Bicton is a

civil parish In England, a civil parish is a type of administrative parish used for local government. It is a territorial designation which is the lowest tier of local government. Civil parishes can trace their origin to the ancient system of parishes, w ...

and a former manor in the

East Devon East Devon is a local government district in Devon, England. Its council is based in the town of Honiton, although Exmouth is the largest town. The district also contains the towns of Axminster, Budleigh Salterton, Cranbrook, Ottery St M ...

district of

Devon Devon ( ; historically also known as Devonshire , ) is a ceremonial county in South West England. It is bordered by the Bristol Channel to the north, Somerset and Dorset to the east, the English Channel to the south, and Cornwall to the west ...

, England, near the town of

Budleigh Salterton Budleigh Salterton is a seaside town on the coast in East Devon, England, south-east of Exeter. It lies within the East Devon Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, and forms much of the electoral ward of Budleigh, whose ward population at the ...

. The parish is surrounded, clockwise from the north, by the parishes of

Colaton Raleigh Colaton Raleigh is a village and civil parish in East Devon East Devon is a local government district in Devon, England. Its council is based in the town of Honiton, although Exmouth is the largest town. The district also contains the t ...

Otterton Otterton is a village and civil parish in East Devon, England. The parish lies on the English Channel and is surrounded clockwise from the south by the parishes of East Budleigh, Bicton, Colaton Raleigh, Newton Poppleford and Harpford and Sidmo ...

East Budleigh East Budleigh is a small village in East Devon, England. The villages of Yettington, Colaton Raleigh, and Otterton lie to the west, north and east of East Budleigh, with the seaside town of Budleigh Salterton about two miles south. Until th ...

and Woodbury. According to the 2001 census it had a population of 280. Much of the parish consists of Bicton Park, designed by

André Le Nôtre André Le Nôtre (; 12 March 1613 – 15 September 1700), originally rendered as André Le Nostre, was a French landscape architect and the principal gardener of King Louis XIV of France. He was the landscape architect who designed Gardens ...

, the French landscape architect and the principal gardener of the Sun King,

Louis XIV LouisXIV (Louis-Dieudonné; 5 September 16381 September 1715), also known as Louis the Great () or the Sun King (), was King of France from 1643 until his death in 1715. His verified reign of 72 years and 110 days is the List of longest-reign ...

, who designed the

gardens A garden is a planned space, usually outdoors, set aside for the cultivation, display, and enjoyment of plants and other forms of nature. The single feature identifying even the wildest wild garden is ''control''. The garden can incorporate bot ...

of the

Palace of Versailles The Palace of Versailles ( ; ) is a former royal residence commissioned by King Louis XIV located in Versailles, Yvelines, Versailles, about west of Paris, in the Yvelines, Yvelines Department of Île-de-France, Île-de-France region in Franc ...

. It is the historic home of the Rolle family, with Bicton Common, adjacent to Woodbury Common, in the west. The parish includes the village of Yettington on its southern border.

History

Bicton appears in the

Domesday Book Domesday Book ( ; the Middle English spelling of "Doomsday Book") is a manuscript record of the Great Survey of much of England and parts of Wales completed in 1086 at the behest of William the Conqueror. The manuscript was originally known by ...

of 1086 as ''Bechetone'', held by William Porter, probably by the

service Service may refer to: Activities * Administrative service, a required part of the workload of university faculty * Civil service, the body of employees of a government * Community service, volunteer service for the benefit of a community or a ...

of guarding the gate at Exeter Castle and the prison there. The manor passed through several families until Sir Thomas Denys (1559–1613) left two daughters as co-heiresses. The eldest was Anne Denys, who by her marriage to Sir Henry Rolle (d.1616) of

Stevenstone Stevenstone is a former Manorialism, manor within the parish of St Giles in the Wood, near Great Torrington, North Devon. It was the chief seat of the Rolle family, one of the most influential and wealthy of Devon families, from c. 1524 un ...

