Wander around the 18th century Walled Garden with its spring bulbs, a dahlia border and a variety of fruit and vegetables.
Don’t miss the beautiful summerhouse in the Summerhouse Garden. The garden was designed and planted as an Edwardian flower garden in 1997 to reflect the Grecian-cross floorplan of the summerhouse.
Other features to look out for are the Lime Avenue, Orchard and herbaceous borders.
Below the house is the lake which was created from four fishponds probably in the 18th century.
Walk to the left, past the bird hide into Morgaston Wood. There are several paths through the woods with spectacular bluebells in the Spring.
There’s a bird hide for visitors to enjoy the wetland wildlife.
National Trust members visit for free.
Read more
Between 1500 and 1520, William Sandys transformed the medieval buildings at The Vyne into one of the ‘Principale Houses in all Hamptonshire’. Sandys became Henry VIII’s Lord Chamberlain and in 1535, the King and Anne Boleyn visited the house. Sandys also bought Mottisfont.
By 1644, the Sandys fortune had dipped and William 6th Lord Sandys sold The Vyne to the lawyer and politician, Chaloner Chute. Chute commissioned John Webb, a pupil of Inigo Jones to redesign the house adding the central portico, the first of its kind on a country house. Webb also designed The Summerhouse which is possibly the earliest domed building in England. It has been used as a banqueting house and a dovecote and is likely to have been one of a pair.
The Vyne was inherited in 1754 by John Chute who was a friend of Horace Walpole. Chute was involved with the decoration of Walpole’s house at Strawberry Hill where he had his own bedroom. Chute also updated the interior of The Vyne, removed the formal gardens and probably enlarged the lake. After his death in 1776, little change occurred at The Vyne until 1827 when the house was inherited by a Chute cousin, William Lyde Wiggett who changed his name to Chute.
In 1920s, The Vyne became a girls’ boarding school while boys were evacuated here during the Second World War.
On the death of Sir Charles Chute in 1956, the estate was given to the National Trust.
Read less