Lovelys days out at nymans house and garden national trust property in sussex page 1

Lovely Days Out

Come and join me on my travels

Nymans, Handcross, Haywards Heath, West Sussex, is an English garden and house set in 600 acres on a sloping site overlooking the picturesque High Weald of Sussex, developed by three generations of the Messel family, from the late 19th century, Lt. Col. Leonard Messel, succeeding to the property in 1915, replaced the non-descript Regency house with the picturesque stone manor, designed by Sir Walter Tapper and Norman Evill in a mellow late Gothic/Tudor style. He and his wife Maude extended the garden to the north and subscribed to seed collecting expeditions in the Himalayas and South America. The garden reached a peak in the 1930s and was regularly opened to the public. The severe reduction of staff in World War II was followed in 1947 by a disastrous fire in the house, which survives as a garden ruin.. The house was partially rebuilt and became the home of Leonard Messel's daughter Anne Messel and her second husband the 6th Earl of Rosse. At Leonard Messel's death in 1953 it was willed to the National Trust with 275 acres of woodland, one of the first gardens taken on by the Trust.