Garden at Tudor Croft, Guisborough

Summary

A small private garden developed from 1934 at the contemporary Tudor Croft for Ronald Crossley, a North East industrialist, and his family. The garden is a rare example of an inter-war suburban garden in a less formal Arts and Crafts style and contains many high-quality features including a fernery and rockwork by the Backhouse Nursey of York, rose pergola of Crossley bricks and terracotta garden ornaments handcrafted by Walter Scott for Crossleys’ Commondale Brickworks.

Reasons for Designation

The garden at Tudor Croft, Guisborough, designed from 1934 for Ronald Crossley, is registered at Grade II for the following principal reasons:

Design interest:
* a good example of a suburban garden with a contemporaneous family house designed for an industrialist, with Crossley bricks used to build the house and garden features, including the rose pergola;

* a carefully considered layout with the house at the highest point overlooking the rear sloping garden, allowing far-reaching views to the natural landscape beyond, with the summits of Highcliffe and Roseberry Topping deliberately appropriated as part of the design;

* the attention to materials and textures complements the Arts and Crafts aesthetic of the house, with plentiful use of bricks, masonry fragments from Gisborough Priory, millstones set in stone paving, and rockwork, including rare textured Magnesium Limestone found only along the local coast;

* the accomplished designs of the rare roofed fernery and the rockwork, and associated civil engineering of the water gardens bear the hallmarks of the Backhouse Nursery of York, famous for their consummate rockwork and expertise in plants, notably alpines and ferns;

* the less formal, more intimate, and relaxed style of the garden, inhabited by numerous terracotta gnomes and other animals handcrafted for Crossley, epitomises the 1930s devotion to outdoor leisure and is in contrast to the formal structures of hard landscaping and garden rooms seen in earlier Arts and Crafts gardens.

Historic interest:
* as a rare example of a largely intact 1930s garden in England.

Group value:
* it has strong group value with the Grade II contemporary house, whose context and setting it forms, and the fernery and rose pergola, which are included in the house's listing.

History

The property was acquired in the early 1930s by Ronald Crossley (1891-1949), director of Crossley Building Products Limited, to build Tudor Croft, his family home. The Crossleys were significant industrialists in the north-east, owning builders’ merchants’ depots and five brickworks, including the works at Commondale founded by Crossley’s grandfather in 1871.

The site had a wood in the corner, which had been part of a small private estate and the rest was a shallow valley through which Hutton Beck flows. The garden was underway when the house was completed in 1934. It is said to have taken ten years to complete and like the house was set out in the tradition of Arts and Crafts gardens of the early C20. Both house and garden showcased the products of the family brickworks and Crossley also ornamented the garden with dressed and carved stone taken from the ruins of Gisborough Priory.

The garden was laid out with water and rock features in addition to summer houses, aviary, grass tennis court, paddling pool, and ancillary garden buildings. Some elements (roofed fernery, rockwork and engineering for the water gardens) suggest the involvement of the Backhouse Nursery of York. William Herbert Everard, who was employed by the Backhouses, is recorded as having worked at Tudor Croft. In 1937 he was married and living in Saltburn, describing himself as a landscape gardener, later setting up a nursery of his own at Melsonby.

Placed throughout the garden are terracotta urns, planters, elves, gnomes, pixies, fairies and animals produced at the Commondale brickworks, modelled by Walter Scott, potter and sculptor from County Durham.

Two air raid shelters were built in the garden at the beginning of or during the Second World War. In 1949 a gardener’s cottage was added at the southern end of the site. Crossley died in the same year and when the property was bought in 1952 by Tony and Edna Heagney the garden was overgrown and neglected. They embarked on a ten-year programme of restoration and conservation.

In 1973 the wooded corner of the property was sold. The Henry Caesar and Son timber summerhouse was relocated from here into the main garden and restored. In 1989 Mike Heagney, son of Tony and Edna, bought a strip of land no longer in his ownership to the west of the rose pergola, restoring the garden to its original size. He designed this new area as a gravel garden and woodland bank. In the 1990s he started a collection of snowdrops and there are now over 300 varieties in the collection. He also began collecting stone troughs, which are planted with alpines. He continues to maintain the garden, and the family tradition of regularly opening it to the public for charity with his sister Gel.

