architecture, belvedere, Folly, garden, Grotto, landscape, Rustic shelter, Summerhouse, Temple, Tower

Kyre Park, near Tenbury Wells, Worcestershire

The grounds of Kyre Park were laid out in the second half of the 18th century for the Pytts family. A roughly horseshoe string of ponds was created, with ornamental cascades and bridges, and this landscape formed the backdrop to pageants and garden parties in the Edwardian era. In 1930 the estate was sold, and a series of institutional tenants then occupied the house. In the 1980s the depressing phrases ‘semi-ruinous’ and ‘partially collapsed’ were used to describe a Hermit’s Cave and a tunnel. But by the end of the century Kyre Park had found its saviours…

architecture, Folly, garden, landscape, Rustic shelter, South Yorkshire, Summerhouse

Deffer Wood summerhouse, Cannon Hall, Barnsley, South Yorkshire

Deffer Wood summer house, Cannon Hall, Barnsley

Root houses, so named because they incorporated natural materials such as tree trunks, branches, bark, moss or heather, became key features of gardens and parks in the 18th century. Richard Payne Knight summed up the genre in his poem The Landscape in 1794

The cover’d seat, that shelters from the storm,
May oft a feature of the landscape form,
Whether composed of native stumps and roots,
It spreads the creeper’s rich fantastic shoots;