History
The
rich history of Orchardleigh dates back to the Doomsday Book, and is one of
the most unspoilt English Country Estates.
Orchardleigh’s
indefinable English charm is testimony to the estate changing family
ownership only twice in 800 years. Veiled in a tranquil bowl of parklands
and lakes its horizon a sweeping backdrop of rolling hills, the Poet
Laureate
Sir Henry Newbolt
was inspired to write his finest works from his love of Orchardleigh.
Orchardleigh House was built in 1855-1858 to the designs of T.H. Wyatt for
William Duckworth. Girouard’s short description of the house states
"A large
Elizabethan house, Stone built, symmetrical garden front, the rest
irregular".
The
house is an example of the briefly fashionable
combination of Elizabethan and French styles, often described as
“nouveau-riche.“ This style, which was popular in the mid-century, English
Style, seen at Cragside. It has been ignored in many histories of the
Victorian period and yet it was extremely popular, and deserves greater
appreciation and understanding.
The
house is not, by country house standards, large. Duckworth was clearly
building a family home, whose character was partly conditioned by the heir
being
acurate. However, corridors were
stencilled by Crace and Morants supplied
such elements as the mirror and curtain pelmets for the drawing room. There
is also a stable block and an octagonal kitchen garden with glasshouses some
distance from the house. A woodland walk led from the house to the formal
entrance into the kitchen garden. After Wyatt’s work on the estate was
completed Devey was employed to build various cottages on the estate and
park farm.
The Church of St Mary, adjacent to the site of the
earlier
house, and now on an island in the lake, was restored under the supervision
of John Oldrid Scott in 1878. For the historian Orchardleigh is exciting
because of the survival of the service wing virtually intact. It retains the
kitchen, with ranges, dressers, and warming cupboards; a full board of
service bells; and, most remarkably, the servants’ sleeping cabins, which
resemble stable accommodation. The floor plan has not been altered. Although
the later Duckworths tried their
hardest
to down-play the Victorian character of the house by refurnishing the house
with Georgian or earlier pieces they did not indulge in major alterations.
It also, at the time of the death of the last Duckworth to live there,
retained a mature park, landscaped, possibly by Humphrey Repton, before the
existing house, but re-cast by W.P. Ayres.
Orchardleigh Stones at
Murtry Hill Farm
The
farmer is happy to let you walk his field edge and chats about the funny
folk who visit.
The barrow is supposed to be immovable and a golden coffin is buried
inside. 
And as Folklore has it It’s haunted by a lady in
white. The Orchardleigh stones are mentioned in ‘The Sun and the Serpent’
as one of the sites on the cross-England ley line of St Michael/Mary. If you
go in for such things.
Orchardleigh -
from The National Gazetteer of Great Britain and Ireland
(1868) Transcribed by Colin Hinson © 2003
"ORCHARDLEIGH, a parish in
the hundred of Frome, county Somerset, 2 miles N. of Frome, its railway
station and post town. The parish, which is of small extent, is situated 2
miles W. of the road from Bath to Weymouth, and is partly bounded by the
river Frome.
The soil consists of loam and marl on a subsoil of limestone.
There is no village, only a few farmhouses.
The land is entirely pasture
and woodland. The greater portion of the parish is included in the park.
The living is a rectory in
the diocese of Bath and Wells, value £167. The church
is a small Norman edifice of great antiquity, and has a tower containing one
bell. The interior of the church contains some monuments of the Champneys
family. The register dates from 1670. A Sunday-school is held at the church.
Orchardleigh Park, the principal residence, is situated in well-wooded
grounds, which comprise nearly 800 acres, and are adorned by an artificial
lake of 28 acres.
William Duckworth, Esq.,
J.P., is lord of
the manor and sole landowner."
