More information : TF 203947. Formal garden earthworks lie around Orford House and are probably of 16th or 17th century date. In plan these garden remains form a series of rectangular compartments that lie together in a square block of 120m side aligned on the house, which is located in the NE corner; but in fact the northern part and the house are separated from the southern part on the flood plain of the stream by a steep and partially wooded natural slope. The northern compartment is defined by very low broad banks to the W and N, cut at the E by a ha-ha going with the later 19th-century extension of the house: a low circular mound on the angle might be a tree mound or could mark the site of a small garden house. A hollow-way or cut to the W alongside the road, while possibly an earlier road alignment, may be a ramp giving external access from upper to lower garden. A straight and sharply defined canal-like feature, 1m deep and now dry, runs the width of the lower garden dividing it in two. Water was fed to its W end by a leat from the stream, 0.5m deep, and controlled by a sluice in a dam at the E, with an outlet channel into the stream beyond. The standing walls here are in local yellow brick, presumably replacing earlier walls. Along its S edge and turning down the leat is a broad raised tree-lined walk only 0.30m high, with an irregularly semicircular platform protruding precisely halfway along. A similar squarish platform at the E end of the walk is overlain by the foundations of later buildings. The broad flat area along the N side of the pond is shaded as a metalled surface in 1854, and tree- planted banks along the W edge of the lower garden are shown as close boundaries then. The present drive from the W overlies ridge-and- furrow, which in the parkland N of the house is much disturbed and smoothed by recent changes including earlier access roads. Features in the field to the W result in part from a small chalk quarry or marl pit at 'a', now filled, and linear scarps perhaps represent access ways. (1-2)
The formal garden earthworks described by the previous authorities were not visible on available air photographs as they were masked by trees. (3) |