Details

A small private garden developed from 1934 during the 1930s and early 1940s for Ronald Crossley, director of Crossley Building Products, and restored and developed further by the Heagney family since 1952. It is a rare example of a suburban interwar garden in a less formal version of the Arts and Crafts style.

AREA, BOUNDARIES, VIEWS: the garden is around two hectares, in a shallow valley which slopes down to the south-west with Hutton Beck flowing in an easterly direction along the south-eastern side. The house stands in a raised position at the northern end of the site with long views to the North York Moors. Highcliffe is seen against the skyline to the south and Roseberry Topping to the south-west (no longer clearly visible due to later development). The boundaries are mostly fenced, railed or hedged and bounded on the north by a footpath on the south side of Stokesley Road and on the east by the adjoining property of Rosewood. The west boundary continues beside the secondary drive as far as a field gate. The boundary excludes Tudor Croft Cottage, built in 1949 as a gardener’s cottage, and its garden, which is now in separate ownership.

ENTRANCES AND APPROACHES: The gateway from Stokesley Road is of the Crossley’s Tudor brick with curved side walls with terracotta lion panels. The entrance drive opens onto a gravelled, curved parking area in front of the house and garage, edged by a low drystone wall to the right with conifers, azaleas and other shrubs. The main garden is reached along a path of irregular stone flags beside the west gable wall of the house, with low drystone walling to the outside. To the west is an ungated, subsidiary driveway opening off Stokesley Road and curving round to run parallel to the west boundary to reach the former stables, workshop and potting shed, and gardener’s cottage beyond.

PRINCIPAL BUILDING: Tudor Croft and its contemporary garage date from 1934 and are built in an Arts and Crafts style from Crossley’s hand-made Tudor bricks with brick and tile dressings and tiled roofs. The irregular south elevation faces onto the garden to take advantage of the views.

GARDENS: the overall concept of the garden is in the tradition of the Arts and Crafts style of the early C20 pioneered by Gertrude Jekyll and others but set out in a less formal pattern than gardens of that period. Many of the beds have low, drystone wall edging and the paths are crazy-paved, stone-flagged or gravelled. Several have millstones set in.

South-west of the south patios is a low ROCKERY, composed of textured Magnesian Limestone (found locally along the coast between Sunderland and South Shields), with Commondale Pottery terracotta ornaments and a rill running into a small pond with a terracotta fountain. The rockery has a curving, organic outer edge, partly edged with crazy paving, and a lawn stretches out beyond with a Ceder of Lebanon in the north-west corner.

On the north side of the rockery is the FERNERY with walls of water-worn Westmorland Limestone. Cavities between the rocks are filled with soil and ferns and a small fountain with water flowing down into a small grotto and pool, then around a rill to another small pool and grotto. The fountains and grottos are decorated with terracotta ornaments.

A narrow path leads through the rockery past the fernery and along the long ROSE PERGOLA which initially curves before continuing in a straight line along the garden’s west side. It has forty-eight pillars constructed of varied types of Crossley bricks. At the north end a path splits off to a small, rectangular WALLED GARDEN with brick walls, segmental-arched north doorway with decorative, metalwork gate and a large, circular opening with stone frame in the centre of the east wall, now with an inserted, iron wheel. Inside is a brick, herringbone floor with inset millstone, a stone pedestal, and stone kerbs to outer flowerbeds. At the south end is a large, terracotta urn standing on an inverted, stone, foliate column capital.

The GRAVEL GARDEN (created by Mike Heagney) has a curved flight of shallow steps to the bank at the north end, lawn to the south, and a path separating the gravel and lawn from a long, sloping, alpine bank on the east side. A narrow west bank beside the secondary drive is planted with spring bulbs, mature silver birches, beeches and other trees and shrubs. A collection of many stone troughs has been added to the garden by Mike Heagney. At the southern end is a small, brick and pantiled stable building, brick shed, timber workshop and open-fronted log store. An angled, screening hedge on the eastern side curves round on the left side of a path which leads to a bridge with timber handrails over the stream.

