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The garden at Anglesey Abbey can be attributed to the vision of one man, Huttleston Broughton, 1st Lord Fairhaven.
He came to Anglesey Abbey in 1926, when the garden was only a small portion of the land, the rest given over to pasture.
In 1930, Anglesey became his principal residence and the creation of Wrestler’s Lawn (a private area) was his first project,
it had previously been an old farmyard fallen into disrepair.
The whole of Anglesey Abbey was developed to mimic an 18th century estate, the grand house, the kitchen garden, and tenanted housing for estate staff,
all enabling Lord Fairhaven to live ‘outside his century’, as one writer described him.
Lord Fairhaven was a wealthy man and this allowed him to develop his gardens to their full potential, unhindered by the constraints of the purse strings.
His love of statuary and fine art are reflected in the collections of both in the gardens and the house. The garden is now home to one of the finest collections of historic statuary in the country.
In his planting schemes, a garden designer called Major Vernon Daniell, whose own garden at Moulton Hall, near Newmarket, was renowned for its beauty, very ably assisted Lord Fairhaven.
Another assistant was Lanning Roper, a man who published a book on the garden in 1964.
The combination of formal gardens and free landscaping has given Anglesey Abbey a carefully crafted design that, coupled with the way in which the gardens are separated by hedges or belts of trees,
afford the visitor a surprise around every corner.
Since the outbreak of Dutch Elm disease in the 1970’s, approximately 4000 trees have been felled which has opened the garden up to an unprecedented amount of wind damage, although now other trees have grown to fill the gap.
An unexpected bonus from this disaster was the appearance of the first snowdrops that have now been expanded to form the large collection that can be viewed during February.
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