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When people share their memories of Warley Woods the physical feature most mentioned after The Abbey is the Rose Garden.  This was one of the few formal parts of Warley Woods and was planted in the former garden area of the house.  It was also called the Winter Garden at some point (perhaps before the roses were planted) due to its number of evergreen trees.  We are trying to revert back to using the name Winter Garden, so that people don’t feel disappointed when they arrive and find there are no roses anymore, but historically the area is most definitely best known as the Rose Garden.

George Bretherick was the park’s first Superintendent and he designed the first rose Garden which was created in 1911.  It was definitely reworked several times and we know its last replanting was around 1972 as one of the Trust’s staff, Roger Haslam, was involved in that work. At first the garden was definitely a place with particular rules of behaviour and no dogs were allowed, but later more relaxed behaviour was allowed.  

There were beds of shrub roses and also arches and arbours of roses with many benches.  It was popular with courting couples.  In the centre was a sundial where the large Derbyshire Gritstone sculptures are now.  These modern sculptures by Ken Smith were commissioned in 2006 by the Trust. A sundial was installed in July 1912 and was paid for by Mr C.L Stiff of Stiff’s Concrete Company Ltd, Birmingham.  It was modelled on a sundial that was on the south west tower of St Paul’s cathedral. Sadly it must have eventually been broken and discarded as we found a leg from it in the excavation of the icehouse, which had been used as a waste repository by staff for many years.  The  bandstand was nearby.

Roger Haslam was one of the staff who replanted the Rose Garden in the 1970s:
"There was just roses each side, long beds, the length of them, roses, climbers, rambling roses, it was absolutely beautiful it was.  I used to love it, all the way around big benches, every 20 feet there was a bench.  I’d tell there was at least 60 benches in that park at one time just around that area...There were 24 [rose plants] around the sundial, like in a half moon shape, on one side of the path, there was 12 there, and then on the other side of the path, there were another 12….There were massive beds but we couldn’t replace them Hybrid Teas, Floribundas.  Peace, that was the name, it was lovely, big shrubs.  We used to prune them every year. " 

In the 1990s the pathways were grassed over and the Community Trust reinstated them on the original design in 2007. We have more than 50 historical photographs of this area of the park, almost as many as of the Abbey and have just shared a few below.

You can hear Paul Ross describe the Rose Garden here. Clip 25

Would you like to read about somewhere else on the history trail?  Go back to the main listing page.