Glossary of Terms

ALPINE HOUSE: A form of glasshouse specifically for the display of alpines that became popular after the mid-nineteenth century when alpines were being brought back from travels in Europe.

ARBOUR: A sheltered place in a garden with sides and roof formed by trees and climbing plants that are trained over a framework.

BEE BOLES: Recesses or cavities in walls, usually on south-facing walls, for beekeeping.

BOTHY: Accommodation for unmarried, junior gardeners usually attached to a walled kitchen garden. Often it was situated adjacent to a boiler room that provided heat for glasshouses because it was usually the job of a junior gardener to refuel the boiler throughout the night.

BACK SHEDS: These were a range of brick-built sheds attached to the outside wall of a walled garden, usually behind lean-to glasshouses within the garden. They would have been used for storage, potting sheds, a head gardener’s office and a bothy.

CANAL: A garden canal is a long rectangular formal garden feature popular in seventeenth and eighteenth century gardens that were influenced by French, Italian and Dutch styles. Their popularity declined towards the end of the eighteenth century with a transition to more naturalistic designed landscapes, although there was a revival in the mid-nineteenth century. Sometimes created from fragments of moats or fishponds, a number survive in Suffolk, many having previously been mis-identified as purely the remains of moats or ponds. They often had raised walkways beside them and sometimes hedges.

CAPPING: These are found on the top of walls to prevent water entering the wall, where it could freeze and blow the bricks. There are various types of capping. These range from the simplest of slate or lead, perhaps bricks laid on edge or specially made with an overhang to specially made stone cappings, which were often only used on walls that were visible from the house.

CARNATION HOUSE: Only for the very rich, these were cool and unheated glasshouses for carnations to augment cut flowers from the garden for indoor display.

CLAYLAND PLATEAU, SUFFOLK: Covering most of central Suffolk, a wide belt of clay soils forms a gently tilted plateau that is dissected by river valleys. It extends northward into Norfolk and south-westward into Essex. Some clay soils contain a large quantity of chalk, whilst in other areas they are sandier. The area is sometimes referred to as claylands.

CONSERVATORY: see also Orangery. A conservatory is a structure predominantly made of glass so is naturally susceptible to fluctuations in temperature – hot in summer, cold in winter.

CRINKLE-CRANKLE WALL: Also called serpentine walls, these were constructed using only a single brick skin and were cheap and easy to build. They created an undulating line that gave some strength to an otherwise unstable construction if build in a straight line, although buttresses were often added later. The bays created were usually quite sheltered and allowed the planting of more tender plants, such as some fruit trees. They are largely found in East Anglia, particularly Suffolk.

DECOY LAKE OR POND: Decoy lakes or ponds were artificially created or modified areas of water where wildfowl were encouraged and lured into decoy pipes, channels covered in netting that birds were lured into and captured. The lakes or ponds were usually square or rectangular in outline, with one or more curving pipes. Decoys were introduced into Britain from Holland in the seventeenth century but at their height in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Suffolk has some decoys in use today, a few having been used continuously since their creation and others restored and brought back into use.

DIPPING POOL: Mostly found in a central position in walled gardens, these circular pools allowed gardeners to fill their watering cans. They were often fed with water collected from buildings.

DOVECOTE: These are structures designed to house pigeons and doves. They were built for the elites in society, partly for food and the feathers provided but also as a status symbol. In Suffolk dovecotes survive from the fourteenth century but were also being built into nineteenth century.

EDGING: Used to delineate paths, they could be of hooped willow, iron, stone or brick. Often decorative terracotta would be used or box plants.

EMPARKMENT: This means to create a park by enclosing land, historically by noblemen to create hunting grounds and display wealth and status.

ESPALIER: An espalier is a fruit tree trained horizontally against a wall.

FERNERY: A building with a cool and moist environment for growing ferns.

FIG HOUSE: A glasshouse for growing tender forms of fig.

FOLLY (also known as eyecatchers): Found in gardens and parks, these were often non-functional, decorative structures designed to add visual interest within a designed landscape. Popular in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, they could take the form of ruins, castles, towers, Chinese pagodas, hermitages, rustic cottages, etc.

FISHPOND: Generally from the medieval period, fishponds were artificial ponds created through various management systems, including inlet and outlet channels carrying water from streams or rivers, to supply a constant source of fish. They were a particular feature of monastic and manorial sites but were also found on the estates of other wealthy members of society. Often they were constructed with clay to produce a waterproof basin so that in Suffolk they are more prevalent on clay soils. Most fishponds feel out of use during the post-medieval period and many were converted from the eighteenth century onwards into ornamental features.

