Cadland House, Fawley, England

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

HISTORIC DEVELOPMENT

Up until the early 19th century the site of Cadland House was relatively quiet and cut off, far from major roads and surrounded by marshes and heathlands, a haven for hunting and fishing which was the reason that Robert Drummond (died 1804) acquired the manor of Cadland in 1772. Later in the 1770s, Robert Drummond, senior partner of Drummonds Bank, called in Lancelot Brown (1716-83) and his son-in-law, Henry Holland (1745-1806), both customers of the bank, to design him a new house and park. This commission included the building known as 'The Sea Cottage' and then 'Boarn Hill Cottage', a fishing lodge set in pleasure grounds on the coast about 5 kilometres to the south of Cadland House, as the main house was then known. Holland and Brown produced a bound book, dated 1775, of their designs for Cadland House and Boarn Hill Cottage and for the layout of the lands around both. The pleasure ground is essentially a miniature landscape park to a pattern used by Brown elsewhere on a far more expansive scale with perimeter belts, sheltered walk circuits, clumps, and scattered tree planting. The degree to which this unusual example of his work has survived at Cadland is notable. Substantial documentary and field research in 1982-5 provided the basis for a scheme of replanting and management drawn up by Hal Moggridge of Colvin and Moggridge.

From 1833 onwards, Andrew Robert Drummond (1794-1865) extended the estate to the east by acquiring the neighbouring Eaglehurst estate, and linked Luttrell's Tower to the Cadland estate with ornamental drives and picturesque lodges. He thereby secured the seaboard between the southern and northern sections of the Cadland estate, which might otherwise have been threatened with 19th-century seaside development. He laid out new approaches to Boarn Hill Cottage from the north and undertook a series of improvements at Boarn Hill.

Cadland House was requisitioned by the army during the Second World War, then acquired under the Defence of the Realm Act for an oil refinery and demolished in 1953. From 1953, the name was transferred to Boarn Hill Cottage, which over the years had been transformed into a substantial family home. The property remains (1999) in private ownership.