Kirby Hall Garden

English Heritage have recreated the 1690s parterre based on the design of the parterre at Longleat of the same period. The south steps have also been rebuilt. John Harvey, in his 1984 presidential address to the Garden History Society, wrote that 'Kirby Hall is of outstanding interest to us as the scene of the first horticultural archaeology in Britain, when the late George Chettle in 1935 discovered by excavation the stone edgings of the paths and beds of the Great Garden'. The garden has been restored. It was primarily a place for great men and great ladies, in long skirts, to walk on gravel paths and view sculptures set in square plats. It is not a place of horticultural display of the type now associated with gardens and gardening. The gravel paths cut into the lawns create a pattern to be viewed from the rooms of the great house.