Lamport Hall: A Storied Legacy of Gardens and Gnomes

Overview

Established in 1568 by wool merchant John Isham and later transformed by his descendants, Lamport Hall is renowned for introducing garden gnomes to Britain and features a rich history of architectural evolution and conservation, now maintained by the Lamport Hall Preservation Trust.

History

Home of the Isham family from the 1560s to 1976, Lamport Hall was built in 1568 by wool merchant John Isham. The house was extended during Charles I’s reign, before Sir Justinian Isham built the building that stands today in 1655, commissioning John Webb, a pupil and the son- in-law of classical architect Inigo Jones to build a large house, with Gilbert Clarke laying out the gardens. Further works were completed by 1741, while a century later major rebuilding took place, finally being completed in 1862. In 1847, the teetotal, non-smoking, bloodsports-opposing Sir Charles Isham, 10th baronet, who had inherited the house and title the previous year, began rebuilding cottages on the estate, and, a keen gardener, he focused on the house’s surroundings. That year he built a crescent-shaped rockery by the house, constructing, reportedly with his own hands, a 24-foot craggy wall of local ironstone. It was later claimed that the only rockery at all comparable had been constructed for the Emperor of Austria. Sometime in the 1850s, he introduced gnomes to Britain and to Lamport, importing several porcelain figures from Germany and populating the rockery with a gang of gnomes, giving them spades and axes to wide, and wheelbarrows to push, as they were miners at work in the rockery. After Charles Isham died in 1903, Lamport was inherited by his daughters, who disliked the gnomes and ordered their removal. The house was let until the 1950s until the actor Sir Gyles Isham, 12th Baronet inherited Lamport, and set about restoring both house and garden. He opened the house to the public in 1974, and when he died, two years later, with no heirs, he left Lamport and its contents to the Lamport Hall Preservation Trust, who continue to look after the house and its gardens today.