File 2 - Master's Lodge

History of the Master's Garden

Part of this was the parish graveyard from nunnery times until the 1560s. The Master had a garden of some sort from the early years of the College, but was then able to expand it to take in the whole area south of the Master’s Lodge and Chapel (Garlick Fair also having moved). A brick wall was built round it in 1681, completing the “Chimney” as a double-walled path. Loggan's map (1688) shows it as an elaborate formal garden with topiary trees and rectangular beds - a substantial parterre with a central piece of topiary, east of it a lawn with another topiary tree in the middle, and a large tree in a small square bed close to the Lodge front door. There were also fruit trees, (further east, to the south of the Chapel). Later stables and a coach-house were built on this eastern side; grazing for the horses lay to the east and north, in the area of what is now Chapel Court - known from an early date as the Master’s paddock (had a wooden fence).

The garden also contains a 17 century mulberry tree and an oriental plane. The latter grew from one of 11 seedlings grown from seeds brought back by Edward Daniel Clarke from Thermopylae. In 1998 three of these trees still survived, the other two being in the Fellows' garden and at the west end of the close.

Frances Wilmoth (Archivist)