In front of you, to your left, the red gabled building is part of the Elizabethan Conversion and restoration of the ruined Abbey. By contrast, the Magnificent Building towering next to it is the Georgian West Wing, built in the 1720s for the Lord Leigh. Despite his extensive improvements to the building, he showed no interest in creating a garden to match in splendour.

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The landscape around you, up until the early nineteenth century, was made up or wild woodland, and grazing pasture and crop fields.

Until the early 180O's instead of seeing a cricket pitch before you, there would have been a high walled farmyard, with a stable and kennels. Not much of a view and quite pungent and noisy!

The pleasant vista that you see today is down to the Landscape designer Humphrey Repton, who was commissioned in 1808, by Rev. Thomas Leigh who had just inherited the Abbey.

One of the tall Wellingtonias, to your right, was planted by Prince Albert to commemorate the Royal visit in 1858. An Oak tree planted by the Queen did not survive.

 

Wisden voted this cricket pitch the prettiest in the country.