Ripley, just north of  Harrogate  is one of those picture postcard villages that according to Country Life “has been crowned North Yorkshire’s best village to live in.”   It was largely rebuilt in a picturesque Gothic style in the late 1820s by the local squire Sir William Ingleby of Ripley Castle which sits on the edge of the village and overlooks a beautiful lake and wide stretch of parkland.

From the outside, however, the castle doesn’t look to have much of a garden. In fact, hidden away behind its walls  it does and they contain some real surprises. I was lucky to visit a few days ago on a glorious late November day, with blue sky and very little wind and although the gardens were at the tail end of the season their quality shone through.

 

As usual the photos are mine unless otherwise acknowledged

Ripley Castle has been the seat  of the Ingilby family for  the last 714 years. They first acquired it through marriage but the estate was then consolidated and enlarged in the late 14th and early 15th centuries.

The family crest is a boar’s head awarded along with a knighthood to Sir Thomas Ingilby who saved Edward III from being gored by one on a hunting expedition. The impressive gatehouse dates this period, although with some later alterations.  The next oldest surviving part is the tower that rises above the rest of the house, and which dates from the 16thc.

Despite being a prominent recusant family during the 16thc,  taking the Royalist side in the Civil War, and supporting James II in 1688 somehow the Ingilbys hung on to  the estate. However little happened architecturally or horticulturally until 1780 when Sir John Ingilby married Elizabeth Amcotts, heiress of Kettlewell Hall in Lincolnshire.  His new wife was supposed to bring a substantial dowry and Sir John borrowed £12000 against that to rebuild the castle.

He commissioned local architect William Belwood, a pupil of Robert Adam,  and work began in 1784 with  the  demolition of  much of the medieval house at a cost of £10.  While the new  interiors designed in a traditional classical style  Ingilby chose the fashionable Gothick style for its exterior appearance.

Belwood also designed an orangery and two pavilions in the formal gardens while Sir John  planted a massive number of trees in the garden, extensive shrubberies and in plantations across the estate every year from 1781 onwards. Its a good thing he did because his new father-in-law, Sir Wharton Amcotts,  didn’t [or perhaps wouldn’t]  hand over the dowry, with the result that Sir John ran out of money and into debt. The situation became so serious that in  1794, although he was an MP, he fled to the continent to escape his creditors.  A keen gardener,  while he was away he  sent back seeds from wherever he travelled. Luckily the family had a good steward who managed to economise and sell off large areas of woodland for timber, eventually raising enough  pay off  Sir John’s debts allowing him to finally return in 1804.

No sooner was he back than he ordered the completion of the adjoining service court, including stables and coach houses. These had been designed by Belwood to complement the Gothick of castle, although he died before they were actually built.  It is this courtyard which now acts as the principle entrance to the castle and its grounds.  There is a second courtyard behind the castle which includes a brew house and laundry block together with the   former dairy range which also has an ornamental frontage to the garden.  There are surviving accounts which show that Belwood was paid at least £734 for his work.

For more information on Belwood, the architect, see Jill Low’s article about him in Yorkshire Archaeological Journal Vol. 56, 1984.

 

Sir John’s  son, Sir William Amcotts Ingilby, did eventually  inherit substantial estates from the Amcotts family and this allowed him huge freedom to carry out more improvements at Ripley.  Despite spending a lot of time abroad, in 1839 for example the local press was full of reports of him spending £1000 on “embellishments” and in 1840 of more  “extensive improvements”. This included rebuilding virtually  the entire village  in the same Gothic style as  the castle and carrying out large-scale garden improvements.

Arriving at the castle today entry is through a Gothick gateway in the high wall that surrounds the courtyard.  On the outside the wall has single story buildings against it which now contain a cafe and commercial premises, while on the courtyard side there are false windows.  The service buildings have been adapted for more modern uses as a wedding and events venue.

At the far end of the courtyard, a terraced walk runs around much of the castle,  overlooking the valley and  the deer park.  This was probably constructed in the 1830s for Sir William.

 

 

Steps lead down from the south side to paths that go to the lake and parkland  but  a another walk leads in the opposite direction past a summerhouse and the back of  the dairy block until it reaches a pair of splendid ornamental gates that lead into the gardens.

