The manor of Lyveden was bought by Thomas Tresham in about 1468. As the family’s wealth increased, so did the Lyveden estate. Lyveden Old Bield was built at the beginning of the sixteenth century replacing an earlier medieval manor house.

On the death of his grandfather in 1559, the family estates passed to Thomas Tresham (1545-1605). Tresham had been brought up as a Catholic, and was punished throughout his life for his beliefs. His first arrest was from sheltering and receiving mass from the Jesuit missionary Edmund Campion, six years after he was knighted by the Queen in 1575.

In 1593, Tresham began planning the Banqueting House at Lyveden [Lyveden New Bield] which was to represent the Passion of Christ and the Virgin Mary. The house was designed by Tresham in consultation with Robert Stickells, Clerk of Works at Richmond Palace. It takes the form of a Greek Cross, and is decorated with inscriptions, emblems and complex numerology. By 1597, the ground floor was complete.

In 1596, Tresham was once again imprisoned and wrote letters to his keeper John Slynn with instructions to George Levens, Tresham’s surveyor and clerk of works on the layout of the gardens. Sir Thomas included references to the landscaping of the ground around the Banqueting House, as well as notes on the cultivation and grafting of fruit trees.

It is likely the walk from Lyveden Old Bield to the new ‘Garden Lodge’ was seen as a pilgrimage with the formal gardens planted with plants associated with the Passion. There were lower terraces, a lower orchard, a moated orchard and a bowling green.

To the north of the bowling green, the ‘new gardening quarter’ was laid out in a geometric pattern, divided by gravel paths with ‘quince, peach, damson trees etc’ growing. There was to be another orchard to the east of the moated orchard, planted with warden pears on mounds and described by Tresham as ‘my warden quincunx hills’. Tresham also instructed walnut trees to be planted here as well as roses underplanted with strawberries.

The lower orchard is separated from the moated orchard by three terraces, the highest of which forms a walk with mounds at each end, still recognisable as pyramids. The mounds are mirrored by the snail mounds at the south-west and south-east corners of the moat. At the top of the mound, there would have been views to the Banqueting House and over the concentric beds on the moat island – these were planted with roses alternating with raspberries. Tresham also instructed cherry and plum trees to be grown here while the moat was to be used as a fish pond.

Some of the original alleys have since been ploughed.

In August, 1605, Robert Cecil described Lyveden as ‘one of the finest orchards in England’.

Work on Lyveden New Bield and the gardens stopped on Sir Thomas’s death in September, 1605. Three months later, his son and heir, Francis, died in the Tower of London, a month after his arrest for his part in the Gunpowder plot.

Lyveden then passed to Sir Thomas’s second son, Lewis Tresham, who rebuilt Lyveden Old Bield c1615. Confusingly, this building now became newer than the 16th century Lyveden New Bield.

Lyveden remained in the family until 1649 when the estate was sequestered because of their continued allegiance to the Catholic faith. Major General Boteler who had been granted responsibility for Northamptonshire by Cromwell, removed the timbers from the roof of the building to build his house in Oundle.

In 1660 Charles II granted Lyveden to the Earl of Sandwich and from then the house passed through various family members including the Earls of Ossory and Robert Vernon Smith, 1st Lord Lyveden who acquired the house in 1841. In 1922 the lodge and 11 hectares of land were acquired by the National Trust.