Gardeners World episode 17 2002

Gardeners World episode 17 2002: Alan Titchmarsh and Gardeners World team visit The Abbey House Gardens in in Malmesbury. Abbey House Gardens is a country house garden in Malmesbury, Wiltshire, England, covering 5 acres (2.0 ha). Privately owned, the gardens – but not the house itself – are open to the public seven days a week from late March until late October. It is one of the main tourist attractions in the town.

Gardening show packed with good ideas, tips, advice from experts and timely reminders to get the most out of your garden, whatever its size or type.

Gardeners World episode 17 2002

The Abbey House Gardens

Abbey House dates from the 16th century, built on 13th century foundations, with some evidence of a substantial house on the site as early as the 11th century. It has been extensively renovated and extended since, particularly in Tudor times.

The site is adjacent to Malmesbury Abbey, which was founded in the 7th century and completed in its present form by the 12th century. The house was possibly begun in the 13th century as the dorter (domitory) and reredorter (latrine) of the abbey. In 1539, the abbey was sold by Henry VIII to a local clothier, William Stumpe, who also bought the site and lived in it himself. In 1542, Stumpe or his son James rebuilt the home in the Tudor style; the old section of the house remains mostly unchanged since then. The lower parts of the 13th-century building survive in the undercroft.

The house and its grounds were handed down through the Stumpe family, which by the time of the English Civil War had married into the Ivey family. The house remained in private hands and in the 1920s was bought by Captain Elliot Scott McKirdy, who (with architect Harold Brakspear) enlarged the house to its current size of 12,637 square feet (1,174.0 m2) by adding a nursery wing and servants’ quarters, keeping the same exterior style. The building was recorded as Grade I listed in 1949. The house was bought in 1968 by the Deaconess Community of St Andrew, who ran it as a base for parish ministry and as a home for its elderly sisters and guests until 1990.