Northiam Things to Do

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The oldest surviving part of this beautiful house at Northiam dates from the 15th century. Other sections of it, have been taken from other places and other houses and added to it over the years. Most of the major additions and changes were made in the early 1900's by the Lloyd family and the famous architect/designer/landscaper, Lutyens who restored sections of the house to it's original design.

Many of the rooms are open to the public, including the parlour, the solar, the writing room, Yeomans Hall. Most of the furniture is17th-19th century but unfortunately photography is not allowed inside the house.

The last resident of the house was Christo Lloyd who's father had undertaken the major restorations of the 1900's. Christo inherited his parents passion for gardening and the various gardens in the acres and acres around the house have been designed by him. They are an abundance of colour, scent and the variety of plant-life here is phenomenal. Christo sadly died earlier this year but the house and gardens will surivive under the Great Dixter Charitable Trust.

A ticket to see the house and the gardens is £7.50 for adults and £3.00 for children.

Opening hours:
1 April-29 October: Tues- Sun 2pm-5pm and Bank Holiday Mondays

The *gardens only* are open open during the above dates fron 11am.

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The gardens have been created by Lloyd with a deliberately haphazard design, with mixtures colours and foliage, flowers, fruit trees, hedges, vegetables herbs and wildflowers spreading far over the several hundred acres of meadows and farm land surrounding the house. There is topiary clipped to resemble peacocks, mixed borders,hedges and ponds (surrounded by Gunnera Monsterosa, a huge pre-historic plant that grows by the waters edge). There are sunken gardens, ponds, oast houses, a walled garden and barn. I am no gardening expert but the work here must take hours and hours and hours - in fact it is a real dedication of love and there are permanent gardeners who live here year round maintaining this horticultural delight!

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Just to the right of the entrance near the meadow garden is the Horse Pond. It's covered in pink and white water lillies and there are huge fish plip plopping on the surface and are very easy to see (but not so easy to photograph! ).It looks deep and there's nothing to stop the visitor from slipping in so be warned!

The second photo is of me standing by the pre-historic "Gunnera Monsterosa" a massive leafed plant that grows by water - I am standing by the edge of the Lower Moat - expecting a Plesiosaurus to rise out of the murky depths at any moment!

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The kitchen garden located in the "High Garden" area of the grounds still grows an abundance of fruit trees and berries. Of course when the house was occupied with a large family, in the early 1900s, they would have been largely self-sufficient when it came to fruit and veg and there would have been an army of gardeners, cook, servants etc to do all the work that was necessary!

Today the fruit trees still abound and I saw pear, mulberry, maize (obviously not a fruit) etc etc growing here.

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This is one of the most beautiful areas of the garden - although all of them are lovely in their own way. This one is paved and also has a pond which has no fish in it, I suppose to encourage newts and other water loving creepy crawlies. During the First World War this area, which was originally laid to lawn, was dug up for vegetables.

Just behind the gift shop is a small meadow with a few friendly sheep. They came running as we approached the gate so make sure you have a bit of grass for them. When you sit in the tea-machine/giftshop garden you can hear them bleating so you'll know where they are!

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The Hovel is an old cow shed and it is possible to walk through it to the exotic garden which was planted on the cattle yard. There are swallows nesting in the rafters above in the summertime.