Tudor sunken garden revealed at Ashby Castle
Archaeologists and historians studying the remains of a formal garden at Ashby-de-la-Zouch castle in Leicestershire have begun to reveal clues about how the garden, thought to date to the 16th century, would have originally looked.
English Heritage specialists have undertaken an interpretive earthwork survey to examine the surface remains of the garden and geophysical surveys and coring to indicate the nature of the buried remains. Most recently, excavations have taken place in order to answer specific questions raised by the surveys.
In addition to the archaeological work, historians have also been examining documents relating to the castle, its garden and parks, and the Hastings family, who have owned the castle since the late 15th century.
Early results suggest that the garden at Ashby represented one part of a larger formal garden which existed around the castle in the 16th century. The sunken gardens contained flower beds picking out the shape of the sunken areas and bands of coloured sandstone chippings, which may have been laid in a pattern that was meant to be viewed from the castle tower. Another garden building has also been discovered to add to the two that still stand at the ends of the garden terrace.
The excavations, along with the earlier surveys, have also revealed that the garden was modified and reused on a number of occasions after the 16th century and that features, such as the garden wall, were adapted for military purposes during the Civil War.
The combination of the archaeological and documentary research has begun to reveal a garden of national importance where excellent preservation can tell us about many aspects of Tudor gardens that we can only read about in descriptions of the day.
English Heritage is grateful to the Wolfson Foundation for its support for this project under the Wolfson Gardens Challenge Fund.
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