Amport Park, Amport, England

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

Formal terraces with water features, designed in 1923 by Sir Edwin Lutyens to complement a mid-19th-century house and planted by Gertrude Jekyll, with adjacent mid-19th-century pleasure grounds and overlooking parkland of late 18th- and early 19th-century origin.

LOCATION, AREA, BOUNDARIES, LANDFORM, SETTING

Amport Park is situated some 6 kilometres west of Andover and 1.5 kilometres south of Thruxton village, off the main A303, Andover to Amesbury road and adjacent to the south-west edge of Amport village. The 99 hectare registered site, which comprises about 8 hectares of formal terraced gardens and informal pleasure grounds and about 91 hectares of parkland and woodland, lies on gently undulating ground which falls south-eastwards from the house to incorporate a shallow, south-west to north-east dry valley. North-west of the Portway, a Roman Road which cuts through the south-eastern third of the park, the site is bounded by minor lanes largely fringed with internal tree belts or woodland, with further lightly wooded farmland beyond. To the north-east of Furzedown Lane, St Mary’s church and village housing, including that within the walls of Amport Park’s former kitchen garden (excluded from the registered area), form the boundary and setting. South of the Portway the park is enclosed by narrow boundary tree belts with wooded farmland beyond.

REFERENCES Used by English Heritage

Victoria History of the County of Hampshire IV, (1911), pp 337-9

Country Life, 25 (13 February 1909), p 251

N Pevsner and D Lloyd, The Buildings of England: Hampshire and the Isle of Wight (1967), pp 78-9

J Brown, Gardens of a Golden Afternoon (1982), pp 141-5, 174

Maps

Isaac Taylor, A Map of Hampshire, 1" to 1 mile, 1759

Thomas Milne, Hampshire or the County of Southampton, 1" to 1 mile, 1791

C and J Greenwood, A Map of the County of Southampton, 1" to 1 mile, 1826

Tithe map for Amport parish, 1839 (Hampshire Record Office)

Enclosure map, 1846 (Hampshire Record Office)

OS Old Series 1" to 1 mile, published c 1817

OS 6" to 1 mile: 1st edition surveyed 1872-3; 2nd edition published 1896/7; 3rd edition published 1911/12

OS 25" to 1 mile: 1st edition 1873; 2nd edition 1896; 3rd edition 1910

Archival items

Copies of Gertrude Jekyll's garden drawings (folder 173) are held on microfilm at the National Monuments Record (originals held at Reef Point, USA).

Photographs, around 1960s (at Amport Park)