Marsh Court

This project brings to fruition a 7-year renewal of the iconic Edwin Lutyens-designed property. With efforts that span preservation, interpretation and invention, our work recovers the genius of the historic design and reimagines the site as a 21st century family home.

Situated in the hills above the River Test in Hampshire, England and constructed between 1901 and 1904, Marshcourt is a quintessential expression of the Arts and Crafts Movement. In spring of 2010, we were commissioned to develop a master plan for the estate’s 55-acres, which, after decades under various owners, lay in decline. With both house and gardens listed on the National Register of Historic Parks and Gardens, we faced the formidable task of stewarding this national treasure into a new era as a 21st century home. The work focused on the renewal of the clarity, precision and expression of the historic landscape framework and the articulation of sensitive contemporary additions that were in keeping with the property's extraordinary genius loci and looked to Marshcourt's next hundred years.

Research into the historic record and our own site documentation revealed extensive loss of the original fabric, but also illuminated the unique bones of that design, in particular agrarian patterns that Lutyens had cultivated, intensified and repeated to shape the estate’s landscape into a carefully calibrated frame read against the painterly effects of shadow and light. Where sufficient evidence existed, the original work was restored.  Where evidence was thin or where we were working on acreage that had not been part of the original design, we interpreted or sensitively invented to accommodate the site's new life as a contemporary home for a large family. 

The estate drive extends through the entire property, choreographing an unforgettable experience of arrival and procession. Here the Lutyens fabric had been particularly compromised.  Steep, precise embankments on both the front and back drives had been smoothed, understory cleared, meadows replaced with lawn, and hedges removed.  Working from the historic record and discoveries of the original fabric made during construction, we re-aligned and narrowed the drive, re-established the “turning courts”, reinstated the 1:1 chalk embankments and associated yew hedges and replanted native canopy above an expanded native chalk meadow.  

The house itself, a vast white building constructed of chalk with flint, limestone, and brick tile inlay sits on a rectilinear system of masonry walls and embankments that extend from the house, negotiating the steep site and structuring a sequence of garden rooms defined by either elaborate masonry or precise yew hedging. Over the past 100 years, much of the hedging had either been removed or had significantly overgrown the intended dimensions.  Archival research revealed very specific relationships between the hedging and the articulation of the paving and house masonry. We planted hundreds of yews to re-establish this character-defining element of the gardens’ “architecture”.

Although the house and estate design is attributable to Lutyens, archival evidence suggests that select flower gardens around the house were the work of his long-time collaborator Gertrude Jekyll.  The absence of original planting plans prevented restoration. Instead, we were inspired by the opportunity to engage her distinct sensibilities in the design for the gardens’ renewal, while achieving a more sustainable regime better aligned to current maintenance practices. 

Farther from the house, areas that had not originally been designed and felt physically and experientially disconnected from the historic project. Here we seized the opportunity to complete a choreographed experience from the Test River floodplain to the estate’s hilltop with interventions that ranged from surgical to significant.  A 500-foot long, limestone sett path threads existing oak and hawthorn groves to join the historic landscape to the outlying fields.  Below, an 8,000 SF walled kitchen garden is set into sloping land, reducing its presence in the landscape and taking advantage of the thermal benefits on production. At the top of the property, an arcing path carves into the grade, within a quincunx of 96 European Beech trees whose canopy has united into a shaded woodland.