Inside the eye is immediately drawn to a range of buildings on the left hand side.  At either end of a long high brick wall are two classical pavilions, while in the centre there is an orangery with arched windows and fluted Ionic pilasters, topped by a balustrade. A note in the estate accounts show that “one Isaac Whitelock was paid £1.1.0 for a plan of a hot house”  in 1781,  but  the orangery and pavilions are  almost certainly the work of William Belwood, who is known to have drawn up plans for the balustrade.   In 1817-18, a glass roof was added to the orangery to convert it into a palm house

 

The pavilions are of similar style to the orangery with arched windows and balustraded parapets. One has a black and white marble fireplace with more fluted Ionic columns,  and a shield with the family’s boar and squirrel badges. It was originally used as a tea room, but is  now home of the castle’s  fire engine. The other pavilion seems to be described as an aviary on the OS map surveyed in 1847 [see below] , but was then used as a fruit store in the late 19thc before being  converted to a squash court in the mid 20thc although it is now no longer in use.

These buildings were all on the Historic England At Risk register for many years but have recently been restored with the aid of a £343,ooo grant.

Two long ranges of glasshouses were added by Sir William in 1817-1818 to link the orangery to the pavilions. One range survives although the other was demolished, probably around the end of the Great War – they are still there on the 1909 OS map.   In the gardens heyday these hothouses were the pride and joy of the estate. A long succession of Victorian head gardeners used them for growing a wide range of tropical plants, especially fruit. Sir William must have been very interested because his head gardeners all seem to have been hot-house specialists.

In 1833 head gardener, Thomas Henderson, was reported to be growing water-lemons [Passiflora laurifolia] while his successor  Mr G.M. Elliott successfully grew  bananas and passion fruit for the table, and gained a particular reputation for growing  papaya, writing  several articles about them in the gardening press in the late 1830s, including a lengthy one in Loudon’s Gardener’s Magazine , as well as exhibiting them at the London show of the Horticultural Society.

 

Elliott was clearly a very skilled horticulturalist as in 1840 he reported how he managed to salvage six orange trees  imported  from Malta that had arrived in a very poor state. He also hybridised pineapples, introducing several to wider cultivation including one called Prince President.    Mr  J Tunnington  who took over in 1890 also wrote regularly for the horticultural  press, especially about  hothouse gardening.

There was also frequent mention in gardening magazines of the Ripley Queen pineapple, the origins of which I’ve not been able to track down with certainty, although I suspect it may have come from the Ripley plantation in Jamaica. Whether that had any connection to Ripley Castle or the Ingilbys I am also uncertain. However an 1899 article in the Journal of Horticulture  says that Ripley was “where some famous Pines were grown in years gone by, of which the variety Ripley Queen perpetuates the memory.”   If anyone knows more about this then please get in touch.

Later generations of  Ingilbys and  head gardeners clearly continued this interest in hothouse plants and there are adverts which use Ripley as an example of new technical innovations.

A new heating system was installed in the early 1870s and then in the early 1880s one of the greenhouse ranges was taken down and replaced by one using Helliwell’s Patent Galzing system. It must have been a successful move because in 1890 the other range of old greenhouses was offered for sale because it too was going to be replaced by the same system.

High standards were clearly maintained right through the last years of the 19thc century with Morris’s Picturesque Views (1880) claiming  that “greenhouses and hothouses are said to be scarcely exceeded by any in the kingdom.”

 

We have a detailed account of the garden, including the glasshouses, in an article in the Journal of Horticulture in March 1899, written following a visit the previous season. The hothouses were divided into 11 sections including the orangery/palm house, five on either side and all with distinct characters. There were several sections devoted to  specific flowers including one devoted entirely to Marecahl Neil roses, three  for grapes -early, mid and  late seasons, and others for peaches, nectarines and figs. The one surprise was that there was no pineapple house as “their culture has been discontinued” to be replaced by  tomatoes which were cropped right through the winter.

Its amazing any of these hothouses survive at all   because by 1847 Sir William regarded them as an unwise expense and as you can see recommended his successor to “make a clearance.” Luckily only half went!

 

 

 

These days they still house an impressively large range of tender plants. Many of these were rehoused from the University of Hull’s  Botanic Gardens at Cottingham in 1991 when it was  under threat of being developed for housing. Ripley also boasts one of the National Collections of hyacinths.

