Lodge Park's rectangular pool

In recent posts I have discussed the rectangular pool in Lodge Park, which I think we can date to certainly before 1725, and possibly back to 1630 quite a bit earlier. It is 300 yards long and 22 yards wide.

Here’s the pool today. Un-restored, a muddy swamp but with its shape clear.

I found an interesting reference as I go through the Dutton accounts. The accounts detail a payment on 24 of March 1727 of One Pound and Twelve Shillings to “Merry” for “making a boat for the New Park”. Now that’s interesting. The River Leach here is barely a trickle and the only place a boat would float usefully would be on the artificial lake or pool. (Remember lakes weren’t called lakes until the late 1700s - before then they were usually called “ponds”, “pools”, “waters” or “canals”).

So, John Dutton bought a boat for this pool in 1727, two years before Bridgeman designed his “plan” which included a significant aspiration of a serpentine body of water here. But why? A boat wouldn’t be needed for fishing, it’s only 22 yards wide with a path either side? It can only be for “pleasure” surely? So with the magical power of the “Sherborne Time Machine”, here’s what I imagine the scene might have looked like:

An AI generated image of the pool.

Whilst on the subject of “lakes”, did you know there were once two lakes in Lodge Park? A lake (or “pond” as it was called then) was constructed downstream from the rectangular pool (lots of references in the accounts). This lower “lake”is referred to as a pond in the period 1735-1740 when it was constructed with a stone weir, sluices and piling. I’m doing a detailed paper on the development of the lakes (ponds) including sluices, grates and masonry in both Old Park and Lodge Park (New Park) as it was called then in the 1730s. It is clear to me from the archive analysis that lakes were being constructed in Lodge Park and Home Park in the 1730s, at the same time, for the purposes of pleasure, aesthetics, and fishing (trout specifically). It contradicts the NT assessment that the Home Park lakes were created in the 1820s, I’m afraid. You can judge yourself when I present the evidence.

Anyway here’s the estate plan from 1820 of Lodge Park, clearly showing the lower pond/lake, created in the 1730s, still extant in 1820. A series of two bodies of water along the valley bottom, just as we see in Sherborne Park.

I’ll return to the details of the pond/lake creation in both parks, detailing the archival and other evidence, in a post in the near future.