Rousham and its stunning landscaped garden are a place of pilgrimage for students of the work of William Kent (1685-1748).
Rousham represents the first phase of English landscape design - a fashion that swept through Europe in later years. Many other examples of this revolutionary style of gardens have since been adapted and updated but Rousham is one of the few to have escaped alteration, with many features which enchanted eighteenth century visitors still to be seen.
These intensely green and simple lined gardens also include ponds and cascades in Venus’s Vale, a winding water channel leading to an octagonal Cold Bath, a seven arched Praeneste, Townsend’s Building, the Temple of the Mill, and, on the skyline, a sham ruin known as the ‘Eyecatcher’.
Also don’t miss the walled garden with its herbaceous borders, small parterre garden, pigeon house and espaliered apple trees.
When you visit Rousham you will find it quite uncommercial and unspoilt with no tea rooms, wheelchair hire or shop, so bring a picnic, wear comfortable shoes and enjoy William Kent's outstanding vision, just as it was so long ago.
N.B. lovers of floral borders should note that this is a Classic English landscaped garden and as such has little in the way of flower borders. The delight and pleasure is in the lines, the textures and infinite number of shades of green.
Author: Bob Saunders.
The nearest station is Heyford (15 mins walk), on the Oxford to Banbury line. Trains stop at the station roughly every two hours, Monday to Saturday, with occasional trains on Sunday during the summer months only.