Biddulph Grange

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

1 Biddulph Grange in fiction
2 Gallery
3 Further reading
4 External links

Biddulph Grange is a National Trust house and landscaped gardens, situated in Biddulph near Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire, England.

It was developed by James Bateman (1812–1897), the accomplished horticulturist and landowner; he inherited money from his father, who had became rich from coal and steel businesses. He moved to Biddulph Grange around 1840, from nearby Knypersley Hall. He created the gardens with the aid of his friend and painter of seascapes John Cooke. The gardens were meant to display specimens from Bateman's extensive and wide-ranging collection of plants.

Bateman was a collector and scholar on orchids, president of the North Staffordshire Field Society, and served on the Royal Horticultural Society's Plant Exploration Committee. He had a number of notable sons who grew up at Biddulph Grange, including the painter Robert Bateman.

His gardens are a rare survival of the interim period between the Capability Brown landscape garden and the High Victorian style. The gardens are compartmentalised and divided into themes: Egypt, China, etc.

In 1861 Bateman and his sons, who had used up their savings, gave up the house and gardens, and Bateman moved to Kensington in London. Robert Heath bought Biddulph Grange in 1871. After the house burnt down in 1896, architect Thomas Bower rebuilt it.

The post-1896 house served as a children's hospital from 1923 until the 1960s; known first as the "North Staffordshire Cripple's Hospital" and later as the "Biddulph Grange Orthopaedic Hospital" (though it took patients with non-orthopaedic conditions as well. Under this latter title the hospital's role expanded to accommodate adults, continuing in operation into the mid-1980s.) The 15 acre (61,000 m²) garden became badly run-down and neglected during this period, and the deeply dug-out terraced area near the house around Dahlia Walk was filled in level to make a big lawn for patients to be wheeled out on in summertime. The Bateman property was (and still is) divided: the hospital got the house and its gardens, and the uncultivated remainder of Biddulph Grange's land became the Biddulph Grange Country Park.

In 1988 the National Trust took ownership of the property and its gardens, which have now been nearly fully restored, including a long work digging out the Dalhia Walk area archaeology-style to find forgotten features. In 1995/6 the Wellingtonia Walk, which had become postmature and badly gappy, was clear felled and in that year and the next replanted. The last bit being restored is the Woodland Terrace, whose site a few years ago was at last rid of a hospital ward building and is still intruded on by houses.

[edit] Biddulph Grange in fiction

The novel by Priscilla Masters, Mr Bateman's Garden (1987), is a fantasy set in the gardens.

[edit] Gallery

Biddulph Grange: Dalhia Walk	Biddulph Grange: Great Wall of China, partly rebuilt	Biddulph Grange: the China area is modelled after the willow pattern plate	Biddulph Grange: the pinetum
Biddulph Grange: Egypt	Biddulph Grange: Wellingtonia Walk, looking towards Great Vase Court: the way to infinity ...	... and beyond, but only once a year when the gate at Great Vase Court into the Biddulph Grange Country Park is opened.	Biddulph Grange: the lake