Honeywood Garden Project - The front garden

The front garden at Honeywood

The present wall of the front garden is the historic boundary of the house and can be traced back on maps into the first half of the 19th century. The path outside the wall seems to be an ancient right of way. The path and the land between it and Upper Pond were part of the manorial waste of Carshalton and belonged to the lord thereof. John Pattinson Kirk acquired rights over this, fenced it, and turned it into a detached piece of garden.

The development of this garden can be traced from the 1870s through a series of paintings and photos in the Sutton Museum Art Collection which appear below.

The area of the present front garden

The earliest photos of Honeywood (then Wandle Cottage) show a wall across the front with a gate opposite the front door. The wall curves upwards to the gate pillars and the ends.

At some point before the 1898 rebuild of the north wing this wall was replaced by a low wall with white capping topped by iron railings. The gate was moved to its present position at the north end of the garden.

The present front garden is surrounded by a low brick wall with a concrete cap which supports steel railings. These date from 1995 and were made by Valmar Engineering of Wallington.

The Victorian and Edwardian photos below show that the garden was planted with small trees and shrubs which become more numerous towards the end of the century. There must also have been smaller plants but these are hidden by the garden wall.

When the Heritage Service took over the house the garden was covered with crazy paving apart from a tarmac path from the gate to the front door and across the front of the house. There were five stone planters set in the crazy paving.

A wide postcard captioned ‘Carshalton Water’ shows the ford and the north side of the garden after the Edwardian extension of 1903 and before 1913 when the baptistry was added to All Saint’s Church. The front garden is filled with substantial shrubs and it is clear that the paving and planters did not then exist.

Several photos of the house taken after 1903 show the front garden still planted with large shrubs as does a picture in an advert which was printed in the Carshalton Council guide for 1932 when Lily was running tea rooms. It seems unlikely that the Council created them after the Second World War so they were perhaps made by Lily in the mid- to late 1930s.

From the Carshalton Guide 1932

Between the path and the pond

The land between the path across the front of the house and the pond is divided by the culvert. The land to the north and south of this have separate histories. The area to the north, directly in front of the house was leased to John Pattinson Kirk in 1886 and was sold to him in 1893. The photos below show that it had been enclosed with railings and planted with shrubs before the north wing was rebuilt in 1898. The plants gradually grew larger and they survived until after 1903.

The area to the south of the culvert is more problematic. There is no reference to it in the deeds of Honeywood and although it was fenced and appears to be part of the garden it is unclear when it was acquired. Both areas were planted with shrubs.

There was a large tree at the north end of the area north of the culvert. It was probably a plane to judge from the appearance of the bark in some of the pictures below. This seems to have been felled, or perhaps blew over, around the time the north wing was rebuilt.

It seems likely that the railings were removed in the Second World War. It is not known when the shrubs were cleared.

Views across the pond

The front garden is partially visible on a number of photos showing the front of the house. The pictures below are details extracted from copies in the local studies collection in Sutton Library unless otherwise noted.

There are currently no larger images to be found by clicking on the pictures below.