Water lily in Italian garden, Heywood.

The garden is reached at the end of a long avenue that winds through an elegant landscape park laid out during the 1770s in the romantic-poetic tradition. Passing a Gothic folly made from stonework stolen from a local friary, the visitor arrives at the site of the old house - sadly now a car park set in front of an unappealing modern building. The garden lies just below the south side of the car park and is composed of three separate elements linked by a terrace that once fronted the house.

Visitors enter the garden through a series of small compartments or 'garden rooms' planted with herb aceous plants and delimited by clipped yew hedges. From here a curving staircase leads down into a large elliptical garden where three terraced borders drop to a central oval pond encircling a large stone fountain. At the east end stands a pavilion with a steep pantile roof, while at the opposite end an elegant gateway leads into an alley of pleached limes. Beyond this lies a large flat terrace with a lawn and borders that were once overlooked by the house windows. At the far end of this lawn a flight of steps arrives at a pergola terrace, whose oak beams are supported by Ionic columns taken from one of the eighteenth-century follies in the park. The pergola was once wreathed with wisteria and roses, while narrow flower beds between the columns contained fuchsias and hydrangeas. Now only cascades of Clematis tangutica grow here, but the views of the park and its lake below are quite lovely and a fitting climax to this splendid garden.