Address: Lower Clifton Hill, Clifton, Bristol, BS8 1BX
There has been a garden on this site for almost three hundred years. It has seen residents, and residences, come and go. It has provided inspiration to writers and artists and offered a peaceful sanctuary from the city surrounding it. The earliest glimpse we have of the garden is the De Wilstar survey of 1746.
De Wilstar survey, 1746
A much larger garden is depicted, complete with orchards and vegetable plots, featuring a central ornamental section laid out to formal pathways and beds, in a patte d’oie or goosefoot shape. It is this section that our restoration project addresses.
The survey depicts two earlier dwellings standing on the site of Clifton Hill House, which began construction in 1747.
The renowned architect Isaac Ware built Clifton Hill House for the linen and shipping merchant Paul Fisher, and his writings suggest that he would have landscaped the garden anew to compliment his building, although no detailed records of this have been found. Ware was a proponent of the Landscape Movement, and wrote at length about the beauty of naturalistic planting and the Arcadian Wilderness, indicating that he would have chosen this style for the garden at Clifton Hill House. Later resources concerning the garden indicate that Ware’s landscape, consisting of trees, gentling sloping lawns and water features, remained in place throughout the Georgian and Victorian periods. After this time, the garden gradually became more municipal in its character, and lost an overall sense of place and history.
Douglas Gillis design, 2010
The idea of breathing new life into the garden with a redesign originated from Professor Timothy Mowl in 2010. He proposed a new layout based on the iconic pathway shapes seen in the De Wilstar survey, with the addition of a curved pathway at the bottom to give the garden a distinctive ‘sextant’ shape, reminiscent of the navigational instrument used on ships at the time that Clifton Hill House was built. This shape reminds us of the maritime history of the garden in Paul Fisher’s time. Douglas Gillis provided an original design.
Elements of this design have been blended with the softer, ‘Arcadian Wilderness’ feel beloved of the Landscape Movement, to give us our new landscape, featured below.
Nicola Greaves design
This beautiful, thoughtful new garden was designed by award-winning landscaping architect, Nicola Greaves. Nicola has used a combination of landscaping techniques and planting both to recreate the iconic sextant shape of the pathways, and to create new spaces to gather, sit and enjoy the garden. The new garden features two sections of wildflower meadow planting, which form the diagonal ‘paths’ of the sextant. The meadows include many pollinator-friendly native plant species, and have already given an increase in biodiversity. We have also reintroduced water to the garden in the form of a wildlife pond, already home to newts, frogs and a host of invertebrates. As visitors journey down the slope of the garden, away from the magnificence of the house, the atmosphere becomes less formal. At the bottom of the garden lies a woodland glade, leading to winding pathways that meander through the trees. Nicola’s design has succeeded in bringing the history of the garden alive in a way which makes it usable today.
