Surveys
The Survey Committee concentrates on the surveying of properties throughout the County. It has listed gardens of interest and importance and has surveyed many of them, with their owners’ agreement, the surveys then being deposited in the County Records Office. It hopes, with the owners’ consents, to pass details of many of these surveys to the national database that is being created at York University.
Members of the Survey Committee first select a site, then approach the owners and visit the garden to record all its features, any artefacts as well as important and unusual trees. They follow up their visits by conducting research into the history of the site at the Local History Library and the County Records Office, both of which are in Taunton and, when necessary at The National Monuments Record Centre at Swindon, The British Library and the Public Record Office.
The gardens surveyed so far range from Alfoxton Park - with its associations with Wordsworth and Coleridge - to East Lambrook Manor of Margery Fish fame, Wayford Manor near Crewkerne, a Harold Peto garden, and Crowcombe Court, a garden that must at one time have been as magical as the 18th Century garden at Hestercombe that is currently being restored by Philip White.
Members of the Survey Team are continuing work on the gardens at Dillington House, Burton Pynsent, Orchard Wyndham and The Court House, East Quantoxhead.