PICTURES: Ragley ploughs £250k into restoration work
A £250,000 project is improving the parkland around Ragley Hall.
Hi-tech mapping equipment is being used to plant around 4,000 new trees according to the park’s original design from the first edition of the Ordnance Survey in 1881.
The work will also see 1,000 metres of paling fencing reinstated, and the lake cascade, Victorian Pump House, and original bathing hut and Victorian decoy pond will be restored.
It is being carried out with funding from the government’s Stewardship Scheme and in partnership with Natural England, and coincides with the 300th anniversary of the birth of the famous landscape gardener, Lancelot Capability Brown, who had a hand in designing the Ragley landscape.
Alan Granger, Chief Executive of the estate, said: “From our perspective it’s quite nice that the agricultural funding and the tercentenary have come at the same time, it gives us something to shout about.
“It’s an exciting year, given that we’ve got that reinvestment back into the park it all knits together quite nicely for us to have all those different things happening at the same time.
“Hopefully, visitors will have a better understanding of what has gone on and why these places are as they are.”
Ragley Hall, the ancestral home of the 9th Marquess of Hertford, is set in 6,500 acres of park and farmland.
See April’s Focus magazine — free inside the 31st March edition of the Herald — for a feature on Ragley and other Warwickshire landscapes that were designed by Capability Brown.
See below to take a look inside Ragley Hall and its spectacular grounds ....