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Go directly to the illustrated catalogue of fittings and ironmongery of a large Victorian greenhouse click |
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The greenhouse is or perhaps I should say was, considering it's present dilapidated condition, together with the kitchen garden part of the the Rhode Hill Estate at Uplyme, East Devon. Built probably in the early 1880s by the owner John Reginald Charles Talbot who in 1851 had inherited the estate from his father Admiral Sir John Talbot . The greenhouse and gardens provided fruit and vegetables up till and including the time the estate was owned by brother and sister Robert and Monica Wood (not relatives of the present owners). They ran Rhode Hill as a residential domestic science school, a finishing school for young ladies. The produce of the gardens was used by the school.
| In 1969 the estate was sold to Dorset County Council, the main intention being to use Rhode Hill House as a dormitory for girl boarders from the Woodroffe School in Lyme Regis, a state school that took a number of boarders, both boys and girls.
This is when the rot set in. Nearly twenty years later when we bought the walled garden, the surrounding land and the head gardener's house, the greenhouse was beyond repair as a result of vandalism by neglect. |
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The greenhouse being built on the full length of the east facing inside wall of a square one acre walled garden, measures some70 metres in length. The reason that it was not built on the south-facing wall was because the wall runs across the contours at right angles, there being a difference in height of 5.5 metres from end to end. This can be seen in the photograph above, taken from the southwest corner of the garden looking towards the north. |
rhodehill.co.uk
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