NEWPORT ALMELEY

Hereford and Worcester Garden Trust- Summer 1998

Newport Almeley is one of the least well-known country houses in EIerefordshire. Lost in the deep lanes which wind their way through the ancient woodlands of the north-western corner of the county, the estate since the Second World War has provided a very private retreat for a Latvian community, displaced by the political events in northeasterr1 Europe. The property has now been bought by a developer, who intends to divide the house and use it for multiple occupation.

The long brick house was built for Paul Foley, second son of Paul 'Speaker' Foley of Stoke Edith, in c. 1712. It is a handsome 'Queen Anne' building, disfigured, to a degree, by large stone bays added in the mid-19th century. At Stoke Edith there is an early 18th century painting of a stag hunt at Newport which shows the house - minus the bays - as it exists today but with an impressive formal garden and deer -park. There are decorated terraces, a sunken garden with an octagonal basin, tree-lined alleys, a walled garden and a summerhouse at the end of a long walk. The deer-park is enclosed by a stone wall and there is an irregular lake which remains an important feature of the landscape today. Details of the maintenance and planting of this garden are revealed in Paul Foley's letters and accounts in the Hereford Record Office.

The grounds were modified in 1767 by a local surveyor/landscaper called John Bach, who also worked at Stoke Edith and who erased the formal elements, created a new drive and established a new detached walled garden to the north-east of the house. Newport was now set in a landscape park, which is revealed in a later estate survey of 1774. The park-like setting of the house remains today, but much denuded of trees.

The property passed from the Foleys in l863 and was purchased by the grandson of James Watt, James Watt Gibbs Watt Esq. who altered the house and commissioned William Andrews Nesfield to restore something of the Italianate formality which had existed in the early 18th century. A new terrace was raised, planted with yew balls and western red cedars whilst below a wide yew alley was established leading to the lake. The focal point today is a great stone tazza with lion supporters surrounded by a kerb but early 20th century photographs show that this was on the terrace - unless, of course, there were two of them! The tazza is identical to those provided by Nesfield for other schemes including the Broad Walk in Regent's Park, designered in 1863. Newport is named in the list of commissions gleaned by Shirley Evans from the Nesfield archive in Australia and published in the catalogue for the Durham University Exhibition in 1994. Mrs Evans had no idea where Newport was in Herefordshire, such was the obscurity of the estate, but she walkcd over it with great excitement with David Whitehead in July and confirmed that it had all the hallmarks of a Nesfield garden. Thus, a neglected garden in the geometrical style, by its greatest exponent, has survived with only minor modifications, the vagaries of 20th century gardening. English Heritage has been informed and we hope Newport will be added to the Herefordshire Register of Parks and Gardens of Historic Interest.