The Rotunda at Hestercombe

In early November a small group of us garden designers visited Hestercombe, Edwin Lutyens’ Edwardian gem of a garden.

The secrets of such a grand and famous Grade 1 Listed garden are not easily revealed in one post. And so our visit is described in 4 posts. This one concentrates on The Rotunda which is on the same level as the house.

Here Edwin Lutyens created a circular paved courtyard with a central round pool. The perimeter is described by three, high, free standing sections of wall interspersed with three gateways.

The Rotunda design is per se impossible to photo adequately except from above ( circled in blue).

While this is a delicious space in its own right it is also functional in terms of movement through the garden.

Because this room this links together:

firstly the victorian terrace, seen through the gateway to the right of the above picture

secondly to the left in the above picture,  gives access to the famous grand plat.

The third gateway from the rotunda leads down to The Orangery.

But seen in plan you realize that Edwin Lutyens has played a blinder.

With The Rotunda, he has managed to coherently link together:  the Victorian Terrace, the Grand Plat and the Orangery even though these elements are on different levels and he has been forced by the lie of the land and logistics to place the Orangery on a completely different axis. Clever!

And he does this with what is effectively a spool - the pool - around which you move and choose your exit.

While part of the design success lies in covering these linear awkwardnesses, it is also useful in that it helps screen untidy domestic utilities:

Here, although two of the walls have the circular niches you have seen in the first large photo, the third also has a central pedimented niche successfully masking the detritus behind. He was spatially always going to have to have one long wall and this longest wall

Featuring the pediment is also a splendid focal point

as you come up through from 'the view of views':

He does not really need to achieve anything else, but of course, being Lutyens, we have still more. There is a wealth of design detail.

The pavement is split into segments as in the cross section of an orange. And each segment contains 3 'trapezoid' shapes, 1 the largest to the centre and 2 side by side to the outside. The floor pattern of wedges and texture extends even into the floor of the pond.

The circular sandstone niches contain baskets of fruit and flowers.

The Rotunda is very much a change of enclosure and exposure and of pace. With the high surrounding walls excluding distant views and his central pool slowing your progress, your attention is drawn to its calm limpid surface and the surrounding detail. And while charming you in a space that tempts you to linger and muse he has moved you around almost without knowing it.

Genius!

Lesley and Robert