On the east side of the house is a single-storey former aviary (now converted to volunteers’ garden room). To the rear is an air-raid shelter and former paddling pool (converted to swimming pool). Where the land slopes gently down to the east is the rectangular ROSE GARDEN aligned approximately north-south along the slope. Two long rose beds have low drystone walls with an opening flanked by staddle stones. A central paved area has a sundial statue of Atlas, with dedication plaque to Edna Heagney, bed of lavender and clipped box pyramids. To the rear is a stone shelter with a bench and on each side are stepped, rectangular rose beds with low, stone block walls. Abutting the shelter is a higher retaining wall to an upper flowerbed running behind. It is visible from the house and has a low outer wall incorporating carved masonry from Gisborough Priory.

Across the south end of the Rose Garden is the narrow, curved, SECRET GARDEN; a partly sunken rock garden with a narrow linear pond surrounded by a copper beech hedge except for a narrow entrance in the north-east corner. Towards one end of the pond is a small, stone-flagged bridge, with a terracotta fisherman at the opposite end. The rockwork is water-worn limestone, with a water source for water to run from the top down the rocks surfaces and into a rill across the path to the pond.

East of these two gardens is a lawn bounded on the east by mature trees, with a gravelled path curving round along the western side of the stream. The stream is crossed by a stone hump-backed BRIDGE with an archway keystone initialled RGC and dated 1936, and carved masonry fragments in the stone parapets. On its north-east side is a water splash with cobbled slopes on each side and a stone block drive through the water, with low, stone retaining walls and a weir beyond.

The WATER GARDENS are entered on the north-east side through an archway in an ivy-clad, stone block wall. In a small lawned area is a large, circular stone basin with a central fountain, with a rock garden on one side and the stream on the other. The rock garden rises to the west, with stone steps curving through the rocks, a water cascade and a stone block shelter (partially covered in ivy) with cobbled floor and stone bench. To the right-hand side is another flight of stone steps up the hillside. The stream has a weir at the southern end and is then engineered to curve around one side of a pond, splitting to flow both sides of a small, narrow leaf-shaped island, with stone block retaining walls to the island and eastern side of the stream. It then flows beneath a simple wooden bridge with no handrails. The pond has rockwork banks with stone steps down to a narrow surrounding path, small, stone flag bridge, and a small island with a crane statue. On the north side of the pond is a BOG GARDEN, kept moist by piped water from the cascade.

On the south side of the Water Gardens is the GNOME GARDEN with stone-block and drystone walling, crazy-paving terraces with inset millstone and steps leading up from the path and up to the upper lawn. It is enclosed on the west side by a beech hedge. There are many terracotta gnomes and other ornaments including urns. The path passes through a stone block archway incorporating a quatrefoil stone inscribed 1956 to meet the bridge with timber handrails. On the west side are long beds with some rockwork and a large, terracotta urn, separated by strips of lawn.

On the south-eastern side of the stream is a gravelled path edged on one side with staddle stones. A grass tennis court is enclosed on three sides by mature trees and hedges, with a rectangular, revolving timber and glazed summerhouse by Boulton & Paul Ltd of Norwich inset at the midpoint of the long, eastern side. To the south is a woodland area and a polygonal rustic timber summerhouse (restored) by Henry Caesar and Son. Beyond is the brick base for a large glasshouse, a brick and pantiled potting shed and other sheds, vegetable garden and propagation area. It is screened by a hedge from the former orchard, now a wildflower garden, at the southern tip of the garden.
This list entry was subject to a Minor Amendment on 30 October 2025 to update the Address

Sources

Books and journals
Where the Mouseman Worked his Magic in Country Life, ,Vol. , (August 30, 2007), 64-69
Cockerill, J, Commondale Clay. Bricks, Pipes and Pottery (1995), 31-33

Websites
Tudor Croft, Mike Heagney, January 2023, Yorkshire Gardens Trust, accessed 31 March 2025 from https://yorkshiregardenstrust.org.uk/research/sites/tudor-croft

Other
Tudor Croft Garden map, Mike Heagney
Unpublished site visit notes by Professor Gillian Parker, presently researching a PhD on the Backhouses of York at the Dept of Archaeology, University of York.

End of official list entry