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A Visit to Sherbourne Castle: Comparing Athelhampton House & Gardens

A recent visit to Sherbourne Castle, another member of our Dorset Garden Trail, showed off the grounds beautifully.


Sherbourne New Castle in a warm beigey yellow stone seen from across the 1753 lake. It's surrounded by clumps of trees. The sky is cloudy, with white clouds in the foreground getting greyer towards the background.
Sherbourne New Castle

With its dramatic lake and naturalistic landscaping courtesy of Capability Brown, the grounds give an impression of simply having grown without any outside help or intervention. The natural calmness and harmony of the landscape Brown created belies the reality of the planning and the hard manual labour that had to go into creating the artificial, contrived space.


A ruin of part of Sherbourne Old Castle. A tree stands between the viewer and the crumbling castle. It's surrounded by other, taller trees, and greenery. The sun is shining brightly in a slightly cloudy sky.
Sherbourne Old Castle

Sherbourne Old Castle, slighted by the Roundheads in 1645, stands as a centrepiece of the grounds, acting as a folly that can be viewed across the lake from the new castle.


A view across the lake created at Sherbourne Castle by Capability Brown, looking towards the New Castle. Only a small part of the castle is visible, surrounded by clumps of trees. The trees, the castle, and the clouds are reflected very clearly in the lake
A view across Capability Brown's lake

The grounds of Sherbourne Castle stand in stark contrast to the gardens at Athelhampton. Inigo Thomas created gardens that were clearly heavily moulded by human influence. His intentions are clear: each walkway, and each viewpoint has been blatantly created, rather than naturally grown. Instead of being inspired by the harmony of nature, he took his influences for the gardens at Athelhampton from the gardens of the Italian Renaissance.


A view towards Sherbourne New Castle over the little waterfall and across the lake. The view is at the centre of the image, and framed by lush greenery on either side. More trees can be seen on the righthand side than on the lefthand side. The waterfall is wide, but not particularly deep.
A view of Sherbourne Castle

Without the influence of Inigo Thomas in the 1890s, what might the grounds of Athelhampton have looked like? Might they have been more naturalistic, taking into account landscape features like the River Piddle, in a different way?


The house and gardens at Athelhampton are open to visit 7 days a week all year round, save a few days at Christmas.

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