FRAME YARD: An enclosed area, usually outside a walled garden but near service buildings, with a substantial number of frames and pits used for cultivation.

FRUIT GARDEN/ORCHARD: A large area, usually near but outside of a walled garden, where standard fruit trees were grown.

FRUIT HOUSE: An unheated glasshouse, usually freestanding, where fruit trees were grown.

FRUIT STORE: A building specifically designed to ensure a constant temperature for storing fruit. They were often built against the north wall of a walled garden although some examples were freestanding.

GAME LARDER: A small building with through ventilation in which game were hung. They were often near the walled garden.

GARDENER’S HOUSE/COTTAGE: A house or cottage for the head gardener, usually close to the walled garden. These were of a reasonable size and usually had some form of outside decorative features. Other estate workers were mostly housed in smaller estate cottages or bothies (see above).

GARDENER’S TUNNEL: A tunnel that allowed gardeners to move between parts of a garden without being seen by the owner or guests. These were often in the form of a pergola.

GAZEBO: A freestanding roofed structure but without sides, gazebos can be used as a seating area and often serve as a focal point within a garden.

GLASSHOUSES: A glasshouse is a building made of glass in which plants grow faster than outside. The glass traps the heat from the sun inside the building to boost the rate of growth. They can be heated or unheated, lean-to (built against a wall) or freestanding. See also: alpine house, carnation house, fig house, orchard house, orchid house, vine house/vinery.

HA-HA: A type of sunken fence created to give the illusion of an unbroken continuous lawn, whilst providing a barrier for grazing livestock. They consisted a dry ditch, the inner side built up to the level of the surrounding grass and outer sloped steeply up, usually by constructing a vertical brick wall, to the same level. They are mainly associated with eighteenth century landscaped parks and gardens.

HERBER: This is a medieval word for a small enclosed garden containing herbs and decorative plants. Often including plants for their medicinal uses, they were valued as calm, quiet spaces and for their beauty and fragrance.

HEATED WALL: A system of heating a wall to protect or advance a fruit crop. By missing out bricks the heat was channelled horizontally and upward through the wall to exit via a flue.

ICEHOUSE: First introduced into Britain in the seventeenth century, these were structures designed to store ice all year to preserve food and cool drinks. Brick-lined and cylindrical or conical in shape, they were constructed below ground or into the side of a slope near a source of water such as a river or lake.

LODGE: A small habitable building found beside an entrance into a park. In medieval deer parks they were mainly home to parkers whose role was to manage the park’s resources such as deer and rabbits, appearing as early as the eleventh century. In later designed landscape parks they were a particular feature from the eighteenth century and continued to be built well into the twentieth century.

MAZE/LABYRINTH: A maze is network of multiple paths, often enclosed by hedges, designed to confuse by presenting barriers and dead ends that may not lead to a centre end point, whereas a labyrinth has a continuous single path which always leads to the centre. In the English garden they began to be introduced in the sixteenth century within formal geometric garden layouts. The fashion for mazes continued into the early-eighteenth century but they began to be lost when the fashion for more naturalistic landscapes became popular.

MELON/PINEAPPLE PIT: A sunken glasshouse entered by steps where melons/pineapples were grown.

MOAT: A deep wide ditch normally filled with water that usually had brick-lined sides. They could surround a building, a flat mound or garden. Although often associated with castles and thought as a defensive feature, moats were more often used as a status symbol. The more moats someone had and the size of the land they surrounded was a reflection of their status in society. In England they were medieval features and most often associated with the fourteenth to sixteenth century.

MOUNT: An earthwork mound rising above the surrounding land. Generally in parks and gardens they may have been created as a viewing place from where to survey a deer or landscape park and as a focal point or eyecatcher. On occasion they would also accommodate a windmill.

NAILING: Before the advent of straining wires fruit trees were trained along walls by nail fixings. The branches would have a pad of leather or calico to protect from damage.

ORANGERY: A room or building dedicated to growing orange and other fruit trees. Historically they were opened-sided buildings where fruit trees in pots were overwintered before taken outside in the warmer weather. They developed into fully enclosed brick structures with large glass windows. Their north walls usually had no or few windows to help keep them warm and were heated by a stove. They were costly to build and heat and as a result they were a status symbol showing wealth and prestige.

ORCHARD: Historically these were a common feature of settlements and farms, providing fruit, grazing for livestock and honey.

ORCHARD HOUSE: Freestanding, unheated glasshouses where fruit trees were grown in pots to achieve an earlier crop.

