Heatwave reveals secret garden lost for 350 years at stately home

A centuries-old garden has been discovered outside a stately home in the rolling green hills of the Derbyshire Dales.

Weeks of scorching temperatures and next to no rain have left the southern lawns of Chatsworth dead and brown.

But estate workers were shocked to discover the outline of an ornate 17th-century garden design on it.

The Great Parterre, a complex arrangement of swirling flowerbeds and paths, was created for the first Duke of Devonshire around 1699.

Measuring 473 by 277 feet, it was flattened and replaced with a new design some 31 years later by the third county duke, William Cavendish.

Chatsworth said that the grass planted to replace the flowers has shorter roots, so it burns faster during hot, dry weather.

With the grass parched, the garden has become a patchwork of the two dukes’ gardens, duking it out, we suppose.

The old garden emerged for the first time in 2018, peaking out of the scorched grass during a heatwave.

It appeared again in 2022 amid a sizzler of a heatwave, sending temperatures to a historic high of 38.1°C in Chatsworth.

Considered one of the great treasure houses of England, Chatsworth has been owned by the family of the same name since 1549.

Estate officials said weather monitoring equipment in the gardens had recorded temperatures peaking at more than 30°C in May, June and July.

Each of those months has seen the UK baked by a heatwave, with the estate 33% sunnier than normal, seeing 530.8 hours of light.

Rain, however, was in short supply, seeing just 108.2mm of it, 32% less than average for this time of year.

‘While the 2022 heatwave was the most extreme on record, hours of sunshine and mm of rainfall recorded between 2022 and present day show a shift in Chatsworth’s climate towards sunny springs, prolonged dry periods, and occasional bouts of very heavy rainfall,’ Chatsworth said.

A YouTube video of the unearthed garden uploaded by Chatsworth shows how several other nearby lots are turning brown in the heat.

South east England saw no rainfall from July 2 to July 18, the longest dry stretch since 1995.

Estate gardeners are having to increase organic matter in the soil to keep it wet longer.

Gardeners in an increasing number of parts of England may have to do the same, given that hosepipe bans are in effect.

Full list of areas affected by a hosepipe ban

• Bedfordshire
• Berkshire
• Buckinghamshire
• Essex
• Hertfordshire
• Surrey
• London
• Norfolk
• Suffolk
• Cambridgeshire
• Lincolnshire
• Northamptonshire
• Rutland
• Bedfordshire
• Parts of Essex
• Kent
• Hampshire
• Isle of Wight
• Cambridge

Firms, including Thames Water and South East Water, are asking customers to cut back water usage and limit how they water their lawns.

Reservoirs are running dry, too, with levels at 79%, five percentage points lower than on average for this time of year, officials said Friday.

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