Saving Eden
The celebrated landscape gardens at Plumpton Rocks in Yorkshire recently reopened to the public after a major restoration programme. Marilyn Elm reports on the history of this leafy lakeside haven, first laid out more than 250 years ago
The path leads you through musty woodland until – quite suddenly – the space opens out. A lake stretches before you; a pair of mute swans glide across waters reflecting the autumnal tints and white birch stems that clad the steep surrounding slopes.
Despite the lake’s beauty, it is the rocks – towering and weatherworn – that demand attention. Overwhelming in their scale and punctuated by striking Scots pines and yews, these great stacks of millstone grit – akind of sandstone – rear up from the waters, by turns spectacular in the sun, with their ochre tones, or moody and menacing when it retreats.
The 12 hectares of Plumpton Rocks are magical to explore, full of surprise and contrast: a landscape for the senses. I follow meandering footpaths, frequently steep and uneven, through mossy lakeside woodland to reach those ancient rock features, all romantically named by the Victorians: Lion’s Paw, Echo Rock, Lover’s Leap and Knight’s Passageway, where two towering sandstone stacks form a narrow corridor.
Nature flourishes here. Nuthatches, treecreepers and tawny owls in the woodland; mallards, moorhens, herons and kingfishers on the lake and carp, pike, tench and roach beneath its surface. So it’s strange to reflect that while this secluded corner of North Yorkshire may be spectacular, beautiful and richly atmospheric, the landscape is not entirely natural in origin. While the millstone grit outcrops were formed at least 300 million years ago, the lake is less than three centuries old, its waters retained by a dam built with the intention of enhancing the natural beauty of the landscape.
PERFECTING NATURE
In 1753, Daniel Lascelles inherited his share of his father’s vast mercantile fortune and soon after purchased land at Plumpton, near Harrogate. He decided to transform the medieval landscape there into a romantic and picturesque landscape instead.
The new pleasure garden was to be part of a move away from the formality of the Baroque garden popular during the Stuart era (1603–1714), epitomised by the garden at Versailles, with its orderly clipped hedges and patterned parterres, topiary and statues. The ‘Picturesque’ landscape embraced a more naturalistic approach: irregular, surprising, even awe-inspiring. It also required an artistic eye to appreciate the beauties of a natural scene. The new style became fashionable among polite society – something Jane Austen mentions in her novels.
Plumpton Rocks’ natural assets – the dramatic sandstone – gave it huge potential. From 1755, Lascelles undertook a programme of adding trees planted in ‘plumps’, or clumps. These included native species, such as sycamore, elm, mountain ash and birch, as well as imported horse chestnut, Spanish chestnut and walnut. Soon after, he added a mix of flowering and evergreen shrubs, including laurel, box, yew and holly for the plantations and among the rocks.
Lascelles even ordered the demolition of a medieval village that ran through the Plumpton estate, to make way for new planting.
In 1755, work started on an impressive ornamented dam to the design of northern architect John Carr, who also designed the Lascelles family’s palatial new country estate at Harewood near Leeds. The dam transformed the stream and medieval fishponds into a lake that surrounded some of the rocks. A simple boathouse followed, by forming an arched roof across a chasm between two of the rocks to create a chamber. Its roof was planted with ling, to blend in with its surroundings. Walks meandered around the lake, through clumps of trees such as Nanpie Plump, and directed visitors through the rocks. Several viewpoints, some elevated and with seats, were created along the way, one featuring a fretwork chair in the fashionable Chinese style.
Lascelles initially planned to live at Plumpton, but despite all this work, by 1762 he had lost interest in the idea, abandoning the partially built mansion in favour of the nearby Goldsborough Estate. Plumpton Rocks became a retreat and pleasure ground, visited from Harewood and Goldsborough for picnic parties and boating on the lake.
Explore enchanting woodland paths enclosed by birch, walnut and mountain ash trees 
The boathouse is built into two rocky outcrops and well disguised to the outside eye 
The Wishing Chair is set within a grotto in the millstone grit 
The Victorians gave evocative names to the rocks, such as Knight’s Passageway
IMMORTALISED IN OILS
In 1797, the young artist JMW Turner was commissioned by the 1st Earl of Harewood, Daniel Lascelles’ brother, to paint some views of what was then known as Plompton Rocks. Turner painted two views of the lake, one looking south, the other north from the dam. These – his very first commissioned oil paintings – still hang at Harewood House. Turner was followed by the noted landscape designer Humphry Repton, celebrity endorsements that helped Plumpton Rocks became a popular tourist destination for genteel folk visiting the nearby spa resorts of Harrogate and Knaresborough, especially when the railway arrived. The coming of photography and subsequent picture postcards encouraged more tourism.
FALL AND RISE
Visiting in the 1920s, Queen Mary, wife of George V, described Plumpton Rocks as “Heaven on Earth” but despite such glowing endorsements, the gardens were in decline by the mid-20th century. In 1952, they came up for sale and descendants of the original Plumpton owners bought it back. Even so, the decline continued, largely due to costs, the silting of the lake and the growth of self-set trees. Storms felled some of the specimen trees, too. Although the landscape’s historic importance was recognised in 1991, with a Grade II* listing on the English Heritage Register, this newfound status could not arrest the decay.
In 2012, Plumpton Rocks was placed on Historic England’s Heritage At Risk Register, which helped to revive a landscape on the brink, because it triggered an influx of expertise and funding from Natural England’s Countryside Stewardship scheme, Historic England, the Historic Houses Association and owner Robert Hunter.
Turner’s sketches of the landscape in its prime proved useful in guiding the restoration. The lake was dredged to recover its 18th-century proportions, revealing a small island, and repairs were made to the dam. The original 1760s planting plan was used to guide tree planting in the parkland and in the woodland around the rocks, including oak, beech, Scots pine and yew. The local angling club is helping to control invasive vegetation and public access is being managed. At last, Plumpton Rocks was removed from the at-risk register in 2021, and finally reopened to the public this September.
Owner Robert Hunter is grateful for all the help and delighted with the results. “I have absolutely no doubt that Turner would recognise the landscape over 200 years later,” he says. “The restoration has allowed us to preserve this remarkable place for the next 200 years.”
Marilyn Elm lives in Yorkshire and lectures and writes on garden and landscape history. She has completed two lecture tours in Australia.
GRAND LANDSCAPES
Yorkshire has at least 480 important historic parks and gardens, and 126 landscapes on the English Heritage Register. It particularly enjoys significant 18th-century landscapes.
Near Ripon in North Yorkshire, the National Trust’s Studley Royal Water Garden and Fountains Abbey form a World Heritage Site. Disgraced Chancellor of the Exchequer John Aislabie created this early 18th-century water garden in the Skell Valley, and later his son William developed Hackfall (Grade I) at Grewelthorpe, a picturesque garden in a steep wooded gorge. Castle Howard (Grade I) is an impressive landscape designed by Sir John Vanbrugh. Harewood House (Grade I) near Leeds, is surrounded by a Capability Brown landscape, as is Sledmere (Grade I) near Driffield. Scampston Hall (Grade II*) near Malton has one of the small Brown landscapes and a contemporary walled garden by world-renowned planting designer Piet Oudolf.