Walled Garden, Penshaw House

A 19th century walled garden located east of Penshaw House (HER 7043) a Grade II listed building (List Entry 1354969) which was constructed c. 1830. The walled garden is considered to form part of the visual and context setting of the listed building. The walled garden was constructed when Penshaw House was owned by Nathaniel Hindhaugh who in 1847 was responsible for the diversion of Station Road to create private grounds for the house. The walled garden does not appear on the tithe map of 1848 and first appears on the Ordnance Survey map of 1857-1889. The walled garden was subject to Historic England Level 2 standard building recording in 2022 prior to refurbishment. A series of horticultural cold frames were recorded adjacent to the eastern wall and in the south-west corners of the walled garden. A greenhouse/glass house was recorded in the north-east corner, and an iron pipe was noted to run from the easternmost structure along the northern wall towards the greenhouse/glasshouse. The presence of the iron pipe suggests that there was a boiler house which would have been used for heating the structure within the walled garden. One of the bricks within the greenhouse/glasshouse was stamped ‘PENSHAW BRICK WKS CO DURHAM’ which was in operation from between 1897-1925 (Davison 1986, 187). The south face of the southern boundary of the garden comprises of a roughly coursed sandstone wall with coping stones, the north facing side of the wall comprises of a brick lining in an English Garden Wall bond. The western part of the boundary wall survived for 17.50m ENE/WSW and was 0.46m wide and 1.57m high. Many walled gardens have stone on the external face and brickwork on the internal is because brick absorbs and retains solar heat and then slowly releases it, which allows fruit trees and other more tender plants to be grown within the garden (PCA 2020). The south-east boundary wall is noted in the report to be in a poor condition due to stability issues caused by nearby tree roots. Modern brick buttress had been constructed to hold up the western part of the wall. The boundary between the walled garden and Penshaw House is formed out of a low c.19th century ashlar stone wall with later 20th century steel railings. It has been suggested that the steel railings were installed to replace the original railings which could have been removed in the Second World War. Located in the north-west corner of the garden, there is a cast-iron gate and gate posts which could be remnants of earlier metal works.