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Orchardleigh (also spelled Orchardlea) is a country estate in Somerset, approximately two miles north of Frome, and on the southern edge of the village of Lullington. It comprises a Victorian country house, the Orchardleigh Lake with its island church, and an eighteen-hole golf course. Various accommodation is provided, both in the house itself and at adjacent lodges and cottages in the extensive grounds.
The Church of St Mary, Orchardlea, dates from the 13th century and is Grade I listed.[1] The churchyard contains the grave of the poet [Sir Henry Newbolt]].
The parish was part of the hundred of Frome.[2]
The old Orchardleigh House was just south of the church. Its heyday was the time of Sir Thomas Champneys, 1st Baronet, High Sheriff of Somerset in 1775, but all that remains of that period is the boathouse, rotunda, the Lullington gateway, and the Tudor lodges dating from the 1820s. The old house was demolished and the present one built in 1856 by Thomas Henry Wyatt for William Duckworth. The new house is described by Pevsner as "picturesque, irregular, and in a mixed Elizabethan style", and is a Grade II* listed building.[3]
In 1986, Arthur Duckworth died, and Orchardleigh was soon sold. Work started on redevelopment, but in 1989 the developer’s loans were called in by the bank and work ceased for thirteen years. In 2002 a new scheme was started to build the current hotels and golf courses.
The boathouse[4] is included in the Heritage at Risk Register produced by English Heritage.[5] The estate also contains a bridge incorporating a sluice,[6] a semicircular bridge,[7] a garden house,[8] a keepers lodge [9] and a stables and coachhouse,[10] which all date from the same period as the main house and are also listed buildings.
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The following was shared by Frome's local historian Terry Cliss
FIDELE'S GRASSY TOMB
The Squire sat propped in a pillowed chair,
His eyes were alive and clear of care,
But well he knew that the hour was come
To bid good-bye to his ancient home.
He looked on garden, wood, and hill,
He looked on the lake, sunny and still;
The last of earth that his eyes could see
Was the island church of Orchardleigh.
The last that his heart could understand
Was the touch of the tongue that licked his hand:
"Bury the dog at my feet," he said,
And his voice dropped, and the Squire was dead.
Now the dog was a hound of the Danish breed,
Staunch to love and strong at need:
He had dragged his master safe to shore
When the tide was ebbing at Elsinore.
From that day forth, as reason would,
He was named "Fidele," and made it good;
When the last of the mourners left the door
Fidele was dead on the chantry floor.
They buried him there at his master's feet,
And all that heard of it deemed it meet:
The story went around for years,
Till it came at last to the Bishop's ears.
Bishop of Bath and Wells was he,
Lord of the lords of Orchardleigh;
And he wrote to the Parson the strongest screed
That Bishop may write or Parson read.
The sum of it was that a soulless hound
Was known to be buried in hallowed ground:
From scandal sore the Church to save
They must take the dog from his master's grave.
The heir was far in a foreign land,
The Parson was wax to my Lord's command:
He sent for the Sexton and bade him make
A lonely grave by the shore of the lake.
The Sexton sat by the water's brink
Where he used to sit when he used to think:
He reasoned slow, but he reasoned it out,
And his argument left him free from doubt.
"A Bishop," he said, "is the top of his trade:
But there's others can give him a start with the spade:
Yon dog, he carried the Squire ashore,
And a Christian could n't ha' done no more."
The grave was dug; the mason came
And carved on stone Fidele's name:
But the dog that the Sexton laid inside
Was a dog that never had lived or died.
So the Parson was praised, and the scandal stayed,
Till, a long time after, the church decayed,
And, laying the floor anew, they found
In the tomb of the Squire the bones of a hound.
As for the Bishop of Bath and Wells,
No more of him the story tells;
Doubtless he lived as a Prelate and Prince,
And died and was buried a century since.
And whether his view was right or wrong
Has little to do with this my song;
Something we owe him, you must allow;
And perhaps he has changed his mind by now.
The Squire in the family chantry sleeps,
The marble still his memory keeps:
Remember, when the name you spell,
There rest Fidele's bones as well.
For the Sexton's grave you need not search,
'T is a nameless mound by the island church:
An ignorant fellow, of humble lot -
But he knew one thing that a Bishop did not.
Henry Newbolt
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