Secret moorland garden forgotten for two centuries

A secret garden has been discovered amongst the wild moors surrounding Simonsbath, near our Exmoor holiday cottages. Archaeologists at Exmoor National Park have begun crucial development of opening up a secret moorland garden that has been lost for the best part of two centuries. This garden could even be Exmoor’s answer to Cornwall’s Lost Gardens of Heligan. This lost garden of the moor was established with the help of Irish navvies during the early 1800s, although their full glory was never recognized because it was left uncompleted. The hopes of the Exmoor National Park Authority is that this remote garden could soon be accessible for people to visit. The massive mansion was never finalised, and fell into disorder. It was finally demolished and remained untouched until the National Park Authority learned of the secret coombe and a semi-ruined neighbouring school. Chief archaeologist Rob Wilson-North, with the authority, said: "There were two things that caused us to look at this place – we had acquired the old school and were wondering what to do with the buildings. As part of that we were trying to discover what they started as – we knew there was something earlier here from the beginning of 19th century – and did it work with the designed landscape?” Back in 1818 John Knight had some grand designs for a 20,000 acre Exmoor holding. He wanted to domesticate the moors and turn it into an enormous estate with a huge mansions and demesne right at its heart at Simonsbath. Your probably think sounds like a high profile operation but there is one big problem which the modern historians are encountering; Knight and his staff were not in the habit of writing anything down or making any kind of records. Image: Herbythyme under Creative Commons.