ORCHID HOUSE: Heated glasshouse specifically for growing orchids for internal displays or button holes.

PARK/PARKLAND: The term park has changed its meaning over the centuries. Parks in early-medieval times were mainly hunting grounds where deer were kept and were usually heavily wooded. They would be enclosed for security by a bank and/or a ditch and often not attached to a manorial residence and located towards the edge of parishes. Most developed to provide timber and timber products, and sometimes with areas managed for other livestock grazing in areas called ‘wood pastures’ ie areas containing timber and pollarded (cut back to reduce the size of the tree and produce a dense head of growth) trees but spaced out to allow some grass to grow beneath. The number of parks in Suffolk increased and decreased over time and by the fifteenth century many of the remote parks disappeared and only those located close to the manorial residence survived. Over a long period, and in Suffolk at varying rates across the county, parks began to be developed as much for their appearance as for their economic role. By the eighteenth century designed landscape parks associated with more naturalistic features such as irregular serpentine planting and areas of water advocated by such designers as William Kent, Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown and Humphry Repton developed.

PARTERRES: From the French word meaning ‘on the ground’, a parterre is a formal garden laid out on a level area and made up of enclosed colourful flower beds, usually separated by gravel, laid out in such a way that the pattern is itself an ornament. Parterres often include box hedging surrounding flower beds, although with the advent of box blight alternatives are now being planted.

PICTURESQUE STYLE: Originally inspired by paintings of the Low Countries and Italian countryside by artists such as Nicolas Poussin and Claude Lorraine, the Picturesque style is an English landscaping tradition in vogue in the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth century. [Sir Nathaniel Bacon, whose home was Culford Hall in Suffolk, has been suggested as painting the first English picturesque landscape in ‘The small Landskip drawn by Sir Nath: Bacon’ 1620s on display at the Ashmolean Museum in Cambridge.] The style uses native elements in landscape scenery such as castles, abbey ruins and local vernacular buildings such as cottages, both real or as follies, plus managed wildness to create a ‘natural’ appearance as opposed to symmetrical geometric patterns with topiary and formal avenues of earlier landscapes. Many designers influenced and re-imagined the style such as Charles Bridgeman (1690–1738), William Kent (1685–1748), Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown (1716–83), Humphrey Repton (1752–1818).

PULHAMITE: This was an artificial stone created by the James Pulham and Son company, which originated in Woodbridge, Suffolk, before moving to Tottenham in London in the early 1840s but had moved to Broxbourne, Hertfordshire by 1869.

RABBIT WARRENS: These were medieval collections of artificial mounds which concentrated rabbits in a defined area so they could be farmed for their fur and meat.

RILL: A narrow channel of water usually inset in a paved area. They evolved from religious Persian paradise gardens and became decorative features in European gardens. They were particularly popular during the Arts and Crafts period and were incorporated into their garden designs by designers such as Gertrude Jekyll, Edwin Lutyens and Harold Peto.

SHELTERBELT: A wide strip of trees to protect an area. In the case of gardens and parks their main use is to provide privacy and wind protection, although they were also used to hide buildings and unsightly features. They could be planted with coniferous or deciduous trees or a mix of both, when the term ‘mixed planting’ may be used. A shelterbelt is sometimes also used within gardens when they would be planted with a mix of shrubs and trees.

SLIP GARDEN: An area outside of a walled garden, often for invasive or space-consuming vegetables or fruit trees. In some instances they became areas for ornamental planting.

TOFTS: In medieval village settlements, tofts were closely-packed small homesteads and outbuildings with strips of land behind called crofts that were used for pasture or arable. Today, apart from elements in place names, they are generally seen as narrow parallel strips of land identified by the presence of earthworks and through aerial photography.

VINE HOUSE/VINERY: A glasshouse for growing dessert grapes. Often the vines were planted outside and their stems threaded through the brick plinth to the inside.

WILDERNESS: From the sixteenth to early-nineteenth centuries, a wilderness was a highly artificial and formalized type of woodland with paths or tracks threading through them, forming a section of a large garden. On large estates they were often found remote from the house within the landscape park.

WOOD PASTURE: An historic landscape characterised by a mix of grazing land and trees that was the product of traditional land management for grazing animals and woodland resources such as timber for construction and fuel, coppiced stems for wattle and charcoal making and pollarded poles. They were characterised by scattered mature trees, often pollarded (tops cut off to encourage new growth out of reach of grazing animals) within a grazed area. Very few examples have survived into the twenty-first century.