Gardens
The Gardens, covering 42 acres (170,000 m²), date from the early 17th century, and were laid out by John Tradescant the elder. Tradescant visited Europe and brought back trees and plants that had never previously been grown in England. The gardens included orchards, fountains, scented plants, water parterres, terraces, herb gardens and a foot maze. They were neglected in the 18th century, but restoration began in Victorian times and continues under the present Dowager Marchioness of Salisbury.
During World War I, the grounds were used to test the first British tanks. An area was dug with trenches and craters and covered with barbed-wire to represent no man's land and German trench lines on the Western Front. To commemorate this, the only surviving Mark I tank was sited at Hatfield from 1919 until 1970 before being moved to the Bovington Tank Museum.
The Rhodesian Light Infantry Regimental Association has placed its 'Troopie' memorial statue on the grounds of Hatfield House, due to the long association of the Cecil family with Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). Around its base is a roll of regimental members ('troopies') who fell in the Rhodesian Bush War and several inscriptions, including ' In reconciliation and hope for future peace in Zimbabwe'.
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Famous quotes containing the word gardens:
“Our fathers wrung their bread from stocks and stones
And fenced their gardens with the Redman’s bones;”
—Robert Lowell (1917–1977)
“It is closing time in the gardens of the West and from now on an artist will be judged only by the resonance of his solitude or the quality of his despair.”
—Cyril Connolly (1903–1974)
“Have We not made the earth as a cradle and the mountains as pegs? And We created you in pairs, and We appointed your sleep for a rest; and We appointed night for a garment, and We appointed day for a livelihood. And We have built above you seven strong ones, and We appointed a blazing lamp and have sent down out of the rain-clouds water cascading that We may bring forth thereby grain and plants, and gardens luxuriant.”
—Qur’An. “The Tiding,” 78:6-16, trans. by Arthur J. Arberry (1955)