Trentham Gardens
From Biocrawler, the free encyclopedia.
Trentham Gardens are formal Italianate gardens, and an English landscape park, south of Stoke on Trent. The house has been demolished and Trentham Gardens is now a public park.
The gardens and park at Trentham currently cover some 300 acres (1.2 km²). Their parkland setting and lake were designed as a serpentine park by Capability Brown in 1759, overlying an earlier formal design attributed to Charles Bridgeman. However, Trentham Gardens are now principally known for the surviving formal gardens laid out in the 1840s by Sir Charles Barry, who also created Italianate gardens at Harewood House and Cliveden.
As of 2005 Trentham is part way through a major redevelopement as a leisure destination. This includes restoration of the Italian Gardens and the woodlands, shops and a monkey world attraction. There are plans to rebuild Trentham Hall as a five star hotel.
Trentham Hall
As for the former days of Trentham Hall, William White wrote 1851: "Trentham Hall is the principal residence of the Most Noble George Granville Leveson Gower, Duke of Sutherland, Marquess of Stafford, Earl Gower, Viscount Trentham, and Hereditary Sheriff of Sutherland. It is an elegant mansion, situated near the village in a park of 500 acres (2 km²). It has been entirely rebuilt during the last 14 years, and now has an elegant stone front and a lofty square tower. The late hall was erected about 120 years ago, after the model of Buckingham House, in St James's Park, but it was considerably altered and improved by the first Marquess of Stafford, from designs by Henry Holland, who gave a new and imposing feature to the whole. The present mansion is on a larger and more magnificent plan and the gardens rank amongst the finest in England." (History, Gazetteer and Directory of Staffordshire, Sheffield, 1851).
External link
- Official site (http://www.trenthamleisure.co.uk/)
