Gardens: Worsley New Hall, Worsley, Salford

At Worsley, Blore was involved with all aspects of the design, including the layout of the grounds, terraces and gardens. Blore was not a particularly gifted garden designer and turned again to William Andrews Nesfield with whom he had often worked in the designs of gardens for his country houses. These were laid out in the early 1840s and developed and enhanced over a period of 50 years.

Nesfield's work at Worsley was to receive special notice. Here he laid out a scroll-flower pattern in box at either end of the upper terrace and a French style parterre on the second terrace. The parterre de broderie, using box and gravel alone had been a major device in the late seventeenth century and its revival had already commenced by the time Nesfield had begun to practice. The design for the parterre at Worsley was taken from Dezallier d'Argentville's Theory & Practice of Gardening, (1712) and Loudon had published the pattern as early as 1812. In 1837 C.F. Ferris had published a little book on The Parterre but this received little attention. Robert Errington drew attention to the 'chaste and unique parterres' at Worsley in 1846 and the terrace garden painted by E. Adveno Brooke appeared in The Gardens of England, 1856. From then on Nesfield's career gathered momentum.

The Gardener’s Chronicle described the New Hall and its grounds in 1846:     ‘This magnificent residence lies about eight miles west of Manchester. The mansion is beautifully situated on a rising knoll, the gentle acclivity of which the approach imparts to a great degree of dignity. In the east may be seen the wild and lofty blue hills of Derbyshire, whilst the fertile county of Cheshire lies within view on the south. The celebrated Chat Moss lies in this direction formerly covered with impenetrable swamps, but now bearing the impress of civilization. Skirting the declivity of the park may be seen the famous Bridgewater Canal winding along the vale, which is beautifully skirted by rich meadows and woods, the whole forming a picture full of interest.’

Over the following years, the sloping grounds to the south of the Hall were organized into a formal terraced garden. By 1857 there were altogether six terraces, separated by stone balustrades and accessed by series of steps and gravel paths. The two upper terraces were designed in Nesfield’s trademark parterre de broderie, intricate patterns based on 17th-century French embroidery designs created using coloured gravels and plantings. Research by Shirley Evans has shown that the parterre on the 2nd terrace was a direct replica of a published design by the French landscape architect Dezallier d'Argenville. At the centre of this terrace was a bronze fountain of a Spanish design by the French company Val d'Osne, and originally exhibited at the Great Exhibition in 1851. Two further fountains were located on the 5th terrace and all three were fed from Blackleach reservoir. According to C A Brooks in Gardens of England (1857), the terraced gardens at the New Hall were ‘one of the most beautiful examples of the kind to be met with in the country’.

Beyond the formal terraced garden was landscaped parkland which extended southwards towards a lake. By 1875 the lake had been enlarged and a grotto constructed on the island, accessed via a footbridge. There was also a croquet lawn and tennis court close by the terraces, and an area of woodland towards the west of the Hall which separated its grounds from the gardener’s cottage and kitchen gardens. The Victorians demanded such exotic fruits as grapes, nectarines, melons, strawberries and asparagus and they were sufficiently hedonistic not to begrudge the costs of such provision. His designs for the kitchen gardens included asparagus beds and melon pits, the melon having become a highly desirable fruit in the 19th century.

The expense of maintaining elaborate parterres such as those designed by Nesfield led to decline in their popularity, and in the 1870s those at Worsley were modified. After the Great War 1914-18 and the departure of the Egerton family from the Worsley Estate, the gardens fell into decline. With the demolition of the New Hall, maintenance of the gardens ceased totally and the terraces disappeared in the undergrowth. Parts of the grounds were taken and one gate house demolished for the construction of the M62 now M60 motorway. However, the walled kitchen garden and various outbuildings survived as a garden centre.

Now RHS Gardens