Lydney Park

Lydney Park is a 17th-century country estate near Lydney in the Forest of Dean, Gloucestershire. It centres on Lydney House and includes formal gardens, a woodland garden, and the remains of a Roman temple complex. The estate sits on ground once occupied by an Iron Age hill fort called Lydney Camp. Iron ore diggings from the 3rd century AD still scar the hillside. A Romano-Celtic temple to the god Nodens was built in the late 4th century and rebuilt after a rock fault caused its collapse. The house was bought in 1719 by Benjamin Bathurst, whose family wealth came partly from trade with the East India and Royal Africa Companies. In 1875 Rev. William Hiley Bathurst commissioned a new house in the deer park with views over the River Severn. After the Second World War the second Viscount Bledisloe and his family reshaped the gardens, planting magnolias, rhododendrons and azaleas. The site also holds a museum of Roman finds and New Zealand artefacts collected by the first Viscount Bledisloe. Visitors walk through a secluded valley of flowering shrubs to a paved terrace above the formal gardens. In spring daffodils brighten the terraces and lawns. The Roman temple area shows the unusual rectangular sanctuary with three rooms and arched colonnades. Nearby stand the remains of a guest house, dormitory and bath suite. Excavations led by Tessa Wheeler in 1928–29 and again in 1980–81 uncovered coins, mosaics and the temple’s fish-covered pavement.