Lytes Cary

South Elevation

The parkland surrounding the house includes the site of a deserted medieval settlement which is a scheduled monument.[2][3]

The unusual name derives from the Lyte family who lived at Lytes Cary for over four centuries, and the River Cary which flows nearby.[4] The first documentary evidence is from 1285 when it was known as Kari.[5] William le Lyte was a feudal tenant of the estate in 1286, and the Lyte family occupied and added to the house until the mid-18th century. The earliest surviving part of the manor and associated buildings is the chapel, which dates to the mid-14th century.[6]

The Great Hall was built in the mid-15th century, and in the early 16th century the entrance porch and oriel room were added to the eastern side of the hall, and the great parlour and little parlour to the south of the hall, with bedrooms above.[7] Sometime after the Lyte family sold the Manor in 1755,[8] tenants moved in and the house gradually fell into disrepair. In 1810, it was reported by a neighbour that the north range 'had lately been destroyed and a farm house built on the site', (this north range is dated by architectural historians to the late 18th century) and by the time John Buckler came to draw the house in 1835 the west range had also disappeared.[9]

In 1907, Sir Walter Jenner of the Jenner baronets and son of the late Sir William Jenner, physician to Queen Victoria, bought Lytes Cary. At that time the Great Hall was being used as a cider store and the Great Parlour was full of farm equipment.[10] Jenner's brother Leopold had just bought and started to restore Avebury Manor in Wiltshire, and Jenner was inspired by his brother's work there. He set about restoring Lytes Cary and decorating the interiors in period style, including fine 17th century and 18th century oak furniture, antique tapestries and fabrics modelled after medieval textiles. He had the west range rebuilt in a plain William and Mary style by the architect C.E. Ponting,[11] but left the historic core of the house mostly untouched.[11][10] It incorporates carvings believed to be from the demolished St Benet Gracechurch.[11]

Jenner left the manor to the National Trust after he died in 1948. The house was designated as a Grade I listed building in 1959.[11] The National Trust opened the west range as a holiday rental property in 2006.[12] Only the older parts of the house are open to the public.[13]

The Cutting Garden

The Apostle Garden

All trace of Henry Lyte's garden has disappeared.[8] Records show that his son Thomas kept a very well-stocked orchard, which included in 1618 "Apples, 3 skore severall sorts. pears and Wardens (a type of pear), 44 sorts. Plummes, 15 divers kynds. Grapes, 3 severall sortes. Cherries, 1. Walnuts, 3. Peaches, 1."[33][34] By the Victorian period the garden had run to seed, and so the Jenners had to start from scratch on their arrival in 1907.[35] They had the gardens designed and constructed to include a series of hedged and walled "rooms" with topiary, specimen trees, a pool, statuary, croquet lawn, walkways, an Elizabethan orchard, and a herbal border that includes plants described in the Lytes Herbal.[36] The gate piers at the east and west entrances are listed buildings.[37][38]

The gardens were constructed in a series of 'rooms', which are separated from each other by high, neatly clipped box and yew hedges.[39] The gardens were influenced by the Arts and Crafts style popular at the time.[40] The Jenners had a garden staff of four.[33]

In 1965 Graham Stuart Thomas, the National Trust's first Gardens Adviser designed the Main Border. From 1955 to 1997 the Trust's tenants at the Manor, Biddy and Jeremy Chittenden, transformed the garden,[41] and Biddy rethought and replanted the main border in 1996, using new plants but following Stuart Thomas's colour scheme.[35]

The gardens are listed as Grade II on the Register of Historic Parks and Gardens of special historic interest in England.[35] A barn and other outbuildings north west of the house are listed buildings.[42]

Pond Garden looking north towards the house through the Seat Garden and Croquet Lawn

The Apostle garden is aligned on the front door in the East front of the house and a building which has been described as a water tower, built by the Jenners in imitation of the dovecote at Avebury Manor,[43][44] which was wrongly identified as a Dovecote by English Heritage.[45] The garden is a severe, formal approach, flanked by topiarised yews, and is "deliberately low-key and simple so as not to distract from the beauty of the building".[43] The main border is 35 metres (114.8 ft) long and at its best in midsummer.[43] The flowers grade from blues and yellows, through creams and apricots to pinks, mauves and reds. There is a restful White Garden beyond for contrast.[43]

The orchard contains fruit trees such as quinces, medlars, crab apples and pears are underplanted with spring-flowering meadow plants such as snake's head fritillaries, camassias, narcissus, cowslips and lady's smock. The orchard is crossed by wide mown paths meeting at a central sundial. Originally four weeping elms were situated at the four corners of the garden, but they succumbed to Dutch elm disease in the early seventies and were replaced in 1973 by four weeping ash trees which make inviting 'houses'. The orchard can be viewed from the raised walk on its east side, another idea copied from Avebury Manor.[46] A main path known as the Long walk is based on the Long Walk at Hidcote Manor Garden in Gloucestershire, although it is on a smaller scale.[43] It is a plain grassed walkway connecting the Raised Walk with the Pond Garden.[46]

The pond garden, seat garden and croquet lawn are interlinked, with aligned openings to form a vista from the bay windows of the Great Parlour and Great Chamber on the south front of the house over to the Sparkford plain. A short tunnel of hornbeams link the Pond Garden to the Vase Garden, where variegated weigela is underplanted with euphorbia and vinca.[46]

• Grade I listed buildings in South Somerset
• List of National Trust properties in Somerset

• Barroll, J. Leeds (1995). Medieval and Renaissance Drama in England. Fairleigh Dickinson Univ Press. p. 28. ISBN 9780838635704.
• Bond, James (1998). Somerset parks and gardens: A landscape history. Tiverton: Somerset Books. ISBN 978-0861834655.
• R. W. Dunning (editor), A. P. Baggs, R. J. E. Bush, Margaret Tomlinson (1974). "Parishes: Charlton Mackrell". A History of the County of Somerset: Volume 3. Institute of Historical Research. Retrieved 16 March 2013. {{cite web}}: |author= has generic name (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
• Dunning, Robert (1991). Some Somerset Country Houses. Wimborne: Dovecote Press. ISBN 978-0946159857.
• Garnett, Oliver (2001). Lytes Cary (National Trust guide book). National Trust.
• McCann, John (2011). "Engravings as evidence of dovecotes". Vernacular Architecture. 42: 36–52. doi:10.1179/174962911X13159065475464. S2CID 162123774.
• Pevsner, Nikolaus (1958). The Buildings of England, South and West Somerset. Penguin Books; Reprinted by Yale University Press, 2003. ISBN 978-0300096446.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Lytes Cary Manor.

• National Trust website for Lytes Cary Manor