Synopsis
The gardens descend from the croquet lawn, through the formal topiary down to the wild garden. The manor house with its church, stable block, coach house, dovecote and courtyard is a glorious harmony of golden sandstone and stands on level ground looking across terraced gardens, grass banks and wooded hill which descend steeply to the south. Pevsner's Dorset guide says "there can hardly be a more enchanting manorial group than Mapperton."
The house, Elizabethan in origin, enlarged in the late 1660s, is a marvellous example of a West Country manor house in harmony with its surroundings and the rolling landscape around it.
Now the home of the Earl and Countess of Sandwich, Mapperton continues to be a family house and harks back to the restoration of Charles II when the first Earl of Sandwich brought the King back from Holland.
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