, brought Bicton to the Rolle family. The gardens at Bicton were begun in around 1735, supposedly to a design by

, but most of the work was undertaken by

John Rolle, 1st Baron Rolle John Rolle, 1st Baron Rolle (1750 – 3 April 1842) was a British politician and peer who served as a Member of Parliament in general support of William Pitt the Younger and was later an active member of the House of Lords. His violent ...

in the early 19th century. This included the digging of the lake in 1812 by French prisoners of war, planting the

arboretum An arboretum (: arboreta) is a botanical collection composed exclusively of trees and shrubs of a variety of species. Originally mostly created as a section in a larger garden or park for specimens of mostly non-local species, many modern arbor ...

in 1830 and the noted

araucaria ''Araucaria'' (; original pronunciation: .ɾawˈka. ɾja is a genus of evergreen coniferous trees in the family Araucariaceae. While today they are largely confined to the Southern Hemisphere, during the Jurassic and Cretaceous they were glo ...

avenue in 1842. Other features include the

orangery An orangery or orangerie is a room or dedicated building, historically where orange and other fruit trees are protected during the winter, as a large form of greenhouse or conservatory. In the modern day an orangery could refer to either ...

(1806), the "bulbous"

palm house Palm house is a term sometimes used for large and high heated display greenhouses that specialise in growing arecaceae, palms and other tropical and subtropical plants. In Victorian era, Victorian Britain, several ornate glass and iron palm house ...

(c. 1825), and the castellated octagonal China Tower of 1839. John Rolle died, childless, aged 86 in 1842. However, after his marriage to his second wife, Louisa Trefusis, he decided to appoint as his heir her nephew, the six-year-old Mark George Kerr Trefusis (the younger brother of the 20th Baron Clinton) requiring him to change his name to Rolle, which he did. However, when Mark Rolle died in 1907 he left no male heir so the Rolle inheritance passed to his nephew,

Charles Hepburn-Stuart-Forbes-Trefusis, 21st Baron Clinton Charles John Robert Hepburn-Stuart-Forbes-Trefusis, 21st Baron Clinton (18 January 1863 – 5 July 1957) was a British peer. Biography Trefusis was the eldest son of the 20th Baron Clinton and his wife, Harriet. Educated at Oxford he play ...

(1863–1957). Bicton House over the lake in Bicton Park - geograph

The 21st Baron let and later sold the mansion house and surrounding lands to Devon County Council as an agricultural college, now

Bicton College Bicton College is a college with around 1,000 full-time and 3,500 part-time pupils, located near Budleigh Salterton, Devon, England. It is part of the Cornwall College group. The college specialises in agriculture and currently offers cou ...

, which as of 2016 covers , and sleeps 231 residential students. The gardens at Bicton were renovated by the baron in the 1950s and opened to the public in 1963. The 22nd Baron gave the botanical gardens to a charitable trust in 1986, which sold them in 1998 to Simon and Valerie Lister who turned their into a commercial visitor attraction named Bicton Park Botanical Gardens – see below. The remainder of the land comprising the former manor of Bicton is still owned by

Baron Clinton Baron Clinton is a title in the Peerage of England. Created in 1298 for Sir John de Clinton, it is the seventh-oldest barony in England. Creation and early history The title was granted in 1298 to Sir John de Clinton, a knight who had served ...

under the management of

Clinton Devon Estates Clinton Devon Estates is a land management and property development company which manages the Devonshire estates belonging to Baron Clinton, the largest private landowner in Devon, England. Lord Clinton is of the Fane-Trefusis family, and is s ...

. This includes of

tenant farm A tenant farmer is a farmer or farmworker who resides and works on land owned by a landlord, while tenant farming is an agricultural production system in which landowners contribute their land and often a measure of operating capital and manage ...

land, of woodland and of the East Devon Pebblebed Heaths. The equestrian venue known as Bicton Arena is also part of the estate.

