Newstead Abbey

Linby, United Kingdom Established: c. 1907

Photo: Jonathan Thacker / CC BY-SA 2.0, modified.

Overview

The Japanese Garden at Newstead Abbey is an early twentieth-century Japanese-style garden within the historic grounds of Newstead Abbey, the former ancestral home of Lord Byron. The garden forms part of a wider group of themed gardens at Newstead Abbey, including the Spanish, French, Venetian, American, Rose and Sub-Tropical gardens. Newstead Abbey’s own material states that the Japanese Garden was designed by the Webb sisters and their mother between about 1899 and 1914, with help from a Japanese horticulturist brought back to England after one of their travels.

History

The garden is associated especially with Ethel Webb, who supervised the Newstead Abbey estate after the death of her father, William Frederick Webb, in 1899, and later became owner in 1910. Historic England states that the Japanese Garden was laid out in the early twentieth century by Miss Ethel Webb. The Japanese Garden Society gives 1907 as the date of construction and notes that Ethel developed the garden using her personal experience of Japan and Josiah Conder’s book as inspiration and guide.

Design features

The garden is a miniature Japanese-style landscape with water, rockwork, paths, bridges, lanterns and Japanese planting. Later descriptions identify a pond, traditional stone lanterns, over-water bridges, waterfalls, bamboo groves, Japanese maples, azaleas and katsura trees. The Japanese Garden Society describes it as an important pre-1910 example of Japanese-style gardening in Britain, predating the Japan-British Exhibition in London.