a golden afternoon (1982), pp 54-55

N Pevsner and E Williamson, The Buildings of England: Buckinghamshire (1994), pp 232-3

Maps

Plan of the Garden at Woodside, Chenies, (Weaver 1925, fig 17)

OS 6" to 1 mile: 1st edition published 1883

    2nd edition published 1900

    3rd edition published 1926

OS 25" to 1 mile: 2nd edition published 1897

    3rd edition published 1923

Description written: November 1997

Amended: July 1998; April 1999

Edited: June 1999