Haddon Hall gardens: facts and fancies

Abstract

For two centuries historians have written volumes on the architecture and inhabitants of Haddon Hall. Everything about the house has been studied in great detail—everything, that is, except the gardens. These have received scant attention and in much early writing are treated dismissively, as if they had existed unchanged throughout the eight centuries of the Hall's existence. It took the romantic legend of Dorothy Vernon's escape through the gardens to elope with John Manners, a legend concocted in the early nineteenth century, to focus attention upon the gardens. Only then did they begin to be considered as a creation as fine as the house and in architectural unison with it.