Secret Revealed

BEHIND the streets of Bramber, a secret Victorian garden is waiting to be discovered.

The Victorian Secret Pleasure Gardens of St Mary s is the latest feature to be unveiled to the public, as the ongoing restoration work on the 15th century house and the surrounding gardens continues.

Members of the public have had the opportunity to see the newly rediscovered garden this summer and Peter Thorogood, from St Mary s, said that visitors had enjoyed the guided tours.

Curator Roger Linton added: They are really excited by it and people have come back again to see how we are going on.

The gardens lie to the west of the house, and when they were put up for sale in 1913 at Harrods by the then owner Algernon Bourke, the catalogue described them as having: Beautifully kept hedges, flowers, borders and shrubberies, all of which combine to make the gardens as fine as any in the county.

There were lawns for tennis and croquet, glasshouses, heated pits, a large tool house and a potting shed.

The previous owner of St Mary s House, Dorothy Ellis, had to sell the gardens in the 1940s, owing to some serious financial constraints.

Then, in 1997, the lost gardens which were now part of the old Knights Templar land came on the market again and were brought back into St Mary s.

A feature on St Mary's can be found in the Herald, August 16.