LOCATION, AREA, BOUNDARIES, LANDFORM, SETTING Abbotswood house stands within its park, which extends north-south to the east of the villages of Upper and Lower Swell. Both villages stand on roads from Stow-on-the-Wold, 1 mile to the east: Upper Swell on the B4077 to Broadway, and Lower Swell on the B4068 to Cheltenham. The same roads bound the park, as does a minor road between the two villages down the west side of the park. Running from north to south through the centre of the park is the River Dikler, and the house stands on the east side of its shallow valley with views, especially from the south garden, west and south. The park continues east towards Stow-on-the-Wold along a wooded valley, rising up at its far end to the town’s edge. The area here registered is around 100ha.
ENTRANCES AND APPROACHES The principal approach to the house is via an entrance on the B4077 400m south-east of Upper Swell. The Lodge (listed Grade II) is a one-and-a-half-storey, L-plan building of 1869 by Haywood in the Cotswold style. The adjoining gate piers with wrought-iron gates (listed Grade II) and 2.5m high, snecked rubble, semicircular flanking walls are by Lutyens and of 1902. From here a 200m long drive winds downhill, through shrubberies and specimen trees, to the north forecourt of the house. Some 50m north of the house that drive is joined by one from Lower Swell. This enters the park at the east end of the village where a C19 lodge stands alongside stone gate piers. From here the 1km long drive runs north-east through the park, midway passing the Bowl Farm complex, and across the River Dikler via a stone bridge.
PRINCIPAL BUILDING Abbotswood (listed Grade II) was built in 1867 and remodelled from 1902 by Edwin Lutyens. It is a modestly sized, L-plan building of Cotswold stone, its two arms running around the south and east sides of its forecourt. The main entrance, on the north side of the south wing, comprises Lutyens' most dramatic contribution: a doorway framed by a projecting two-and-a-half-storey gable whose eaves drop almost to ground level. Lutyens also considerably remodelled the west end of the south wing, adding narrow gables to compliment the lily pond terrace which he laid out beneath it. The south, garden front (from the 1867 construction) is fairly plain, with a central door flanked by double-storey bay windows. At the east end of the south range, opening onto the south garden, is a loggia. Although of Lutyenesque style, this post-dates 1913 (CL, 1913). The house is currently (April 2018) undergoing renovation.
The main house to the south of Abbotswood at Bowl Farm dates from around 1800 (listed Grade II), and the farm has several outbuildings including stables around a yard (the north range listed Grade II). To the east of the drive is a creamery by Lutyens of 1912 (listed Grade II) and Kitchen Garden Cottage (early C20) with an associated walled garden (probably constructed at the same time as Bowl Farmhouse).
GARDENS AND PLEASURE GROUNDS An arch in a buttressed yew hedge against the north-west corner of the south range of the house gives access to a flight of steps down into the garden. A short path leads to the west end of a flagged terrace abutting the west end of the south range. The terrace is 25m long from east to west and 14m wide, and has 2.5m high buttressed walls of rubble stone down its north and south sides. Running down the centre of the terrace is a rectangular lily pond (called the 'lily tank' in CL, 1913). At the end of this, set into the house's gable wall, is a semi-circular dripping well with a head of Neptune as the keystone and source of the water which falls into the circular pool below. Herbaceous borders run around the edge of the compartment.
The main formal garden is the roughly square compartment against the south front of the house, overall 65m long north-south by 60m wide. Steps (some semi-circular) from the gardens west of the house lead up to a terrace across the front of the house, from which the whole of the south garden and the parkland beyond is the main view. At the west end of the terrace, looking south, is a summerhouse with two Roman Doric columns to the front and a hipped stone tile roof, originally open-sided but glazed in the mid-C20.
A drystone terrace wall divides the south garden into two halves: north (upper), and south (lower). The north half of the garden is itself subdivided by clipped yew hedges into three compartments. To the centre, and reached by a short flight of steps off the terrace, is a 30m square formal Flower Court, with numerous small flower beds arranged symmetrically around domed yews in the centre of each quarter. Down its west side, and overlooked from the summerhouse at the end of the terrace, is the Rose Garden, 8m wide internally, with box-edged beds. At its north end is a small apsidal pool. Down the east side of the Flower Court, again 8m wide, is the Flagged Parterre, with L-plan rose beds, originally hedgeless (CL, 1913 and 1958).
