The Secret Gardens of Sandwich

Whilst walking along the picturesque quayside in Sandwich, Kent, the visitor may encounter the beautiful Secret Gardens, tucked away behind part of the ancient town walls. The gardens surround the majestic Salutation manor house, designed and built by Sir Edwin Lutyens in 1911-12. Lutyens designed many English country houses, and was renowned for his ability to ingeniously modify time-honoured architectural styles to meet the demands of his era. In Another Six English Towns (BBC Books, 1984), the English architectural historian Alec Clifton-Taylor wrote that Lutyens must surely be recognised as “the greatest English architect of the last hundred years at least”.

- Janice Lawford

Although Lutyens was influenced by the work of Sir Christopher Wren, Lutyens’ Queen Anne-style manor house was on a much smaller scale. The Salutation, named after an inn that once stood on the same land, was commissioned by the wealthy London Farrer family as a weekend retreat. The three brothers suffered from respiratory problems and chose Sandwich for its bracing sea air. The new house was built near a gasometer, the effects of which were thought to alleviate breathing disorders. In 1950 the Salutation became the first 20th-century house to be granted Grade 1 listing.

In completion of his work at Sandwich, Lutyens devised a bold but fitting 3½-acre garden plan. This would have been challenging as the plot lacked parallel boundary walls, was rectangular and had a triangle positioned on the south side. Despite these irregularities, Lutyens formulated an ingenious, apparently symmetrical, garden design.

Lutyens had met Gertude Jekyll, a naturalistic garden designer, artist and writer, prior to working on his commission in Sandwich. He designed Jekyll’s house at Munstead Wood in Godalming, Surrey, completing it in 1896. At this time the battle raged between advocates of two very different styles of garden design: formal versus naturalistic. Architect Sir Reginald Blomfield, a contemporary of Edwin Lutyens, took the formal stance, believing only architects could design gardens whilst gardeners raked the gravel and grew gooseberries. Conversely, gardener and journalist William Robinson advocated informal herbaceous borders and wild gardens, spurning Victorian formal planting schemes. Thus the world of garden design was at odds with itself.