Church

In 1850, Lady Louisa Rolle commemorated her late husband by building a new church on the estate close to the old one, which was partly demolished and the chancel reworked by

Augustus Pugin Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin ( ; 1 March 1812 – 14 September 1852) was an English architect, designer, artist and critic with French and Swiss origins. He is principally remembered for his pioneering role in the Gothic Revival architecture ...

as a mausoleum to the Rolle family. The mausoleum, which is not open to the public, contains Minton floor tiles, a vaulted ceiling, east and west decorated windows by Pugin, and a Rolle monument on the north wall designed by George Myers. It also contains the baroque marble tomb of Denys Rolle (died 1638) and his wife and son, which was described by

W. G. Hoskins William George Hoskins (22 May 1908 – 11 January 1992) was an English local historian who founded the first university department of English Local History. His great contribution to the study of history was in the field of landscape history. ...

as "magnificent". Some fifty years before its demolition, the topographer

John Swete Rev. John Swete (born John Tripe) (baptised 13 August 1752 – 25 October 1821) of Oxton, Kenton, Oxton House, Kenton, Devon, Kenton in Devon, was a clergyman, landowner, artist, antiquary, historian and topographer and author of the ''Picturesqu ...

made a watercolour painting of the old church, and wrote of its

picturesque Picturesque is an aesthetic ideal introduced into English cultural debate in 1782 by William Gilpin in ''Observations on the River Wye, and Several Parts of South Wales, etc. Relative Chiefly to Picturesque Beauty; made in the Summer of the Year ...

setting in his journal in 1795. Gray, Todd & Rowe, Margery (Eds.), Travels in Georgian Devon: The Illustrated Journals of The Reverend John Swete, 1789–1800, 4 vols., Tiverton, 1999, vol.2, pp.140–145 The church of 1850 was designed by the Exeter-based architect, John Hayward: Hoskins simply called it "dull", though it was later described as an early example in Devon of the ideals of the

Cambridge Camden Society The Cambridge Camden Society, known from 1845 (when it moved to London) as the Ecclesiological Society,

Landmarks

Bicton

Obelisk An obelisk (; , diminutive of (') ' spit, nail, pointed pillar') is a tall, slender, tapered monument with four sides and a pyramidal or pyramidion top. Originally constructed by Ancient Egyptians and called ''tekhenu'', the Greeks used th ...

on the edge of the park was built in 1747 by

Henry Rolle, 1st Baron Rolle Henry Rolle, 1st Baron Rolle (7 November 1708 – 17 August 1750) was a British landowner, peer and politician. Origins Rolle was the eldest son of John Rolle (1679–1730), Member of Parliament for Devon (who had declined the offer of an earl ...

(1708–1750) as a visual attraction for the gardens. Rolle also built the four-sided pillar in the centre of the four-cross-ways between Bicton and Otterton in 1743. As well as serving as a signpost for the various places to which the four roads lead, it incorporates biblical inscriptions, such as "Her ways are ways of pleasantness", etc.

Bicton Park Botanical Gardens

Bicton Park Botanical Gardens is a

tourist attraction A tourist attraction is a place of interest that tourists visit, typically for its inherent or exhibited natural or cultural value, historical significance, natural or built beauty, offering leisure and amusement. Types Places of natural beaut ...

on the southern part of the former Bicton estate. The landscaped park includes historic glasshouses, a countryside museum, the

Bicton Woodland Railway The Bicton Woodland Railway is a narrow-gauge railway running in Bicton Park Botanical Gardens in the grounds of Bicton House near Budleigh Salterton in Devon. The line was built in 1962 as a tourist attraction for visitors to the house. Mos ...

train ride, nature trail, maze, mini golf, indoor and outdoor children's play complexes, restaurant and shop. The gardens, which originated in c.1730 are Grade I listed. The four glasshouses at Bicton Gardens were designed to re-create the natural environment of plants from different continents. The Palm House was built in the 1820s to a curvilinear design, using 18,000 small glass panes in thin iron glazing bars. The Tropical House is the home of the Bicton orchid ( ''Lemboglossum bictoniense''), named after the Park where it first bloomed in 1836. The Arid House features cacti and other succulents growing in a naturalistic desert landscape.

Notes

References

External links

Bicton Park Botanical GardensBicton Arena
{{authority control Villages in Devon Civil parishes in Devon East Devon District