Steps from the centre of the Flower Court lead down to the Sunk Tennis Lawn, 60m east-west by 35m. A 0.5m tall and 5m wide raised grass walk runs around its edge retained by drystone walls, and around the edge of the raised walk are narrow herbaceous borders. At the south-west corner of the garden, looking back across it and to the house, is an open-fronted, six-sided garden summerhouse, its hipped tile roof supported on circular rustic stone piers. A short flight of semi-circular steps leads down to the tennis lawn. In the centre of that lawn, aligned east-west, is a narrow, rectangular, apsidal-ended lily pool. This post-dates 1913, a photograph of that date (CL, 1913) showing the lawn in use for tennis. In the centre of the south side of the Sunk Tennis Lawn (and hence south garden compartment) are wrought-iron gates on 2.5m high stone piers surmounted with balls. The iron gates give access to a 15m wide lawn, divided from the parkland beyond by a sunk fenced area, almost a shallow ha-ha.
A path runs down the whole of the east side of the garden, flanked by a low stone wall, and aligned on the loggia at the east end of the house. Originally, a pergola rose over the north half of this path, its stone piers (the same as those at the south end of the garden) rising off the wall. Running uphill along the east side of this path is the Heath Garden, part of the original planting. Rock steps carry a path eastwards through this to the Arboretum at the northern boundary.
A herbaceous bed runs along the outside of the west side of the south garden compartment. A path alongside this leads south to a door into the basement storey of the summerhouse whose upper level opens onto the Sunk Tennis Lawn. The lawn to the south of the formal garden continues along its west side. Here it is 50m wide, sloping downhill to the woodland and specimen trees fringing the Stream Garden which occupies the shallow valley running around the north and west sides of the lawn. The north-east end of the Stream Garden, with several small pools and Pulhamite rockwork, adjoins the west side of the north forecourt. West of the forecourt the ground runs uphill, and here the stream runs into the Spring Garden Pool, flanked by a rock garden of Pulhamite features and waterfalls. There is a distinct difference between the character of the rugged rockwork in the Stream Garden, and the sparser placing of rock in the Spring Garden, illustrating how the use of Pulhamite changed during the early C20 (Hitchens, 2012). At its upper, east end is a rustic summerhouse (date unknown). Shrubberies and specimen trees extend northward to the north lodge.
The house of 1867 apparently had little in the way of gardens, and was set in terraced lawns. The planting of the Lutyens garden was the work of Mark Fenwick, initially with Russell Page and later in conjunction with his gardener Fred Tustin who began work there in 1908 and remained into the Fergussons' time. Parts of the formal gardens, including the eastern pergola, are currently (April 2018) undergoing restoration.
PARK Abbotswood house and its formal gardens stands in the centre-north part of the park, which is around one mile long from south-west to north-east and over half-a-mile at its widest point. The park has several distinct characters, from the shallow north-south valley along the River Dikler, prominent with parkland trees; to the east-west valley of open parkland where historic hedge lines and wooded belts are more characteristic. The west side of the park contains the drive north-south, carried over the narrow river by a small stone bridge, possibly early C20. South of Bowl Farm is a small lake, created in 1958, and surrounding the farm are coppices, including Searcham Coppice and ‘The Walks’, and areas of open grassland. Views from the farm to the south west are of the rooftops of Lower Swell, and a section of the parkland here is designated as a Scheduled Monument as evidence of medieval settlement remains on the village edge. A short distance north of the medieval moat on the southern edge of the park is Lady's Well, a so-called healing spring covered with a low, pitched, ashlar cover (listed Grade II).
The central part of the park, immediately south of Abbotswood, has many parkland and specimen trees, including some large veteran oaks and smaller trees planted in the late C20, alongside small groves of trees. It has the character of woodland pasture, and is probably a remnant of the historic parkland owned by the Atkyns family, and before. The principal views from the house are of this area of the park.
To the east of this parkland, the character changes again, to comprise a steep valley with a stream dropping from the east. The banks of the stream are wooded and form a belt through the central part of the eastern half of the park, ending with a coppice at the centre of the entire parkland. The King’s Highway (or Cotswold Ridgeway) was possibly located to the south of the stream, although no obvious evidence survives. In the 1920s a golf course was situated here. The fields running down to the stream are open pasture, with few trees, although remnants of hedge lines are defined by historic hawthorn and oak near to the southern boundary. Along the north boundary is a wooded shelterbelt with a modern gated entrance half way along. Within the field to its south, evidence of a Romano-British Villa was found when excavating for stone for the house in 1862; it is a scheduled monument. The south boundary also has a shelter belt of trees of a more recent date, and all boundaries to the park are defined by dry stone walls, approximately 1.5m high.
KITCHEN GARDEN Brick-walled kitchen gardens stand 150m west of, and upslope from, Bowl Farm, their position relating to Bowl Farm rather than Abbotswood. The main walled garden is 70m square, and slopes downhill from north-west to south-east. The walls (that to the south fell down in the mid-C20 and was not rebuilt) appear to be of the C19 and C20. Lean-to glasshouses along the north wall were rebuilt in the 1990s and the garden remains (2018) in production. There are sheds along the rear of the north wall.
East of the kitchen garden, between it and the creamery, are some old orchard trees, and a new orchard has been planted to the north.