Well worth visiting are the gardens at Wroxton Abbey, a Jacobean house with a 1727 garden which was partly converted to the serpentine style* between 1731 and 1751.

There is a serpentine* lake, a cascade, a rill and a number of follies by Sanderson Miller: a Gothic Dovecot, the Drayton Arth and the Temple-on-the-Mount. W A Nesfield advised on a formal flower garden on the south side of the house. A knot garden has been added in the twentieth century and was illustrated by Blomfield as an example of a 'modern garden'. He wrote that 'Nothing can be more beautiful than some of the walks under the apple trees in the gardens of Penshurst'.

The gardens are open from dawn to dusk daily, all year round, admission is free. Telephone 01295 730551 for more details.

* Serpentine Style
In the middle years of the eighteenth century, Lancelot Brown developed a personal style which can be seen as more-abstract version of the Augustan Style. It made less use of garden buildings and more use of serpentine lines in the layout of woods and water. The classic features of this style were a lawn sweeping up to the house, clumps, a serpentine lake and an encircling tree belt and carriage drive, also showing a serpentine geometry. This is the style of what is often known as the 'English landscape garden'. One could call it the 'Brownian' style.

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