Munstead,
Surrey - Munstead Wood
19th century
Click on photos to enlarge.
Notes in italics from Surrey by Ian Nairn and Nikolaus Pevsner,
Revised by Bridget Cherry (1971),
Yale University Press, New Haven
and London. |
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Munstead
No village, simply an area of thickly wooded hills above Godalming.
In the
late C19 it became famous for the country houses built there, largely by
Lutyens and largely under the sponsorship of Gertrude Jekyll. ... |
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Munstead
Wood, 1896, is Gertrude Jekyll's own house designed for her by Edwin
Lutyens and completed in 1896. It is set in a large wooded garden
developed by Jekyll over many years. At
Munstead Wood Lutyens's distinctive free Tudor style is already fully
formed - though not fully worked out- in a kind of small-scale
anticipation of the masterpieces of the next few years. The house was
built of local Bargate sandstone and weathered tiles so that the house
would not look 'new'.
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The
house is U-shaped ...The internal court or spatial kernel occurs here, in
the well of the U, most successfully done, with Bargate stone sides and a
completely unexpected half-timbered first-floor gallery across the middle.
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There is a second court for the kitchen entrance, partly open to the sky
for light and ventilation. The main
entrance to the house is through an arch in a wall forming an extension of
the east side.
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The
house was doubtless originally intended to be integral with the gardens,
the total effect that of continuous give-and-take between landscape and
architecture. Gertrude Jekyll revived or invented the image of the
informal English cottage garden ...
There are many distinct parts to the large garden, all flowing
effortlessly into each other. The stone terracing is a distinctive feature
of all Jekyll/Lutyens collaborations. The Main Border of the garden, some
way from the house is about 200 feet long and fourteen feet wide and
backed by a Bargate stone wall.
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Gertrude Jekyll's grave,
designed by Lutyens, at the nearby church
The
Lutyens Trust - more about Edwin Lutyens
More
about Gertrude Jekyll at the Museum of Garden History
Map
for Munstead
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