Cragside - A magical house and garden

(Picture credit - Cragside Cascades - Photograph by NTPL/Graeme Peacock)

Cragside is a Northumbrian Jewel, where a wealthy industrialist and his wife transformed bare hillsides and narrow denes into one of the most stunning gardens in England. Sandy Felton revisits this fascinating house and garden.

It is hard to believe that the landscape surrounding Cragside, one of the National Trust's Northumbrian jewels, is man-made. So comfortable is this Victorian mansion sitting high on a steep valley within its environment that it looks to all intents and purposes as though the house and landscape have been perfectly moulded into each other over centuries. (Picture left - Cragside Cascades - Photograph by NTPL / Graeme Peacock)

It's not until you start to understand the Cragside story that you realise this unique estate has been built on bare Northumberian fells which would have had nothing but gorse and scrub. William George Armstrong was a scientist and technical innovator and his house at Cragside was designed with many pioneering furnishings and fittings. It became a window for his many talents and a perfect base to entertain other industrialists and influential people from all over the world.

I had first visited Cragside not long after the National Trust took over the property in 1977 and I was enthralled then by the house and its contents. My return was no less exciting and this time I was particularly fortunate to have a detailed tour of the house with house manager, Paul Hawkins.

The house was advanced for its time, so much so, that Lord Armstrong attracted no lesser guests than the Prince and Princess of Wales (later Edward VII), who came in 1884 no doubt attracted by the electric lights and Armstrong’s use of hydraulic water power. It is a strikingly comfortable home with beautiful stained glass (Morris), Gillows of Lancaster furniture and some very fine paintings. The Armstrongs were enthusiastic collectors, particularly of 19th century artists, and it is sad that many of the notable paintings of that time were sold in 1910, however, those that remain still give an insight into their taste.

After the 'wow' factor of the house there still remains the delights of the pleasure gardens and estate and so it is outside to explore one of the finest alpine landscape gardens in the country. I discover Head Gardener, Alison Pringle, (pictured below) planting out an enormous flower bed in the formal garden.

(Pictured above - Alison Pringle - next to her favourite plant LOMATIA ferruginea from the southern hemisphere.)

Because the house became the principal home of Lord and Lady Armstrong, this unique landscape stimulates the senses whatever the season. In Spring you will find the blossom on the Pear trees in the Orchard house, pansies, polyanthus, wallflowers and bulbs of all kinds. In May the formal gardens fill with colour from the spring bedding and of course the Azaleas on the Rock Gardens give forth their showy displays. Then the Rhododendrons explode and summer bedding takes over in the Formal Garden. The ferns fill out to entertain you and in the Rock Garden a variety of foliage struts its stuff. In high summer Alison and her staff make sure that the many large containers and hanging baskets are at their best and then as autumn approaches the 700 Dahlias in the formal garden bring their own entertainment.

For Alison life is never dull at Cragside. She first came to the garden in 1991 on a National Trust Careership Scheme and has recently taken over as Head Gardener. She explained that Lord Armstrong wanted to recreate a Himalayan landscape without actually using Himalayan plants and indeed most of the plants in the gardens today are from America as they are far more hardy.

"We don't have little tiny beautiful alpines with a mulch of gravel over them," she explains. "We are talking rock gardening on a huge scale. The rock garden is over 4 acres and is one of the original features of the garden." It was during the late 1860s that the use of rock in garden design became popular in this country and owners of estates such as Cragside wanted to create a natural look while at the same time making a bold statement.

Alison and her team do not have any documentary evidence for the property: "We just glean little bits of information, but Lord Armstrong wrote a children's story which described a traveller walking through the Himalayan mountains. Little streams and waterfalls and rocky outcrops are described and as you read it the landscape of Cragside comes to mind." There is no evidence that Armstrong ever went to Himalaya and it is likely that he interpreted his landscape from pictures.

He didn't even have a designer - the garden is his inspiration and that of his wife, doing what they wanted, to create a landscape that they wanted. Between 1860 and 1900 they completely transformed the natural landscape. It is estimated that they planted seven million trees in and around the estate using over a hundred gardeners.

"He uses conifers, Rhododendrons, Azaleas, Berberis and Pieris," explains Alison. "That broad brush stroke approach. When people come today they think they are going to see a little alpine walk - however, they are surprised - it is really huge and you are now looking at trees which are 150 years old." Alison's favourite plant in the garden is Lomatia ferruginea which is from the southern hemisphere - just one of the many unusual plant varieties which can be found.

The smaller rocky outcrops are planted with robust alpine plants while the south rock garden uses plants from New Zealand and the warmer parts of Europe.

Alison explained that the Armstrongs created a garden which reflected Victorian high society. The Formal and Italian Terraces, the palm house, kitchen garden and ferneries, rock garden, conifers and cascades, all typical of the period: "But when you look at them, they have this unique Armstrong twist - there is a lot of stuff you can really tell wasn’t done by a professional designer, its quirky or idiosyncratic and you say to yourself, 'what a weird thing to do there', like the rotating pots in the orchard house." The rotating pots were designed by Armstrong on a turntable mechanism so that each huge pot is rotated to prevent the plants from growing towards the light.

The garden also benefits from a Pinetum - during Victorian times a supreme symbol of wealth - which holds a fine collection of conifers.

The magnificent cascades are another wonderful surprise at Cragside and recently restored by the National Trust. The existing rock work on the top two thirds of the west cascade and nearly all of the northeast cascade rock work has been repaired without any disturbance to the original Armstrong design. Now the cascades work once again in all their glory as a brilliant tribute to Armstrong who was also a great water engineer. (See our feature on Cragside’s water cascades.)

For our modern-day gardeners the main challenges of looking after such a magnificent garden is the fact that they cannot use big machines and most of the maintenance has to be done manually.

The restoration work is ongoing at Cragside - there is still much to do - however, we are indeed fortunate that this lovely house and its exciting and dramatic man-made landscape are still there for us to enjoy today and cared for by the National Trust.

It was lovely to see the gardens once again and to be able to appreciate the progress made by the NT since my last visit in enhancing and preserving this truly unique landscape garden. Our thanks to Alison and Paul for their time and for instilling into us some of their enthusiam for what is a very special place.

Cragside is situated on the B6341 half a mile north east of Rothbury - for opening times and details log onto www.nationaltrust.org.uk