Help our volunteers to re-create the sights, sounds and tastes of a traditional kitchen garden producing fruit, flowers and vegetables from a  bygone age.

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Information below is transcript of the notice board at the entrance.

The walled garden which belonged to Allesley Hall is believed to date from 1780s when the owner was John Neale, Lord of the Manor of Allesley and High Sheriff of Warwickshire.  The walls, ranging from eight to fourteen feet high (2.4 to 4.3 metres), are made of hand-made bricks, laid with lime mortar. They enclose an area of nearly 1.4 acres (5530 square metres).

The garden was used for 150 years to produce vegetables, fruit, flowers and herbs for the occupants of Allesley Hall.  The central path connected the walled garden with Allesley Hall's home farm (now the Allesley Park Community Centre).  The farm would have supplied animal manure to maintain the fertility of the soil.  Plants were watered from the well, which is fed from a spring on the castle mound.  A gardener's cottage was sited with its front wall in the top (south-west) corner of the garden so that the head gardener could keep an eye on the under-gardeners working inside.
 

James Beck, who had been Mayor of Coventry in 1838, occupied Allesley Hall in the 1840s and was probably responsible for the list of the fruit trees which were planted in the walled garden in 1842.  As many as possible of the original varieties are replanted around the walls.

By the late nineteenth century the "exceptionally fine kitchen garden" as it was described in 1897 included a range of cold frames, greenhouses such as a vinery and stove-house, forcing pits and potting sheds.  There was also an orchard in the area immediately behind you, which was in existence for at least 150 years.

After 1937 when Allesley Hall and its park were given by Lord Illiffe to the people of Coventry the walled garden was used by the Corporation for raising bedding plants.  In the 1960s it was landscaped as an ornamental garden with wall shrubs, rose-beds and island beds for dahlias.

In 1999 the Allesley Park Walled Garden Group was started by volunteers wanting to restore the walled garden to its late eighteenth century appearance using old varieties of flowers, fruit and vegetables and organic methods of horticulture.
 

If you would like further information, please contact one of the volunteers.  We work in the Garden most Saturdays and have a full programme of fund-raising events, visits and meetings.  New volunteers are always welcome.

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