The 1899 article  described  the main part of the garden  as having the rest of its walls  “hidden by shrubs and creepers”  while the 450 feet long herbaceous borders “were the picture of health and full of flowers which might also have been extremely bright and colourful  because there was enough grass and shrubs to tone down the colours and form a very pleasant picture.”  The style of gardening reported was also very different to what is practicable today with large numbers of annuals being grown, including many Eckford sweet peas at the back of borders. From 1854 the grass was cut by a new-fangled Shanks mowing machine bought  by the Rev Henry Ingleby who had succeeded Sir William. [Yorkshire Gazette 13th Oct 1855]

An ornate  gateway on the opposite wall to the buildings  open into what had been the kitchen garden and orchard. It now has a splendid brick pergola and box-edged parterres, including the  family’s badges – squirrel, boar and star have been included, as well as trained fruit trees.  Beyond that is a further narrow enclosure  with a sun-trap south facing wall which yielded fruit at least a week earlier than the main orchard.

 

 

 

 

 

As can be seen from the cutting below  the family also supported local produce shows held for villagers who were growing far less exotic produce.

 

 

 

 

 

Returning to the orangery another surprise awaits the visitor. Instead of entering the range of glasshouses a door at the back  leads to a completely different world. Gone are the open views across the lawn and the warmth of the hothouses and instead the view is of cool, dark, almost mysterious woodland.  Officially called the pleasure grounds it is a densely planted area, which may have started life as an arboretum. Ripley was one of the gardens which was well-covered in Loudon’s Arboretum et Fruticetum Britannicum which gives the planting dates and measurements of several specimens including Wellingtonias.

Against the rear wall of  the orangery and glasshouses are the former bothies and potting sheds. Long out of use their conversion to a new use associated the castle’s outdoor pursuits was covered by the same grant that covered the restoration of the orangery.    The roofline is topped with a boars head and a squirrel.

A straight path, over 300m long leads directly through the woodland to a small Ionic temple, also attributed on stylistic grounds to William Belwood.

The whole area was probably laid out by Sir William Amcotts Ingilby   about the time of the construction of the kitchen garden in 1817-18.

 

 

Coming out of the woodland pleasure grounds into the open again the visitor can look back at a late 18thc ha-ha that dividing the pleasure grounds from parkland, which was probably part of the late 18thc improvements by Sir John Ingleby,  before following the path down the slope to the bridge across the weir that divides the two lakes and into the deer park.

When I first saw the view of the lakes and parkland from the castle terrace my immediate reaction was – it must be  another Capability Brown landscape. It certainly has that look with its  small clumps and scattered trees including  several large mature specimens of oak and sweet chestnut.

 There has been a deer park at Ripley since mediaeval times, although the boundaries have altered a lot and the present park is now much smaller.  According to Historic England the maturity of the tree cover suggests the parkland has C17 or earlier origins, or that it was formed from an area of existing ancient woodland. 

The upper lake covers 2.8 ha [7 acres] and the larger lower one 11 hectares [26 acres] with couple of small wooded islands. Both  have  typical Brown serpentine outlines and were  formed by damming the small Ripley Beck. The difference in levels between them was  solved in a very Brown-like way by creating a weir  that’s crossed by a bridge   Yet there’s no evidence of Brown being at Ripley  although the family tradition is that he was consulted and drew up plans but they were never implemented. However there are no surviving documents, plans or other evidence to give that any real certainty. Dorothy Stroud in her biography of Brown accepted it but later scholars are more sceptical, but despite that it looks the part!

Work on the lakes didn’t start until the time of  Sir William’s second marriage to Mary Ann Clementson in 1843.  The Halifax Guardian reported on March 28th that Sir William, who was a friend of William Cobbett and quite radical in his political beliefs, “has given directions for the formation of an extensive lake…which will afford employment for  a considerable period to the labouring poor to whom the hon. baronets is always a friend in times of need.”   It was overseen by Mark Faviell, a Lincolnshire farmer – perhaps because the Ingleby’s still had land there – and was finished in June 1844 at a cost of about £3,000. Faviell was then contracted to drain the parkland at the cost of another £250.  The new Lady Ingilby also had a deer shelter  built in 1852 and then, on the far side of the park, the dower house where she retired after Sir William died.

Following the paths around the lake or higher  to the park boundary the visitor returns via a 17thc bridge over the Ripley Beck which runs  on a former Roman road past the end of the Lake and its  impressive horse-shoe shaped weir and 6 tiered cascade. Just in time for tea and cake in the friendly Castle Tea Room!

There is plenty of tourist information about Ripley Castle and a couple of Youtube videos with Sir Thomas and Lady Ingilby, but for more on the history of the estate there’s only one major source and that’s Richard Muir’s fascinating book Landscape Detective : discovering a countryside  [2001] which uses Ripley as an exemplar.