By Kind Permisson of Lord and Lady Cranborne

A garden tour will be led by Lady Georgiana Campbell, Viscount Cranborne’s sister. The house is not included in the visit.

This delightful garden surrounds the Manor house, originally built as a royal hunting lodge for King John around 1207. In 1604 the Manor was acquired by Robert Cecil, 1st Earl of Salisbury and the garden was laid out by Mounten Jennings and John Tradescant who supplied many of the original plants. Throughout a series of intimate and varied rooms connected by walks and views of local architecture, this romantic and quintessentially English garden still retains elements of the original C17th formal design. More recently, it was given a fashionable Arts and Crafts makeover in the early C20th and then in 1948 the self-taught garden designer Mollie, Viscountess Cranborne took over and spent the next 24 years transforming the garden, introducing organic and ecological principles, years ahead of her time.