Eggelstone Hall & Gardens. (4K)

Eggleston Hall is a privately owned 19th-century English country house near Barnard Castle, in Teesdale, County Durham. It is a Grade II listed building.
The manor of Eggleston was forfeited to the Crown by Charles Neville, 6th Earl of Westmorland as a consequence of his part in the Rising of the North in 1569. It was granted by the Crown to the City of London and thereafter passed through several hands until it was acquired by the Hutchinson family early in the 18th century.
The house was built in 1817 on the site of the old manor house. It was commissioned by William Hutchinson to a design by architect Ignatius Bonomi. The two-storey house has a recessed two-bayed central block flanked by projecting end bays connected by a Doric order colonnade.
In 1919 the house was acquired by Sir William Cresswell Gray, 1st Baronet, of the shipbuilding firm William Gray & Company. From 1972 to 1991 it was run as a finishing school by Rosemarie Gray, the widow of William Talbot Gray (High Sheriff of Durham in 1971), the son of Sir William Gray Bt., but has been returned to residential use. It is, in 2008, the family seat of Sir William Hume Gray, 3rd Baronet.
Eggleston Hall Gardens
The Nursery Garden of the North
There have been Gardens at Eggleston Hall since the late 16th century. It is hard to imagine, given the limitations of plant varieties, just how these would have looked, but my suspicion would be towards a physic garden, in all likelihood with the proximity of Egglestone Abbey it may well have been under monastic influence through their use and knowledge of medicinal herbs.
However this was the time of the Tradescants and the birth pains of more a scientific interest in plants. Over the next couple of centuries many of these old monastic gardens morphed into Botanical gardens. The advent of relatively easier travel around the globe, the natural human thirst for knowledge, and adventuresome spirits such as John Fraser, David Douglas, Robert Fortune, Sir Joseph Hooker, George Forrest, and latterly Frank Kingdon-Ward, meant that tales of exotic plants and enchanting gardens were brought home to an insatiable public. Many amongst them would have been wealthy landowners, merchants, or industrialists, to who both money and land were readily available. It is not hard to imagine the culture of oneupmanship over who had the rarest and most unusual plants on their estate.
One only has to look along the river banks of the Tees from Eggleston bridge to see the selection of rarer mature trees that could only have been planted during this long period, and while they are sadly passing with the winds of time, their spirit and grace remain as a testament to this past for a while yet.

[@DominicWade]

Great footage :)