Wood House

A Memory of Taw Green.

Early C20 formal gardens and parkland designed and landscaped by Thomas Mawson and implemented by Robert Mawson of the Lakeland Nurseries, Windermere, surrounding a house designed by Dan Gibson with a ground plan by Thomas Mawson.

Historically, Wood was a substantial Devon farm centred on a late C16 or early C17 house, lying some distance from the village of South Tawton. The early C19 Tithe map (c 1840) shows a group of buildings on the site of the present house approached by a drive on the line of the present service drive. An orchard and kitchen garden lay to the south and south-west, while many of the other fields associated with the farm were in arable cultivation, reflecting the relative fertility of the site. The early C19 farm was let to Richard Lethbridge, whose family remained in occupation until the early C20. The 1st edition OS map (1886) shows significant alteration to the grounds at Wood, with the construction of the south-west drive and lodge, and the formation of the lake to the south-east of the house. In 1900 William Lethbridge, a successful barrister, consulted Thomas Mawson about further improvements to the estate (Mawson and Mawson 1926). Mawson introduced Lethbridge to the architect Dan Gibson (Mawson 1927), with whom he had earlier had a partnership, and with whom he worked at Graythwaite Hall, Cumbria and The Willows, Lancashire (qv). Mawson and Gibson collaborated on the comprehensive remodelling of the existing house (ibid). Gibson was responsible for the design of the new house, its furnishing, and the design of the home farm buildings and alteration of the lodge on the south-west drive, while Mawson made an initial ground plan for the house to ensure its relationship to his garden scheme. The house and new gardens were substantially complete by 1905, although Mawson returned to make further alterations to the south-west entrance. Mawson's landscape scheme was implemented by his brother Robert Mawson, of Lakeland Nurseries, Windermere, and was described by Thomas Mawson in an extensive, illustrated account of his work at Wood in the fifth edition of The Art and Craft of Garden Making (1926). William Lethbridge died c 1920, and the property remained in private hands until 1973 when it was sold and converted into a country house hotel. It was subsequently resold, and is now (1998) again a private residence. (From HistoricEngland.org)

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