History of Sugnall Hall Estate

Lord Glenorchy decided to establish a walled kitchen garden in the dip between the old hall and the main road. In 1737 brickmakers set themselves up in a field not far away and supplied over 250,000 bricks to Glenorchy. He purchased plants and seeds from a London nurseryman and by the summer of 1738 he had a fully functioning kitchen garden. The walls remain completely intact after over 280 years in remarkably good condition, and two of the original doorways remain.

Another of Glenorchy’s improvements was the planting of woods from the hall to Copmere, where he built a Gothic boathouse. These woods were a long thin strip, wide enough for a ride from which he could observe what was going on in his fields, but widening at a point where there were the ugly scars of marlpits that were hidden with the planting.  This type of layout was called an ornamented farm, or ferme ornée.

Arabella died in 1754, thus ending the link between the Pershalls and Sugnall, When Glenorchy was an old man he decided to sell it, and so it was put in the hands of land agents who sold it farm by farm. The demesne (i.e. land in hand) was only 200 acres, but this was sold to John Turton soon after 1770. The walled kitchen garden had had no glasshouses, and Turton decided not just to rebuild the hall, but also to build a vinery with backsheds.