naturally comes

Doing what

Stowell Park, Northleach, Gloucestershire

Lady Vestey and her head

gardener have spent 25 years refining the grounds at

Stowell, creating a garden of great charm and

midsummer beauty, finds

Kathryn Bradley-Hole

T

Photographs by Andrew Lawson

HE Fosse Way, built by the Romans in the middle of the 1st century AD, cuts an impressively straight route across England

from Ilchester in the south-west to Lincoln, in the east. In the process, it rolls uphill and down, through the gentle hills and stone villages of the Cotswolds, passing through numerous scenic estates includ- ing one of England! s finest at Stowell, near the old wool town of Northleach. Indeed, Stowell has further claim to antique interest, as the remarkable ruins and mosaics of Chedworth Roman Villa were excavated in the estate woods in the 1860s (and are now cared for by the National Trust). So it! s clear that people have been coming

to this particularly lovely part of the Cots- wolds for a very long time indeed, although Stowell itself appears never to have been more than a hamlet of cottages attending a single house on the hill. Although it has its own tiny church! the Norman parish church of St Leonard, dating from about 1150! this is, and has always been, one of the country! s smallest parishes. Since 1923, Stowell Park, in a 6,000-acre

The York-stone paved terrace of the west front, framed by rugosa roses and Alchemilla mollis, the walls clothed with wisteria and jasmine

106 Country Life, May 19, 2010

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