MEM24942 - 19th Century designed landscape around Lee Abbey (Monument)

Charles Bailey purchased the house and holding of Lee in 1841. A designed landscape was created in the second half of the 19th Century and it is shown on the 25 inch 1st Edition Ordnance Survey map of 1889 [1]. This included removing medieval field boundaries such as those separating Great Church Close from Little Church Close to form two blocks of open parkland to the west and east of the house. A road leads from Valley Lodge past the Lodge Tower to the wooded Grove featuring cottages, waterfalls and fish ponds, and gives views across the newly planted woods in Cuddycleave to the north and Six Acre Cleave to the south, with Duty Point Tower visible above Lee Bay. By 1975, after the establishment of the Lee Abbey Christian Community, the parkland was enclosed into the current fields. N.B. The mapping for this record has been estimated from the information in the report; the feature may extend beyond the marked boundary. [1-3]