Dunorlan Park
Dunorlan Park is a park and grounds in Royal Tunbridge Wells, UK.
Totalling approximately 78 acres (31 hectares) and containing a 6-acre (24,000 m2) lake, the grounds were landscaped by Robert Marnock for Henry Reed, the merchant and philanthropist who owned the estate and the now-demolished house that once overlooked it.
First record of the land is under the name of Burnthouse or Calverly Manor Farm which appears on a Tunbridge Wells map produced by John Bowra in 1738. After the death of the owner, a Mr Thomas Panuwell, in 1823, the farm was purchased by a land developer called John Ward, who intended to build a 1,000-acre (4.0 km2) Calverly Estate to rival the lower village of Tunbridge Wells which was centred around the spring in the Pantiles.
However, in the 1850s the farmhouse and lands were purchased by Henry Reed who was the driving force behind the park as it stands today. Mr Reed demolished the house that stood on the grounds and built his own mansion, completed in 1862, which he named Dunorlan. In a sale brochure of 1871/2 the mansion was described as "a most elegant and substantial mansion, erected ... entirely of Normandy stone, in the Italian style of architecture, finished throughout in the most perfect manner, and in every way adapted for the comfort and enjoyment of a nobleman or gentleman of fortune". However, Mr Reed was "not at all satisfied with the house" on its completion and during its construction "he was not at all satisfied with the plan. The architect, however, said that his reputation was at stake and he would not have anything altered". As his family grew, he decided to pull down part of the building and erect a new wing. The 1881 Census (the house at this point now belonging to the Collins family) shows the house to have operated with 11 servants, a testament to its size.
To complement the house the surrounding fields were landscaped and formed into a park under the direction and design of Robert Marnock, one of the leading landscape designers of his day. These grounds were often used by Henry Reed in his evangelical pursuits, and during his last few years there he invited local Reverends to hold open air services under the fine beech trees on the lawn, with over 500 invitations to attend sent to the local gentry.
In designing the grounds of Dunorlan, Marnock adhered to his guiding principle of "harmony with nature". The lake was adapted to form a "fine ornamental sheet of water" and a "luxuriant avenue of deodoras and douglas picea, leading from a Grecian temple to a handsome stone basin and fountain".
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